Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AT Bridgeboard, '020 Status?
Message-ID: <55517@sun.uucp>
Date: 6 Jun 88 17:40:12 GMT
References: <2300009@hpsadla.HP> <4336@killer.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 30

In article <4336@killer.UUCP> elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes:
>Talking about which, Commodore better do some looking at upgrading the Amiga's
>graphics capabilities. Some of the "extended VGA" cards out there can display
>256 colors simultaneously, 720x480. True, AT's are slower'n molasses in
>dealing with 256K images. But, some applications simply need that kind of
>resolution (in particular, stuff we're doing results in 256-grey-scale digital
>images -- which doesn't look so great when mashed down to 16 grey scales to
>display on the Amiga in hires interlace overscan mode, because of the
>gradations). 
>    Eric Lee Green                     {cuae2,ihnp4}!killer!elg

Actually, it's almost too easy to take pot shots like this at cost constrained
computer companies. Of course people will continue to do it but that's life I
guess. To Eric, why not put an 'Extended VGA' card in the AT side of a 2000?
Write some buffer routines that can be called from the Amiga side to write 
to it, and poof two headed machine that lets you look at your source and
an image too. This is actually a big plus for the 2000. Because you can get
nicer frame buffers for the AT bus (like the Targa et al). And as you said
in your posting, 90% of the applications aren't really interested in 
animating 720 X 480 displays, just looking at them. I would like to see 
Commodore make a 'dumb' Bridge card (basically a bus connector with some
dip switches and autoconfig logic so that peripherals on the AT bus could
be addressed directly on the Amiga side. (I'm thinking the AT bus would
look like 1Meg of fast ram to the Amiga.) This is one of those projects
I would do if I had a couple of grand and a CAD system sitting around
idle.


--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.