English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Atari ST graphics hardware compared to PC EGA

Foebane · 19 January 2021, 20:35

I remember reading that the Atari ST used "off the shelf" parts, so I got the impression that Atari, having lost the Amiga to Commodore, hastily threw together a simple design to be deliberately cheap.

And since then, decades later, I heard that there was an attempt at custom hardware for the video, namely something called the "Shifter" which does yield somewhat impressive effects in the Demoscene, namely the ST's abilities to display hundreds of colours at once, with no HAM mode, that can be faded in and out (something which very few Amiga demos have tried with HAM, AFAIK).

19 January 2021, 20:35	#10
Foebane Banned Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Cardiff, UK Age: 51 Posts: 2,871	I remember reading that the Atari ST used "off the shelf" parts, so I got the impression that Atari, having lost the Amiga to Commodore, hastily threw together a simple design to be deliberately cheap. And since then, decades later, I heard that there was an attempt at custom hardware for the video, namely something called the "Shifter" which does yield somewhat impressive effects in the Demoscene, namely the ST's abilities to display hundreds of colours at once, with no HAM mode, that can be faded in and out (something which very few Amiga demos have tried with HAM, AFAIK).