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From: rbt@sftig.UUCP (R.Thomas)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga with a small monitor? -- (A fix for crummy text)
Message-ID: <613@sftig.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 11:12:45 EST
Article-I.D.: sftig.613
Posted: Tue Oct 29 11:12:45 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Oct-85 07:42:23 EST
References: <213@telesoft.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit, NJ
Lines: 41

> I was sitting at a Mac today, and I noticed how much nicer the Mac
> screen looked than the Amiga screen (I've only seen the Amiga with the
> 1080 monitor).  In particular, the Amiga characters and icons look
> fairly course (especially visible horizontal gaps between lines) and
> the Mac characters and icons look nice and dense - much more "paper-like".
> 
> ...
>
> -David
> sdcsvax!telesoft!dar

Actually, the gaps between lines are probably caused by the 640x200
resolution of the screen.  That particular aspect would undoubtedly look
better if you were using 640x400 resolution.  But then you would probably
notice flicker, and that would make you unhappy too.  It almost looks like
there is no way out.   But wait!

Has anybody tried looking at 640x200 text with a 'scan-doubler' (which
replicates each line in the first half-frame into the line immediately
below it in the second half-frame.)?  I'll bet that the text and icons
would look quite acceptable that way.  Has anybody tried a simple
software kludge that sends out interlaced 640x400 to the monitor, but
the second half-frame is just an exact copy of the first half-frame?
With a simple hardware patch to replace the software kludge, it should
take half as much memory as full 'hires' and produce good looking
text and icons that dont flicker.  Obviously you wouldn't want to use it
for hi-res graphics (a long persistence phosphor would be better there,
unless you wanted to do animation.  Then you could probably get away with
scan-doubled 640x200, because motion tends to obscure jaggies and other
things that would be objectionable in low-res still pictures.)  But for
text and icons, it should be acceptable.

Would somebody with an amiga try it and report back, please?

How does it look?

Hey, you folks at Commodore/Amiga, what about it?  Is the hardware patch
feasible? How does it look to you?

Rick Thomas
ihnp4!attunix!rbt