sterling@dasys1.UUCP (Sterling Brown) (09/18/89)
I am looking for any information on a Frame Buffer for the Amiga Machine. If there are any developers out there that have such a product please let me know. The company I work for 'Exhibit Technology' wants to use a INTEL based machine with a TARGA card installed to get good quality graphics for a computer interactive system. I have suggested the amiga machine instead. Now I am on a quest for any information on any Amiga card comparible to the TrueVision Targa Cards. Any information will be greatley appreciated. Sterling Brown Exhibit Technology Inc.
michaelf@pro-graphics.cts.com (Michael Franzyshen) (09/26/89)
Network Comment: to #4261 by sterling@dasys1.UUCP
You have made a MISTAKE. A 286 or 386 platform coupled with a targa 24 or
targa 32 is going to blow the Amiga out of the water, although at more than
twice the cost of a stock amiga. I love the Amiga as much as the next guy,
but let's be realistic...
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_______________________________________________________________________________sterling@dasys1.UUCP (Sterling Brown) (10/05/89)
In article <438@crash.cts.com> michaelf@pro-graphics.cts.com (Michael Franzyshen) writes: >Network Comment: to #4261 by sterling@dasys1.UUCP > >You have made a MISTAKE. A 286 or 386 platform coupled with a targa 24 or >targa 32 is going to blow the Amiga out of the water, although at more than >twice the cost of a stock amiga. I love the Amiga as much as the next guy, >but let's be realistic... Actually Mimetics makes a frame buffer that is supposed to be comparable to or better than a targa equiped machine. And then there is the Video Toaster When ever it comes out it will blow the targa away. All day I work with Targa boards and intel based platforms and it makes me sick when I think that the Amiga has hardware comparable with it but no one is putting it to wide spread use. It would make me feel a lot better to see Amiga screen shots in Computer Graphics magazine. Then every one will know what the Amiga can do. The thing that gets me the sickest is to hear my boss talk about Intel's DVI sweeping the desktop video market off it's feet and the demise of the Amiga. Anyway, I'd like to see Mimetics and NewTek realy push their products more. Commodore is supposed to be bringing out their PVA Graphics board for the Amiga. The last thing I read about it was that it would have a 256 color display out of a palette of millions. When I was at the World of Commodore last month one of Commodore's reps said they will be going with 24 bits of color. This will give it 4 billion colors on the screen at one time. This graphics board and the others should make for realy sophisticated interactive exhibits. This should make my boss change his mind about the Amiga. I have been pushing him to spec an Amiga system for one of our clients for some time now. That why I asked about available frame buffers. Anyway I've typed enough now. So long..... sterling@dasys1
leeg@mcrware.UUCP (Lee Glen) (10/05/89)
In article <10853@dasys1.UUCP> sterling@dasys1.UUCP (Sterling Brown) writes: >When I was at the World of >Commodore last month one of Commodore's reps said they will be going with >24 bits of color. This will give it 4 billion colors on the screen at one >time. > sterling@dasys1 > Gee, I thought 2^24 was equal to 16,777,216. It my understanding that the board will be a 8 bit/pixel with a 256 color lookup table. Each color having 24 bits of color information. This would give 256 colors on the screen at one time out of a palette of 16,777,216. Am I all wet? Lee Glenn
jac@muslix.llnl.gov (James Crotinger) (10/06/89)
Well, I don't have the original posting handy, but I'm pretty sure that there were TWO boards announced. One was a frame buffer, which I believe was supposed to have 24 bit color. The other was the ULowell graphics board, which has 8 bit color and a TI34010 graphics chip, supporting resolutions up to 1024x1024. I'm particularly interested in the latter card. Does anyone know what the status is? At a AMIX demo last year, Dave Haynie said that Commodore did not intend to port the graphic library to work with this board, which would make it sort of a special purpose board that applications would be have to be explicitly written for. (There was a hint that a version of X might be written to work with the board). Does anyone know if Commodore has reconsidered this position? I realize that it would be impossible (probably) to provide complete compatibility with the graphics library, but a level of compatibility could be achieved which would allow most programs to run on the ULowell card. Please! (grovel, beg, ...). Jim
rayl%cyclone@Sun.COM (Ray Lamoreaux) (10/07/89)
> > >When I was at the World of >Commodore last month one of Commodore's reps said they will be going with >24 bits of color. This will give it 4 billion colors on the screen at one >time. > sterling@dasys1 Does this mean that there is going to be a "SUPER-DUPER HIRES MODE" that will display 4 billion pixels? How else can they get 4 billion colors on the screen AT ONE TIME??? :^) ^^^^^^^^^^^ Seriously, Isn't 2^24 somthing closer to 16 million. This probably is the number of colors they are going to use in the pallette. They are probably going to have a smaller number of bitplanes. If they use 8 bitplanes, then they could get up to 256 colors on the screen at once (but each of these colors could be chosen from the pallete of 16 million). The current pallette on the Amiga is 12 bits which gives us a selection of 4096 colors. Of course, If this new framebuffer suports HAM mode, then you could get as many colors as there are pixels on the screen. What I would like to see is a 12 bit framebuffer with a 24 bit pallette. You could get some pretty darn good high quality images with that! Of course, It would need some kind of acceleration ( can you imagine a 12 bit workbench on an unaccelerated MC68000 Amiga ) -Ray
john@wpi.wpi.edu (John F Stoffel) (10/07/89)
Well, I don't have the original posting handy, but I'm pretty sure that there were TWO boards announced. One was a frame buffer, which I believe was supposed to have 24 bit color. The other was the ULowell graphics board, which has 8 bit color and a TI34010 graphics chip, supporting resolutions up to 1024x1024. I saw a prototype board from the people at Ulowell last year. They came to my school and gave a talk about it. It wasn't a color board, it was an image manipulation board. It was very good at doing real time image stuff, such as rotating the text, finding the edges of an object, and some other neat stuff. It was basically 8 processors on a card. Quite a niced setup. I might, stress on might, be able to get some more info about it, like the professors name who gave the demo. -- John Stoffel | john@wpi.bitnet | Club a Baby Seal for JESUS! WPI, Box 2432 | john@wpi.wpi.edu | Worcester, MA 01609 | husc6!m2c!wpi!john | Yank, rip, snip, sew. A Vasectomy in four easy steps!
dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck) (10/09/89)
In article <35041@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> jac@muslix.UUCP (James Crotinger) writes: > >The other was the ULowell graphics >board, which has 8 bit color and a TI34010 graphics chip, supporting >resolutions up to 1024x1024. > > I'm particularly interested in the latter card. Does anyone know what >the status is? At a AMIX demo last year, Dave Haynie said that Commodore >did not intend to port the graphic library to work with this board, which >would make it sort of a special purpose board that applications would >be have to be explicitly written for. Any statements made about the graphics library supporting the ulowell board are pure speculation. Whether it they indicate support or indicate no plans for support. board whether >(There was a hint that a version of X might be written to work with the board). We plan on supporting the frame buffer board in a future release of X11 for the Amiga. There is actual work being done to achieve that already in progress. ETA? probably 2nd quarter 1990, after the release of native color X11 for the Amiga. For those that are interested, X11 release 3.0 is now shipping for the Amiga. -- Dale Luck GfxBase/Boing, Inc. {uunet!cbmvax|pyramid}!amiga!boing!dale