Improving Workbench 2.0+ resolution on Stock ECS Amiga

[AmigaJohn]

I have a stock ECS Amiga, running a resolution of 640x200. I have 1meg of chip and about 28 megs of available fast ram.

640x400 Hi Res Interlaced on a stock 1084S is hardly usable because of the outrageous flicker. I know that a flicker fixer can help with this, but I was wondering what software-only solutions are out there that would get me a bigger desktop on-the-cheap. That is when I discovered there are things out there to use fast as chip and was thinking that might be able to get me 640x400 without the flicker. I've heard about a "Productivity Mode" for ECS chipset that have 2mb of chip... I only have 1mb, but a heaping boatload of fast that I'd gladly share to the graphics side.

I've read up on some posts about using FBlit and FText and some people are claiming that this will allow me to do what I want. I've put FBlit and FBlitGUI in my C dir and FBlit.library into my Libs dir, edited s:startup-sequence, adding C:FBlit right before the BindDriver command line and rebooted, per the docs included in the archive on Aminet. I went into Prefs and set the screen mode to Hi Res Interlaced and it still flickers. Am I missing something here, or does this just not work. Do I need some kind of custom video mode?

I'd love to get 640x400 with no flicker and a 16 color palette in a NTSC video mode. I'd settle for the 640x400 productivity mode in 4 color though. Tell me this is possible please!

Thanks!

[idrougge]

Flickering is an unavoidable result from using TV frequencies (15 KHz). If you connect your ECS Amiga (not OCS!) to a VGA monitor, you may use Productivity mode to reach 640x400 with no flicker, but then again VGA monitors aren't likely to support the usual PAL/NTSC modes.

So what you really need is a flickerfixer. With the most modern one, called Indivision ECS, you can even reach much higher resolutions without flicker, while playing all the usual games even on a VGA monitor.

[AmigaJohn]

Kind of what I figured. I guess I'm stuck in 640x200 16 color and no flicker or 640x400 with interlace. I'm discovering that FBlit helps more with icon detail and image display swapping those processes over to fast to conserve chip.

:-(

[PeterK]

Try out to set Prefs/Overscan for NTSC to max 724x241 and Prefs/Screenmode to NTSC Hires NonInterlace @60Hz

Of course, you can always use Autoscroll in Prefs/Screenmode to set a larger number of lines than 241 on your Workbench for example.

[AmigaJohn]

I'll give that a try. That would give me a little more screen area.

I've heard the Euro36 display offers better screen resolution on 1084S monitors. Can anybody offer any info on that?

[Sandro]

Originally Posted by AmigaJohn

I have a stock ECS Amiga, running a resolution of 640x200. I have 1meg of chip and about 28 megs of available fast ram.

640x400 Hi Res Interlaced on a stock 1084S is hardly usable because of the outrageous flicker. I know that a flicker fixer can help with this, but I was wondering what software-only solutions are out there that would get me a bigger desktop on-the-cheap. That is when I discovered there are things out there to use fast as chip and was thinking that might be able to get me 640x400 without the flicker. I've heard about a "Productivity Mode" for ECS chipset that have 2mb of chip... I only have 1mb, but a heaping boatload of fast that I'd gladly share to the graphics side.

I've read up on some posts about using FBlit and FText and some people are claiming that this will allow me to do what I want. I've put FBlit and FBlitGUI in my C dir and FBlit.library into my Libs dir, edited s:startup-sequence, adding C:FBlit right before the BindDriver command line and rebooted, per the docs included in the archive on Aminet. I went into Prefs and set the screen mode to Hi Res Interlaced and it still flickers. Am I missing something here, or does this just not work. Do I need some kind of custom video mode?

I'd love to get 640x400 with no flicker and a 16 color palette in a NTSC video mode. I'd settle for the 640x400 productivity mode in 4 color though. Tell me this is possible please!

Thanks!

what you want 640x400 or 640x512 16 colors flicker free : this trick is only possible on AGA
there is a program called magictv which stop flicker in high res up to 16 colors
documentation says it only work on AGA ,in my A1200 works very well,but maybe you can try it and check if works on ECS
http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/magictv2

[Doda]

28 megs of fast ram on stock A500? Is it really stock?

[NorthWay]

I can't remember the name of the program (might have ben MagicTV?) that I tried ages ago, but it basically took a 4-colour hires interlace WB and replaced it with an 8- or 16-colour display (can't remember which) where the colours had been tuned so that every second line had much lower contrast and that made it look much more stable.

If you're willing to spend the extra memory and cycles on this, then you could hunt around and see if you can find that utility. I just can't remember the name. I'm pretty sure it was rather popular, enough to find its way to some magazine coverdisks.

[Leandro Jardim]

Unfortunately seems that MagicTV is AGA-only. This is what the readme on Aminet says.

http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/magictv2

Try out what PeterK said and install this font on your miggy, too.

http://aminet.net/package/text/bfont/den6

[AmigaJohn]

@Doda -- okay I mean stock video, not stock machine LoL - Amiga 2000 with Fusion Forty 68040, GVP HC+8 II loaded with fast memory.

Yeah I did see MagicTV on AmiNet and the details saying it was for AGA.

Perhaps the best I can do is go to 724x241 with an NTSC system. As I understand it, PAL is capable of much better height before having to interlace the video, like 540 or something like that.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by AmigaJohn

@Doda -- okay I mean stock video, not stock machine LoL - Amiga 2000 with Fusion Forty 68040, GVP HC+8 II loaded with fast memory.

Yeah I did see MagicTV on AmiNet and the details saying it was for AGA.

Perhaps the best I can do is go to 724x241 with an NTSC system. As I understand it, PAL is capable of much better height before having to interlace the video, like 540 or something like that.

Pal can display around 288 lines, maybe a bit more but definitely less than 300.
The 576 visible lines it can display are obtained precisely by interlacing.

As others have said here, if you can grab a multisync monitor, then double scan modes are really going to change your life. When I sold my A500 to buy an A500+ back in the day, I did my best to get my hands on a Commodore multiscan monitor as well so I could do 640x512 without interlacing.

It is hard to understate how nice the double scan modes are to the eye. And you do not need 2MB of chip to run that mode since it requires half as much Chip RAM as a 16 colours interlaced one. The extra DMA bandwidth these modes require force them to use twice as less bitplanes (so, 4 colours maximum).

Update:
You want this kind of monitor: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-Am...-/221899108743.
This particular one has stability issues (although that is likely repairable) but you will find a few others on eBay if you are patient enough.

[Doda]

To buy a new monitor is not software solution. If you want to buy something buy Indivision ECS. It's something like preudo-graphics card and you can use 800x600 or 1024x768 and more collors (in some situations) than ECS itself can do. I use this in combination with ACA500 and B1260.

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by AmigaJohn

I'll give that a try. That would give me a little more screen area.

I've heard the Euro36 display offers better screen resolution on 1084S monitors. Can anybody offer any info on that?

You may try this 720x300 setup with the EURO36 monitor:

http://aminet.net/search?query=euro36 optional for NTSC hardware Amigas
                                      =================================
 
http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/PatchOverscan
http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/SetDefMon
http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/BlackborderV11
copy all these commands into C:
and EURO36 from your Storage/Devs/Monitors to DEBS:Monitors
 
edit the following lines in your startup-sequence:
 
IF EXISTS DEVS:Monitors
  IF EXISTS DEVS:Monitors/VGAOnly
    DEVS:Monitors/VGAOnly
  EndIF
  C:List >NIL: DEVS:Monitors/~(#?.info|VGAOnly|EURO36) TO T:M LFORMAT "DEVS:Monitors/%s"
                                            ; > EDIT <
  Execute T:M
  C:Delete >NIL: T:M
EndIF
 
DEVS:monitors/EURO36 MINROW=0x10 TOTROWS=0x140
PatchOverscan ID=79000 O=N   0 0 639 199
PatchOverscan ID=79000 O=M -40 0 679 299
SetDefMon EURO36
BlackBorder

Install my icon.library to save chipmem and to achieve faster icon loading:
http://aminet.net/package/util/libs/IconLib_46.4
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=64079