IMS103@PSUVM.BITNET (12/31/89)
This seems almost too good to be true... but if it is......
I just got a text file (15K) that described a new graphics "card"
that adds two fully slidable, genlockable modes for all Amigas.
Here is a snipit of the article....
Here is a concise list of features for the HAM-E graphics enhancer:
* 256 thousand simultaneous colors on screen , HAM-E mode
* Up to 236 directly usable color registers in 8 bit HAM mode
* 256 simultaneous colors out of palette of 16 million, REG mode
* Complete "color cycling" capability for 59 or 236 color registers
* All color registers are 24 bit accurate (8 bits/color-gun)
* Both modes can be animated using standard anim type tools
* Both Modes are completely IFF compatible
* Both modes supported by existing show and slideshow tools
* Both modes may be overscanned horizontally or vertically
* Both modes may be interlace or non-interlace
* High rez menuing capability
* No "CPU" overhead involved in maintaining the image
* No "BLITTER" overhead involved in maintaining the image
* All normal Amiga modes pass thru unaffected
* Amiga modes are still Genlockable
* Both new modes are Genlockable
* Image memory is BLITTER and CPU accessable
* Screens are fully "vertical slide", "overlay" & "front/back".
* Works with ALL Amigas - a1000, 500, 2000, 2500, 2500/030, PAL, etc
* Attaches to Amiga RGB connecter only - no internal connections
* Quality RGB output - not composite
* Externally powered, no load on Amiga system
* FCC Approved
256 thousand colors out of 16.7 million in 320 x 400! Does anyone have
any other info on this company? Oh yea, they said the planned retail was
inb the $300 range! If they can pull this off then they have my vote
for company of the year. If anyone want's the entire article e-mail me
and I will send it to you. The company is called Black Belt Systems and
they give an address as...
398 Johnson Road, Glasgow, Montana, 59230
and for voice or fax...
406-367-5509, 8am to 5pm, MST.
Ian Smith <ims103@psuvm.bitnet>11tstark@gallux.gallaudet.edu (Timothy Stark) (01/01/90)
Hello, Ian Smith, PLease send me your entire article about new graphics adapter. Thanks! -- Tim Stark Timothy Stark Bitnet: 11tstark@gallua.bitnet People/Link: T.STARK Gallaudet University Internet: 11tstark@gallux.gallaudet.edu GEnie: T.STARK1 P.O. Box 1453, 800 Florida Ave., N.E., Washington, DC 20002 "Gallaudet University is the only university for the deaf in the world."
IMS103@psuvm.psu.edu (01/04/90)
Ok, here it is... Enjoy!
-----
Club : AMIGA ZONE Sec: 2
Date : 12/21/89 21:20 Num: 58,633
Theme: HAM-E VIDEO UPGRADE
To : ALL By : CAPT*VIDEO
Title: BLACK BELT DEVICE
-----
Black Belt Systems is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of
our new HAM-E graphics system for all Amigas from the early a1000's, on
up to PAL version 2500/030's and all models in between. The HAM-E is
inexpensive, extremely compatible, and it offers more performance for
your dollar than any other graphics system for the Amiga.
We'll start at the top: The HAM-E provides you with two new graphics
modes in addition to all of the original ones you already have in a
standard Amiga - and it does so in an extremely compatable and
interference free manner.
*** REG Mode:
The first mode is 256 simultaneous colors from a palette of 16,777,216
colors (24 bits, 8 bits/gun). Resolutions available are 320x200,
320x400 (interlace), the normal overscan options both horizontally and
vertically, and equivalent PAL resolutions. Additional features include
the capability to color cycle any or all of the 256 color registers,
fully Genlockable, sliding/overlapping front-back screens, no CPU
overhead to maintain the image (unless you want to color cycle or
glow... and even then it's minimal), completely IFF compatible. You can
have 256 levels of grey scale in this mode if you are involved in image
processing and so on.
*** HAM-E Mode:
The second mode is the Extended HAM (Hold-And-Modify) mode. This mode
provides 236 24-bit color registers in four banks of 59, and full 18
bit HAM capability. You can have 262,144 colors on screen at one time
(in exactly the same way "standard" HAM allows you to have 4,096) and
instead of having 16 color registers available to enhance "fast-edge"
color changes, you have 236.... which are accurate to 24 bits (16
million colors).You use this just like you use HAM mode, but you get...
(1) More than a quarter-million more simultaneous colors than standard
HAM mode (or any "normal" Amiga mode) can provide;
(2) You have much better sharp edge color changes because you have 59
immediately available color registers you can use to load the R, G and
B guns with no delay or HAM artifacts to a precision of 24 bits (16
million colors);
(3) You have the ability to change anywhere in the picture to a new set
of 59 color registers - the cost is one pixel that does not change at
all from the previous pixel. Obvious "good" places to do that are at
the beginning of a scan line, or in an area of an image that is not
currently changing (say, the contour of a cheek). Remember, it only
takes one pixel and there is no processor overhead involved, no
interrupts, no blitter. It's all directly dependant on the pixel data
in the image.
The HAM-E mode is Genlockable; it exists on a sliding, front/back
standard Amiga screen; it's fully IFF compatible; and supports color
cycling of any of the 236 color registers, regardless of bank.
Resolutions available are 320x200, 320x400 (interlace), the normal
overscan options both horizontally and vertically, and equivalent PAL
resolutions.
Some General Information:
The HAM-E device attaches to any Amiga by simply plugging it into the
DB-23 connector that is the RGB port using a supplied cable, and then
plugging your monitor or genlock into the other DB-23 connector on the
HAM-E. Then you plug it's AC cord into a wall outlet. That's all there
is to installation; no need to change your system software in any way,
or to add libraries or devices.
At this point, you turn your Amiga back on, and use SuperView (or any
other show or slideshow utility that understands standard 640
resolution images) to view your first HAM-E images (supplied on a demo
disk from us). When you're not viewing an image that uses one of our
new modes, for instance, if the WorkBench(tm) is pulled halfway "over"
a new mode image, the normal screen (in this example, the WorkBench)
looks just as it usually does, and the portion of the new mode image
looks exactly as it should also.
The point we're making here is that the new mode images act exactly as
if they had been designed into the system from the very start of things.
One very important difference between the HAM-E product and other,
competing display adapters is that our images are maintained in the
Amiga's normal "chip" memory, and so you can use the blitter on them;
that means that animation and page flipping does not require the direct
attention of the CPU... a critical point for those of you using
standard animation utilities.
Something else worth noting at this point is that the output from the
HAM-E hardware is quality 24 bit RGB (or 12 bit when a normal Amiga
screen is showing, and only for the portion that is showing) rather
than composite video - composite is very difficult to process in many
ways, especially for studio work. You can always turn RGB into
composite or S-VHS, but not the reverse.
Some things to keep in mind:
The HAM-E works by operating on the video data coming out of the Amiga
RGB port. For this reason, in a system using a flicker-fixer (tm) the
new enhanced modes will not be visible on the flicker-fixer's output
monitor - only on a monitor connected to the HAM-E. This is a video
tool and as such does not at this time support deinterlacing. You can
always have both monitors attached, of course.
Think of the output port on the HAM-E hardware as if it were the DB-23
jack on the Amiga; all the same signals are there, on all the same
pins, and they work as they always have under the same conditions. For
this reason, external genlocks, composite and S-VHS adapters, and
monitors all will continue to function normally. It really is as if the
Amiga magically "grew" three great new video modes.
Here is a concise list of features for the HAM-E graphics enhancer:
* 256 thousand simultaneous colors on screen , HAM-E mode
* Up to 236 directly usable color registers in 8 bit HAM mode
* 256 simultaneous colors out of palette of 16 million, REG mode
* Complete "color cycling" capability for 59 or 236 color registers
* All color registers are 24 bit accurate (8 bits/color-gun)
* Both modes can be animated using standard anim type tools
* Both Modes are completely IFF compatible
* Both modes supported by existing show and slideshow tools
* Both modes may be overscanned horizontally or vertically
* Both modes may be interlace or non-interlace
* High rez menuing capability
* No "CPU" overhead involved in maintaining the image
* No "BLITTER" overhead involved in maintaining the image
* All normal Amiga modes pass thru unaffected
* Amiga modes are still Genlockable
* Both new modes are Genlockable
* Image memory is BLITTER and CPU accessable
* Screens are fully "vertical slide", "overlay" & "front/back".
* Works with ALL Amigas - a1000, 500, 2000, 2500, 2500/030, PAL, etc
* Attaches to Amiga RGB connecter only - no internal connections
* Quality RGB output - not composite
* Externally powered, no load on Amiga system
* FCC Approved
Best of all...
* Affordably priced - less than half the cost of other solutions
About support programs:
Currently, we have talked to Impulse (Silver), NewTek (Digipaint),
MicroIllusions (Photon Paint II), Electronic Arts (DPaint, Deluxe Photo
Lab) and ASDG (Professional ScanLab, ScanLab 100) about the HAM-E. All
were enthusiastic and interested, and all have already ordered units
from the developer run. Support has been promised for format conversion
for the various 24 bit file formats that are out there, and we have
barely scratched the surface as of yet.
We will be supporting the HAM-E directly with our AVT (Amiga Video
Terminal) product which is marketed by AEA corp.
We fully expect the sales of the HAM-E to positively explode as soon as
we make units available (Jan-Feb of 1990), and are planning production
accordingly. There is nothing available for the Amiga that even comes
close to the flexibility, compatability, and color resolution for
anywhere near the planned retail of this unit, which is in the $300.00
range (subject to change as we get a better handle on production costs,
of course).
Black Belt Systems - technical products for the Amiga Computer
398 Johnson Road, Glasgow, Montana, 59230
Voice and FAX: 406-367-5509, 8am to 5pm, MST.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CAUTION!!! Getting Really Technical:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
By now, if you're a technical type, you may have picked up on the fact
that both of the new modes use an 8-bit word for each pixel. Also,
these pixels are maintained in the Amiga's chip memory, and not on (in)
the HAM-E device. It is well known that the maximum number of bitplanes
the Amiga can support is 6, and that must be in "lo-res", that is, at
the 320 pixel/line rate. All of this is true.
What we are doing is creating a "normal" 4 bitplane 640 pixel/line mode
of one type or another, interlace or non, overscan or non. Then, at the
RGB connector, as these pixels are emitted 1 at a time at a 640/line
rate, we combine each pair into a single 8 bit pixel, which the HAM-E
hardware then processes as appropriate for the mode it's currently in.
In the top scan line of the new-mode image, there resides a 16 pixel
long sequence at the beginning of the scan line. Recognizing this
sequence "triggers" the HAM-E hardware into one of it's two new modes.
We refer to this trigger data with a smile as the "Magic Cookie". Our
Cookie resides in the top line of the IFF image as data, so when
viewing images, the "show" software needs to do nothing in order to
display the image properly.
Once triggered, the HAM-E stays triggered until (1) vertical sync, (2)
a new code is enccountered, or (3) The Amiga emits color zero for more
than one entire scan line.
If you drag an new mode screen down, the trigger data is not
encountered until the top of the new mode screen is emitted - that
means that you can vertically drag the screens with normal results.
When an overlapping screen begins, several lines of color zero are
emitted, and this turns off the trigger - meaning that overlapping
screens switch immediately back into the correct mode. This is why the
value zero is reserved in the color register lookups... if you were to
have an entire line of this, the HAM-E would un-trigger. You may, if
you are careful, use the value zero, as long as there is some other
value somewhere on the scanline. This applies to both REG mode and
HAM-E mode.
On the line where the 16 pixel code resides (presumably the top line in
the image), there follows 384 pixels which contain the color register
information for the display, if it's REG or HAM-E. This data is
arranged as 64 sets of RGB triplets, each 8 bits wide. To load the
extra banks of 64 registers, you simply put a second, third, and fourth
trigger line at the top of the screen - each successive trigger line
loads another set of 64 color registers.
There are some interesting implications here. If there is only 1 new
mode screen active, you only need to do this once - the color register
rams are static, and will hold this data until new trigger lines are
encountered. If you have more than one new mode screen up, then you'll
need to maintain as many trigger lines as there are sets of color
registers being used.
In addition, in interlace, a trigger line is required for each field,
so two lines are required for 64 registers, and 8 for 256. An
interesting thing to note here is that the color registers for the odd
and even fields can be different, and so you have 472 24-bit color
registers you can work with. This goes for REG mode as well, of course;
in interlace, the odd field has it's own set of 236 registers, as does
the even field.
We do not take our pixel information from the Amiga on the linear RGB
lines. Instead, we use the IRGB lines. New Mode images must have a
particular set of values loaded into the Amiga color registers, so that
the IRGB lines will set themselves to 16 discrete states. This is no
hardship, as the Amiga color registers are otherwise unused for the
duration of a new mode image.
False triggering is extremely unlikely. First of all, the trigger data
is 16 pixels, or 64 bits, long. That means there is a one in 1.8 to the
19th power chance of hitting it accidentally. But that's not all.
because we take our data from the IRGB lines, the Amiga's color
registers must also be set to values that create 16 discrete
combinations on the IRGB pins - the number of color combinations that
do this are a very limited set of those you can create. Next, the data
rate coming from the Amiga must be 640, and there must be 4 bitplanes
because otherwise you can only make 8 (or less) color combinations. So
an "accidental" trigger can only happen in a 640 rate screen with a
particular (Amiga) color palette and a particular sequence of data in
the first 16 pixels. It's very, very safe.
Here is a general diagram of how the HAM-E mode compares against the
standard HAM mode; it may help clarify things for you.
Standard 6-bit HAM works like this:
00xxxx - the 4 x's pick a color register - R, G and B load up.
01xxxx - the 4 x's go to the red gun for this pixel.
10xxxx - the 4 x's go to the green gun for this pixel.
11xxxx - the 4 x's go to the blue gun for this pixel.
HAM-E uses an 8-bit data word, and works like this:
00xxxxxx - the 6 x's pick a color register, 1-59 are valid #'s,
the color registers load 24 bits of data, 8 bits
per RGB gun - accuracy is 16 million colors.
00111100 - Select bank 0 of color registers - no gun changes
00111101 - Select bank 1 of color registers - no gun changes
00111110 - Select bank 2 of color registers - no gun changes
00111111 - Select bank 3 of color registers - no gun changes
01xxxxxx - the 6 x's go to the most significant 6 bits of the
red gun for this pixel - the least sig two bits are
zeros..
10xxxxxx - the 6 x's go to the most significant 6 bits of the
green gun for this pixel - the least sig two bits are
zeros..
11xxxxxx - the 6 x's go to the most significant 6 bits of the
blue gun for this pixel - the least sig two bits are
zeros..
Let's sum up: Let's say you use SuperView (a standard show utility) on
a newmode formatted IFF image. First, the IFF image data represents a
four bitplane image, with a particular set of color registers. The data
for the first 1 to 4 scan lines will contain the Magic Cookie, followed
by data for 64 color registers. The rest of the image body will contain
scan lines formatted as four bitplanes, each bitplane arranged as 320
pairs of bits per scan line. When this is displayed by SuperView, the
line containing the first Magic Cookie triggers the HAM-E hardware and
it then loads the color registers from the rest of the trigger line. If
there are succeeding trigger lines (up to 4), it loads more sets of 64
color registers. Any line that is encountered that does not have a
trigger in it is processed according to the mode selected by the Magic
Cookie type (There are two types, one for each mode). If the WorkBench
is visible, say it's pulled up over the bottom third of the image, then
the HAM-E system un-triggers when it see's the presence of the c0
(Color zero) bit for longer than one scan line.
************************************************************************
The above came from a local BBS...the Amiga Blue BBS (804) 748-9853
Kermit // Capt*Video