Which to buy - A500, A500+, A600 or A1200?

[Fuzzball]

With a pistorm can you output all video modes via the HDMI port or do you still need a rgb2hdmi mod too?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

With a pistorm can you output all video modes via the HDMI port or do you still need a rgb2hdmi mod too?

RGB video goes out as normal. How you handle that is up to you - I personally have an RGB2VGA into an OSSC which feeds HDMI into an HDMI switch box attached to the parallel port for automatic switching of modes.

The Framethrower, when released, will make all of that redundant however.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

With a pistorm can you output all video modes via the HDMI port or do you still need a rgb2hdmi mod too?

There is a scandoubler + auto switcher in development by the PiStorm team called Framethrower that routes native video through the Pi HDMI giving seamless RTG+NATIVE output.

I've only seen the A600 and A1200 versions but I am sure an A500/A2000 version is just a variant of the A600 version and so also in development.

https://twitter.com/Claude1079/statu...96588183011406

[Fuzzball]

Originally Posted by alexh

There is a scandoubler + auto switcher in development by the PiStorm team called Framethrower that routes native video through the Pi HDMI giving seamless RTG+NATIVE output.

I've only seen the A600 and A1200 versions but I am sure an A500/A2000 version is just a variant of the A600 version and so also in development.

https://twitter.com/Claude1079/statu...96588183011406

That seems to be a separate board to the pistorm so how does that differ to the rgb2hdmi one?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

That seems to be a separate board to the pistorm so how does that differ to the rgb2hdmi one?

RGB2HDMI only supports the Denise chip (A500/A600) with maximum 4096 colours. There is no RGB2HDMI for the Lisa (A1200) which has maximum 16M colours.

RGB2HDMI has it's own HDMI port meaning if you have a Pistorm too you have two HDMI cables and have to manually switch between HDMI ports on your monitor to select between Native and RTG.

Framethrower internally sends the digital RGBS data from Denise/Lisa to PiStorm via the RPi Camera port and PiStorm can control in software which one to display. This means only one HDMI cable.

Framethrower is a small FPGA and will almost certainly be lower power / heat than RGB2HDMI (which is a Raspberry Pi Zero W).

If you're going to be using a Pistorm then Framethrower is the scandoubler/deinterlacer/monitor switcher for you.

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

That seems to be a separate board to the pistorm so how does that differ to the rgb2hdmi one?

Here you go & probably MORE than you will ever need....

https://www.retrorgb.com/amiga-500-h...rgbtohdmi.html

[Fuzzball]

Originally Posted by alexh

RGB2HDMI only supports the Denise chip (A500/A600) with maximum 4096 colours. There is no RGB2HDMI for the Lisa (A1200) which has maximum 16M colours.

RGB2HDMI has it's own HDMI port meaning if you have a Pistorm too you have two HDMI cables and have to manually switch between HDMI ports on your monitor to select between Native and RTG.

Framethrower internally sends the digital RGBS data from Denise/Lisa to PiStorm via the RPi Camera port and PiStorm can control in software which one to display. This means only one HDMI cable.

Framethrower is a small FPGA and will almost certainly be lower power / heat than RGB2HDMI (which is a Raspberry Pi Zero W).

If you're going to be using a Pistorm then Framethrower is the scandoubler/deinterlacer/monitor switcher for you.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by alexh

If you want to get technical the 68000 in A500 and 68020 in A1200 do not run 680x0 code natively. They have a much more simple MCU inside running uCode to "emulate" a 680x0. How is that any different from an PiStorm? It is a much simpler MCU running uCode to pretend to be a physical 680x0. Every other part of the original Amiga (ChipRAM, APU, GPU, etc.) are used natively. PiStorm is just an accelerator card with a few built in peripherals, just like a Blizzard

CPUs are fixed and must be correct, finished, and documented on release, and that's what makes it a platform (see "Architecture" on Aminet or Target in a compiler). It's not possible for you to win a technical discussion just by calling software (including firmware and "cores") hardware. Better as a separate discussion.

[LordCrass]

I'd say that it depends on what you want to do with the computer. If you're interested in just old games, the A500 is probably going to fit your needs at a cheaper price. You can add an extra 512kB for next to nothing, and you can replace the floppies with a Gotek emulator for cheap too.

If you want to start using applications and Workbench, I'd recommend something faster than the stock 68000 CPU. This means an A1200 with accelerator, or an A500 with Pistorm since it gives you (very) fast CPU, hard drive, more memory, and RTG graphics, but can stray from "Amiga" in a sense, if that matters to you. It also introduces a few incompatibilities with some games, usually the result being music doesn't play entirely smoothly. Same thing can happen on other high speed CPU upgrades.

There's very few AGA games that are worthwhile. Most of the good ones are just PC ports.