08 July 2013, 17:44 | #181 |
Zap´em
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Many years ago I heard somebody say, that the A1200 was initially planned with Akiko chip and that there is a spare place for it on the mainboard.
I always wanted to know if that´s true, I couldn´t respond to this opinion since I am no expert. |
08 July 2013, 17:50 | #182 |
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I saw somewhere that 3DO hardware was planned as Amiga 1000 or 500.
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08 July 2013, 21:27 | #183 |
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I don't know anything about that, but there is a spare area, looking like should accomodate a large chip - its to the left of the 020 on most (probably all?) revisions. Always wondered what it was for and assumed it was for an 030 version.
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08 July 2013, 21:38 | #184 |
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I thought that space was for an FPU.
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08 July 2013, 22:10 | #185 |
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08 July 2013, 22:36 | #186 |
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08 July 2013, 23:37 | #187 |
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08 July 2013, 23:59 | #188 |
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Here is one i have never been able to work out!
90% of all Amiga Games are PAL yet they do not cover a full 320x240 screen. most games only cover a typical 320x200 screen. So the game typically only fill 3/4 of a monitor screen... Is it because most game devs were from USA? ITS BUGGING ME! |
09 July 2013, 00:13 | #189 |
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I think this was discussed in another recent thread. Apparently it works just fine if you stick an FPU in there, perhaps an oscillator or a little extra logic is required but otherwise, no catch. I think the reason you never see one fitted is that anyone needing a high performance A1200 would have at least a trapdoor RAM board and it is simpler to include one on that than solder a new chip as an upgrade. I wonder if any were ever factory fitted with an FPU?
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09 July 2013, 03:21 | #190 | |
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Quote:
it was probably a cost cutting excercise as well,its cheaper not to have the fpu and 74 logic on board let alone the fastram. if you think about it,not much uses the fpu anyway so it was probably best to let the end user make that choice.and the fpu that went there wasent very fast compared to what was built into later cpu's. well,thats my take on it anyway. |
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09 July 2013, 03:25 | #191 |
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Jimbob, Roy Bates, Thanks for the info! I found a thread that mentioned it, but, seemed best left buried.... I have started a new discussion topic for this here: http://eab.abime.net/hardware-mods/6...tml#post898939
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09 July 2013, 23:02 | #192 | |
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Thanks for clearing information.
Quote:
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14 July 2013, 09:51 | #193 |
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Localisation
Hi,
I'll bet there were many demos that broke the language barrier in style, but I doubt that foreign language boxed games were sold commercially. My question is if any/many games spread through either piracy or free PD became popular in a country of a different native language. where the game might be simple enough that instructions are not needed. That includes English speaking countries as well! |
14 July 2013, 09:59 | #194 |
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A lot of games with English text were sold here (and still are). That includes games with lots of text like adventures or RPGs. I'm pretty sure that the other way around was next to zero though.
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14 July 2013, 10:27 | #195 | |
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Quote:
I guess there are two reasons for the many PAL games: 1. Most games were developed in Europe. 2. Running at a slower frame rate of 50Hz gives the developer more time to render all the action. Still they don't always use the full 320x256 resolution, because it would consume some of the just won time again. |
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14 July 2013, 22:31 | #196 |
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Your instincts are spot on! It's quite a novelty to be able to download foreign language versions of games and educational titles (you know which ones I'm talking about ) shared here via The Zone.
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14 July 2013, 23:25 | #197 |
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I bet most non English speaking countries had English games on the shelves We had a good share of localised games (most only had a German manual though), but a lot of countries didn't have many localised games at all. I'm still somewhat stumped that we only have 4 Greek games on HOL (http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_language=20) and quite a few Greek members here on EAB. I'd like to hear (for example) how the situation was there for Amiga (and other) games in the 80s & 90s
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15 July 2013, 01:45 | #198 | |
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In the early years of the Amiga's commercial life outside of the USA (beginning with the launch of the A500 in 1987) UK/Euro publishers were aware that the biggest installed Amiga userbase was NTSC-land, so they kept an eye on compatibility for licensing/exports. Having recently re-read contemporary UK publications such as The Games Machine and ACE it's clear that it took a while before a UK/Euro published game threw caution to the wind (late 1989?) and just went for it (Pacmania perhaps?). Plus, given that most early Amiga UK/Euro efforts were ports of Atari ST software (and I'm sketchy on the details of why this is...) most games that filled a full lores ST colour screen (with scanlines) only filled 3/4 of an Amiga lores screen (without scanlines, but with better definition). Handy for publishers with an international outlook, but always looked ugly to me and was *NEVER* referenced in magazine reviews of the day, despite being noteworthy and obvious! For example: in PAL-World, load up a disk with one of those 50/60Hz bootblock toggles, switch to 60Hz, then swap the disk for Super Hang On. The game now fills the screen and is ST speed. With scanlines, but that was arcade-authentic back then... What I never understood was why the CLI window, upon booting Workbench in PAL-World, defaulted to the NTSC size... even though you could drag it to PAL size. It took someone to make a (very popular) CLI command to put in the startup-sequence that would resize the window automatically. |
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15 July 2013, 11:13 | #199 |
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As far as I remember (and I may be wrong) this was caused by a bug in Kickstart's PAL/NTSC detection routines, sometimes the window was opened in full PAL mode.
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15 July 2013, 11:25 | #200 | |
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Quote:
Regarding hardware, things were much better though. |
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