Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[Viceroy]

Originally Posted by crazyc

Are younrunning the same screen modes etc within workbench?
Also it could be completely false but I have a vague memory of cwb running some tv mode type thing, check the startup folder etc.

I've done it with some help from Retroplay ;-)

[Viceroy]

Originally Posted by crazyc

Workbench menu and click backdrop.

As your last solution worked perfect, would you know how to the same under Scalos. as it seems to remove that option from pull down menu?

[crazyc]

Sorry its been too long since i used scalos, but if you dig through the menu options you should find it

[Viceroy]

I'll try that again. it has to be in there somewhere ;-)

[Ulysses13]

You need to use a screenmode that has (roughly) square pixels. If you're using a 15kHz display, that means either low resolution (320x256) or interlaced (640x512). A 15kHz video signal simply doesn't have the bandwidth to include 512 lines of the display in a single frame, so the default Workbench screenmode is 640x256, resulting in tall, narrow pixels.

OK, I'm getting my head around it, and I do understand now WHY it is the way it is, given all the quirks of displays and TVs in the 80s and 90s. More complicated, the more you read about it!

So I guess it should be all square pixels for Workbench from now on then, seeing as its the 21st century - no more doubling up to make a squished thing look square.

So long as you can find the right ScreenMode and display combo...

[Daedalus]

Yeah, it's the reason VGA monitors start at 31kHz - so they have enough bandwidth to fit 480 lines on the screen without resorting to interlace. TVs are one thing, but for Workbench I was happily using a VGA monitor with my A1200 and Productivity / DblNTSC modes in the '90s. At the time though, most people were just using their Amigas for games and had them connected to TVs, until moving on to PCs.

But for that nostalgia factor, people still use CRT TVs and 15kHz monitors like the 1084, which leaves a choice of nasty flicker or double-height pixels. So it all depends on what you really want from the Amiga today.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yeah, it's the reason VGA monitors start at 31kHz - so they have enough bandwidth to fit 480 lines on the screen without resorting to interlace.

It's not really a bandwidth issue (that's determined by pixel clock), it's a just a timing issue. 320 pixels per line has the same effective bandwidth as 640 pixels per line. Neither is anywhere close to the maximum theoretical bandwidth of the signal itself (it's baseband, so in RGB mode your bandwidth is effectively infinite until you get to pixel sizes of light wavelengths -- the term "bandwidth" really only applies to when you choose to use a limited band when using a remodulated signal)

[Daedalus]

Fair enough, I'm using it in the more general sense for the amount of information that can be passed, rather than the more specific modulation meaning. But I wasn't talking about horizontal resolution as being limited, since that is, like you say, effectively unlimited as far as an Amiga is concerned - after all, a 1084 can happily display a 1280x256 Amiga screenmode, which is the limit of the native Amiga pixel clock. It's the vertical resolution that's limited due to the 15kHz horizontal frequency - there are only so many lines that can fit into a 50Hz frame at 15kHz, which is where the throughput limit that I was talking about comes from. More lines means either dropping the 50Hz vertical refresh rate (which is kinda what interlacing does), or increasing the horizontal refresh rate (which is what VGA does).

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

But for that nostalgia factor, people still use CRT TVs and 15kHz monitors like the 1084, which leaves a choice of nasty flicker or double-height pixels. So it all depends on what you really want from the Amiga today.

Not to be nitpicking, but the reason I still use CRTs has nothing to do with nostalgia, and all with the fact that when it comes to retro-gaming I consider their image quality to be vastly better than that of modern panels (partially because the games were designed with them in mind). And the squishidness in many cases comes from the NTSC-PAL divide. You can still get the intended look on a CRT if running the NTSC version.


That's strictly in regard to gaming though, if you talk about WB & productivity then I agree it's a different matter.

[Lord Aga]

Are the CIA chips same and interchangeable throughout the different models, say, A500, A500+, A2000?

Obviously the SMD ones are different though.

[rabidgerry]

What are the benefits for faster mb/s rate on a hard drive?

This might seem a little obvious to a lot of you but just for clarity I'm asking so I've a better idea

[NLS]

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

Are the CIA chips same and interchangeable throughout the different models, say, A500, A500+, A2000?

Obviously the SMD ones are different though.

AFAIK yes.
Actually even C64, C128 and 1750, 1571, 1581 drives CIA are practically the same.

Tiny changes between revisions are in the Time-Of-Day clock, or the high speed capabilities.

Pretty remarkable and useful IC for the time.

[NLS]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

What are the benefits for faster mb/s rate on a hard drive?

This might seem a little obvious to a lot of you but just for clarity I'm asking so I've a better idea

Not sure what kind of clarity. Looks like a troll question.
My mom knows the answer to this.

Things load faster and save faster.
There.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

What are the benefits for faster mb/s rate on a hard drive?

This might seem a little obvious to a lot of you but just for clarity I'm asking so I've a better idea

What if you imagine a harddisk to be a road? Faster maximum speed on the road usually means you get to your destination faster when we assume there are no accidents and traffic jams...

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by NLS

Not sure what kind of clarity. Looks like a troll question.
My mom knows the answer to this.

Things load faster and save faster.
There.

Sorry mate, I've been on this forum long enough to be known as no troll, so I'll forget about your sarcastic answer.

This is the place for questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask after all.

Originally Posted by gimbal

What if you imagine a harddisk to be a road? Faster maximum speed on the road usually means you get to your destination faster when we assume there are no accidents and traffic jams...

Thanks for that

I probably should have been more specific. So with our old Amigas do I just get files from A to B quicker or do any heavy duty games or applications benefit from this? Or is faster mb/s just a novelty on Amigas?

Does software benefit from the ability to access files quicker? Any nice and noticeable benefits?

[Jope]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

Does software benefit from the ability to access files quicker? Any nice and noticeable benefits?

The larger the file, the more enjoyable it is to read quickly.

The Amiga has a slow CPU (even the fastest ones) so in the end the hard disk speed can get you only so much..

If you consider a large jpg file, the CPU will take a while to decode it no matter how quick the transfer rate of the HD.

[NLS]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

Sorry mate, I've been on this forum long enough to be known as no troll, so I'll forget about your sarcastic answer.

This is the place for questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask after all.

Sorry to insist, but this is not a matter of lack of knowledge or being embarrassed or not.
You asked why we care that a hard drive is faster than another fast drive (or than a floppy)?
Does this need ANY kind of knowledge?
I mean, does anybody explain to us (as adults) why we need to eat, or why we put one foot in front of the other when we walk? Or why larger steps result in faster walking? Or why we need faster walking?

It is not like asking "why the sun rises".
It more like asking "why when the sun rises, I can see more things out of my window".

It could be a difference in mentality, or my language barrier, or I don't know what, but really... sorry.
Sorry that I (still) fail to understand, and sorry that I insisted and why I commented this like I did.
Carry on.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by NLS

Sorry to insist, but this is not a matter of lack of knowledge or being embarrassed or not.
You asked why we care that a hard drive is faster than another fast drive (or than a floppy)?
Does this need ANY kind of knowledge?

I didn't ask that.

Sorry to insist it IS a lack or knowledge on my part, as I don't really know how faster mb/s will benefit me in the real world when using my Amiga.

Obviously a little less now since I've had some explanation.

Originally Posted by NLS

I mean, does anybody explain to us (as adults) why we need to eat, or why we put one foot in front of the other when we walk? Or why larger steps result in faster walking? Or why we need faster walking?

It is not like asking "why the sun rises".
It more like asking "why when the sun rises, I can see more things out of my window".

It could be a difference in mentality, or my language barrier, or I don't know what, but really... sorry.
Sorry that I (still) fail to understand, and sorry that I insisted and why I commented this like I did.
Carry on.

Just being patronising now aren't you? Just no need for that response.

Originally Posted by Jope

The larger the file, the more enjoyable it is to read quickly.

The Amiga has a slow CPU (even the fastest ones) so in the end the hard disk speed can get you only so much..

If you consider a large jpg file, the CPU will take a while to decode it no matter how quick the transfer rate of the HD.

Ok so it's not quite as straight forward as fast transfer speed, fast opening everything etc. Any demanding games benefit from faster transfer speed?

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

Any demanding games benefit from faster transfer speed?

Nothing special. But it is nice to see shorter load time across the board. Multi-disk big games especially. Adventures are much more fluid to play. Also productivity software. Everything feels more seamless.

[NLS]

All that is installable to hard drive, benefit from it and benefit more if you get a faster one.