cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (03/12/87)
So you want a high resolution Amiga, and you can't buy one. Here is
a hackers solution :
The new Amiga 2000 has some internal IBM PC compatible slots, and
an optional A2086 card that makes them very PC like. There is
a company called Spectrum Digital Inc in Texas. Which sells a Color
Graphics board for the PC which can display 1024 columns by 768 rows
of non-interlaced color graphics on a high resolution color monitor.
To use this with an Amiga 2000 (or 1000 with a sidecar) you will need
to do the following :
Make your Amiga PC compatible (Add a sidecar or A2086 card)
Buy the board from these guys at $1800 and plug it in.
Write an entirely new Graphics.library, give it a higher
version than the 1.2 one, put it in the libs: directory
so that Intuition will use it instead of the built in one.
(If Intuition requests the specific version then you will
have to 'SetFunction' all of the calls)
Install an input handler in front of intuition so that you
can move the mouse on the other screen.
Buy a high resolution color monitor, Barco has a good deal
on a 60Khz monitor for about $2800.
Voila, after investing only a year in programming time (assuming nights
only) and $4600 in equipment + the side car costs, you have a
very high resolution Amiga.
Now this is sort of a joke and sort of not. You see it would cost a
lot of money to give the Amiga workstation graphics so the joke is
you can't get 1K X 768 color and still pay only $2000 for an Amiga.
The good thing though is that you *could* do it if you wanted to
because there is nothing in the software/design preventing you from
running wildly amuck and doing wonderful things with it.
And so it goes,
--
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.