English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Graphics Cards

Zetr0 · 18 September 2010, 11:36

@fingers

Pending on the rotation of your location you could pick one up as little as £60 upto about £120

The Picasso 2 is a fantastic Card - however its worth mentioning that the Picasso 2 has what is best described as a "design over sight".

the 15pin HDVGA output header also provides +5 volts (straight from the motherboard!) (vga pin 9) in days of yaw when dinosaurs ruled the earth this +5v was ignored by most CRT monitors -

However newer CRT's and more so the LCD's of today tie this +5v to ground - as you can imagine once the power flows its grounded - since its tied directly to the motherboard you will get a thumping ammount of current flow down the line and hence burn out a small resistor on the card - but also quite likely damage the monitor display.

The problem is easily solved by either removing pin 9 from the VGA cable or by removing a small resistor from the PCB (I would do the latter)

read more about this problem by clicking here

Now, lets talke screen promotion =)

Quite a few workbench titles use custom screens (like PAL / NTSC) these infact can be promoted to the Graphics card by use of a program called NewMode

An example of how this would work is say using "Imagine 3.0fp" rendering program - since its default it to open a custom screen using the native chip-set this can be promoted to any of the graphics card screens you setup.

I used to run it in 800x600 for most of the work I did with imagine - later versions of imagine didn't need the screen mode promoted as they already had the requesting asking what screen to use.

NewMode works wonders for older workbench apps that dont have a screen mode requester - the program also saves the information of the screen you used previously so if you wish you can turn of the newmode requester asking what screen to output too for that program - making everything seemless and smooth =D

I used to also use this with VistaPro3 as well as a few others!

I cannot relay to you how much faster an Amiga feels when you have a GFX card installed - the graphics processing for OCS/ECS or AGA is drastically reduced!! you instantly have a Chunky Buffer (no need to waste CPU time converting chunky data to amiga native planar!)

Even a humble 40Mhz 030 with a chunky display card will be very smooth and playable in 320x200 in 256 colours on a graphics card!

The bandwidth access of the gfx card is much higher and you dont have to have the CPU wait its turn when writing to the graphics display - all in all a RTG graphics card is a fantastic addition to any Amiga Setup.

However its best to know that setting up a graphics card is a two part process - and is essentially customized to your kit!

upon installing the software you will need to "configure" screen modes for the graphics card to use - to do this vaires a little between cards - but is essentially the same - you select a screen dimension of xxx X xxx and depth and then set the output frequency to the monitor - some of this can be a little trial and error - but most monitor information is availalbe in the monitor manual or online =)

Strange as it may seem I always configure the low-screen modes like 320x240 (256) in 8bit, 16bit and if the adapter can 24bit - I then go up the scale including 640x512 in all possible depths too - this is for some very old software that just doens't scale correctly at larger screen dimenions.

With a GFX card - there is a lot to learn but I promise that its worth every effort!

18 September 2010, 11:36	#8
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	@fingers Pending on the rotation of your location you could pick one up as little as £60 upto about £120 The Picasso 2 is a fantastic Card - however its worth mentioning that the Picasso 2 has what is best described as a "design over sight". the 15pin HDVGA output header also provides +5 volts (straight from the motherboard!) (vga pin 9) in days of yaw when dinosaurs ruled the earth this +5v was ignored by most CRT monitors - However newer CRT's and more so the LCD's of today tie this +5v to ground - as you can imagine once the power flows its grounded - since its tied directly to the motherboard you will get a thumping ammount of current flow down the line and hence burn out a small resistor on the card - but also quite likely damage the monitor display. The problem is easily solved by either removing pin 9 from the VGA cable or by removing a small resistor from the PCB (I would do the latter) read more about this problem by clicking here Now, lets talke screen promotion =) Quite a few workbench titles use custom screens (like PAL / NTSC) these infact can be promoted to the Graphics card by use of a program called NewMode An example of how this would work is say using "Imagine 3.0fp" rendering program - since its default it to open a custom screen using the native chip-set this can be promoted to any of the graphics card screens you setup. I used to run it in 800x600 for most of the work I did with imagine - later versions of imagine didn't need the screen mode promoted as they already had the requesting asking what screen to use. NewMode works wonders for older workbench apps that dont have a screen mode requester - the program also saves the information of the screen you used previously so if you wish you can turn of the newmode requester asking what screen to output too for that program - making everything seemless and smooth =D I used to also use this with VistaPro3 as well as a few others! I cannot relay to you how much faster an Amiga feels when you have a GFX card installed - the graphics processing for OCS/ECS or AGA is drastically reduced!! you instantly have a Chunky Buffer (no need to waste CPU time converting chunky data to amiga native planar!) Even a humble 40Mhz 030 with a chunky display card will be very smooth and playable in 320x200 in 256 colours on a graphics card! The bandwidth access of the gfx card is much higher and you dont have to have the CPU wait its turn when writing to the graphics display - all in all a RTG graphics card is a fantastic addition to any Amiga Setup. However its best to know that setting up a graphics card is a two part process - and is essentially customized to your kit! upon installing the software you will need to "configure" screen modes for the graphics card to use - to do this vaires a little between cards - but is essentially the same - you select a screen dimension of xxx X xxx and depth and then set the output frequency to the monitor - some of this can be a little trial and error - but most monitor information is availalbe in the monitor manual or online =) Strange as it may seem I always configure the low-screen modes like 320x240 (256) in 8bit, 16bit and if the adapter can 24bit - I then go up the scale including 640x512 in all possible depths too - this is for some very old software that just doens't scale correctly at larger screen dimenions. With a GFX card - there is a lot to learn but I promise that its worth every effort!