Foebane

Yeah, I tried that - same problem. I assume those files are identical to the download link on the main part?

Most of the A8 Demoscene prods I have work fine on Altirra, except this one doesn't fully do so: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=9748 It's a three-disk demo that always lingers on the first part of the second disk, namely the grey box floating around the crowned skull pic. I think it's something to do with SIO, but does anyone have experience in this sort of thing and getting Demos to run on Altirra? I have the latest version.

Just to clarify, 768 x 576 includes overscan (because standard Amiga HiRes is 640 x 512 without overscan) but when I said 1280 pixels wide for SHR, that did NOT include overscan - so it would be even higher - not sure exactly how much.

Yes, 576 lines but 768 pixels on each line, isn't that what you meant? Yes, that's why it was blurry - that and the composite artefacts making it fuzzy too.

Well, I saw Super HiRes on a TV through the modulator attached to my A1200, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. 768 was the horizontal resolution of PAL, but there's nothing (as far as I know) stopping more condensed signals from going through the electron guns of the TV, especially due to the nature of CRT TV. However, if there IS a limit, maybe it simply downconverted the resolution from 1280 to 768 - I do recall it looked rather blurry.

OK, I agree with the general consensus, that Workbench and productivity in Amiga interlaced resolution SUCKS! But is it any worse than attempting AGA Super HiRes mode on a TV? We're talking 1280 pixels wide, here!

It's possible the PC I walked in on with its flickery mode was entirely non-standard - some kind of Frankenstein variant, but I have to admit, it was the only one I saw. Maybe the TCR vendors were up to something dodgy? I've seen interlaced mode on my Amiga 1200 as well - didn't like it, but then there were more expensive monitor options available, as has been mentioned, and in any case, interlace was best suited to HAM6/8 images with the subtle colour transitions between lines so the flicker was nowhere near as obvious, anyway.

Yes, they were, I speak from personal experience of walking into a computer shop in Tottenham Court Road in the mid 90's and seeing it for myself on a PC.

Calimero, interlace was the only way to achieve twice the vertical resolution without sacrificing graphical ability, and the Amiga made full use of that - as did the Sega Genesis, as I recall. However, yes, it was NOT really suitable long-term for real work, but then there were such things available for the Amiga like "flicker fixers" that would allow the ECS and AGA chipsets, as I recall, to use more advanced monitors that yielded higher resolutions without any sign of flicker whatsoever. Then again, don't blame the Amiga for solely having the whole "interlace flicker" problem, as I saw IBM PC compatibles around the same time with exactly the same problem!

My Amiga 1200 came with an 80Mb HDD, so I'm guessing the HDD option was routine for getting an A1200 and the smaller 2.5" HDDs easily fit inside the case, so that's no excuse not to go for one. But yes, the processor was budget, alright (the 68EC020, if I remember correctly) - the same kind that was put into washing machines as standard! How embarrassing!

Wait, so you're sensitive to 60Hz or less flicker on a CRT? Wow, you must hate PAL on a CRT, then!

Um, you DO know the Amiga had monitor as primary output, right? Namely for the 1084S. I never got "headache" from AGA, but I dunno about you. Refresh rate is irrelevant as the Amiga could both 50Hz and 60Hz, unless you're suggesting 60Hz should be the only one?

If only you'd seen me back in the early 1990s in my computing college courses, I was quite the Amiga zealot and was happy to promote the Amiga every chance I could to everyone who was thinking of getting a PC for their college course. If I recall, there was even a moment where me and some PC zealot (who was a complete jerk in any case) had a loud argument in front of the whole group, mainly about the meaning of the term PC (was it a brand or a generic computing term). I would get quietly outraged at lecturers scoffing at the inflated prices of the higher-end Amigas, and I did everything I could to use my Amiga feasibly for the PC stuff (I used CrossDOS for PC compatibility, as I recall). Someone else I knew in the group had bought a cheap PC and brought in a box of his old Amiga games for me to have a look at, although I inadvertently almost got him in trouble by risking the lecturer (a complete asshole, everyone agreed) seeing the box and us engaging in disk swaps right there in a lecture. Really should've apologised to him for that, but didn't realise what I'd done at the time. Of course, I was starting to learn that PCs are not entirely compatible with Amigas, when it came to working on a COBOL text file, and some of the time was spent stripping away ASCII characters that had been added by the PC or Amiga for carriage returns/New Lines. I didn't consider the PC to be any threat to the Amiga in the early 1990s whatsoever, as AGA had come out and at least there was no advantage to either platform, graphics-wise (please explain how VGA could be better than AGA). However, I had an Amiga 1200 and didn't count on the Motorola 68x series' low processing power compared to the Intel x86s of the time, and things finally began to turn me towards the PC once I saw Doom on a friend's PC and was blown away by how good it looked. I knew then, that the Amiga's days were numbered and the next Big Thing was on its way. Commodore going bust was the final nail in the coffin. Yes, despite what happened before, I was a turncoat.

AGA was a good step-up in spec for the Amiga, even if it was flawed in places, and it allowed the Amiga to be evenly-specced with the PC, except maybe sound. It's just a shame the AA chipset never got finished. I didn't say ST wasn't "real Atari", but I refuse to believe that Hi-Toro/Amiga developed Lorraine for Atari, they were just one of the potential buyers, the field was wide-open. It was just a horrible mess that all the Atari/Amiga/Commodore shenanigans happened in the first place.

Well, that's simple economics - should've guessed that myself.

You're joking, right? Given the names "Rock Lobster" and "Rock Bottom Price", I know which one I'd prefer. Jesus, why is Tramiel so OBSESSED with "cheap"?

Irrelevant. We're solely talking about HOME computers here. EDIT: WHAT is "RBP"?

I think the Atari 8-Bit had the exact same thing, except for 0-7 instead.

I've seen dozens of ST Demoscene productions over the last few weeks, and I've come to realise that the ST can pull off its own amazing graphical tricks and give the platform its own unique feel, but then every platform has its own pluses. I don't want to squabble about what is better, I was just posting what my personal experience of the two platforms was, and you jumped in with "and here we go again".

I decided back then that my allegiance was not to Atari (unlike you, it seems) or Commodore, but to Jay Miner and his revolutionary hardware. It was a sad day for me indeed when he passed away, we would never see such hardware again.

I wasn't the first one to mention Amiga in this thread. How was it stolen from Atari? Amiga was a separate hardware developer. And Tramiel would've sacked the development team and thrown away the OS materials, not known how to properly implement the custom chipset and discarded them. Please elaborate if I've got that wrong. What custom chips does the ST have? Off-the-shelf parts is what I've heard time and time again. The STE was just to try to copy the Amiga, with the Blitter and everything. Again, please elaborate. I think the Amiga floppy controller is more versatile, even if slower. The Amiga really shines in the Demoscene, and so does the ST and C64 - gaming's not bad, but I prefer the Scene for more innovative uses of computer hardware.

I grew up with Atari XL machines, and naturally wanted to go to the next Atari machine, but I would never have gotten the ST (I did) had I known that the true successor to the A8 was the Amiga (I got an A500 soon after I found out). And then ironically had to put up with a friend's constant gloating that his ST was better than my "crappy Amiga" (I'm astounded by the sheer ignorance there).

CUSTOM CHIPS ALL THE WAY, BABY! The Amiga BURIED the Atari ST for that reason alone!

What I'm happy about with this is that now I can switch between mono and stereo audio without having to reset each time! Brilliant!

Problem solved, I simply renamed the .STU files to .PRG files.