I missed out on the Amiga (introduced in 1985) at the time, being an early PC adopter. Went from CGA (1981) directly to VGA (1987).
In terms of colors the most popular VGA modes (320x200 or 320x240, 256 color palette, 18 bit color depth) are superior to the most popular Amiga graphics modes (320×200 or 320x256, 32 color palette, 12 bit color depth).
It's because of the artists. The Amiga was a much more affordable art-making machine, so many artists made graphics ON the Amiga FOR the Amiga. There were even some good-looking VGA games that under utilized the PC's capabilities because they were essentially converted Amiga games.
The cost between an A500 and a VGA-enabled PC in 1987 ($699 vs $3500-ish?) would have put them in such different categories and customer segments that they would rarely interact.
I remember seeing a PC one of the rich kids brought to boarding school in 1990 and realising it was just crisper than my A500. The PC’s in the school lab were all green and orange screens with one colour CGA, so this was quite a surprise. Still took me some time to accept reality :)
You're comparing 1987 VGA to 1985 Amiga? Not a realistic comparison.
Technology advanced much more rapidly in those days. Similar to how hard drive capacity seemed to double every six months for a while, or how there's a new bleeding edge AI model every three months today.
Also, VGA had 256 colors. The Amiga had 4,096 simultaneously.
Only using the party trick HAM mode though. 32 (plus 32 for the half-bright bit plane) is the mode that most software uses.
Of course in 1987 a Macintosh II with a fully expanded "Toby" framebuffer could not only do 256 colours, it could do it in 640x480 mode where as a PS/2's VGA could only do 16 colours at that resolution. And an Amiga could only do flickervision at that res.
Of course with technology improving all the time, not having a updated chipset circa 1987 that at least had a progressive scan 640x480(ish) is one of those things that really killed the chances of Amiga as a serious computer. They only got that circa 1990, and "Super VGA" was already just about becoming a thing in the PC world (and Microsoft had kinda got round to making a version of Windows that didn't suck by then). I'm not sure if the mythical Ranger had a progressive mode, but it's it does show how Commodore inability to keep the custom chips updated in a timely mannner slowly sunk the system...
Don't forget "dynamic hires" and "sliced HAM", two software modes that were really only useful for static images.
Dynamic hires ran at 640x400x16 colors, but changed the palette on every single scanline, which could allow display of all 4096 colors in hires). Sliced HAM did the same thing, but in 320x400 HAM (the base palette was 16 colors and could be used directly without fringing, so changing those 16 colors every line would reduce fringing while still allowing more than 16 colors to appear on a scanline).
Nothing stopped people from using this dynamic palette technique with 32-color lores or 64-color EHB as well. But it was most commonly used in the two forms I mentioned.
By the time HAM8 came around in the AGA chipset, this wasn't really needed, as HAM8 fringing was much less noticeable, having a base palette of 64 colors. There's no reason you couldn't do sliced HAM8 however, although I'm not sure if you could change all 64 base colors for each scanline.
> Of course in 1987 a Macintosh II with a fully expanded "Toby" framebuffer could not only do 256 colours, it could do it in 640x480 mode where as a PS/2's VGA could only do 16 colours at that resolution.
If cost is no issue, the PS/2 also had the 8514/A card that could do 256 colours at 1024x768. And there was also the PGC from 1984 that could do 256 colours at 640x480.
Also, VGA had 256 colors. The Amiga had 4,096 simultaneously.
That's the highly special hold-and-modify mode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify). I tried pretty hard to word my comment fairly, remembering the sometimes legendary tenacity of Amiga fans. (Which nowadays includes yours truly.)
Not at all! Use of the Copper to punch up visuals was de rigeur on the Amiga - Amiga games are immediately recognizable by their Copper-fueled sky gradients for instance. I actually think that if there's any really good explanation for why you like might find Amiga graphics more pleasing than VGA, the Copper is the thing.
15khz 320x200 with proper CRT scanlines (like in arcade games and home consoles and computers on a standard TV) is immensely more pleasing to the eye than the same resolution displayed on a PC monitor.
The glow of a crt warms my heart. There's a beauty to phosphor based images that nothing else replicates.
I tried playing my old games and software on modern TVs and monitors but somethig was "missing"; it didn't feel right.
Sure enough, the halo and color bleeds were leveraged by the great designers of the day. The sprites, fonts characters _require_ the "glow" to experience them as they were designed. It goes beyond simple nostalgia.
I finally broke down and bought a gorgeous Zenith Space Command TV, hacked it for various modern input sources (composite, s video, VGA and even HDMI.) It just brings the joy back that was missing.
You had VGA in 1987?! That was very rare. You must have been an early adopter. Amiga users in '92 and '93 had great color and many PC users were still on EGA.
You had VGA in 1987?! That was very rare. You must have been an early adopter. Amiga users in '92 and '93 had great color and many PC users were still on EGA.
I got my first VGA card in 1994. You're right, VGA wasn't common in 1987.
And based on the parent's comment history, he wasn't even alive in 1987; which is why he presents himself as an expert.
Amiga 1000 was released in mid-1985, although I think few units were shipped before 1986. Amiga 500 was 1987 - same year as VGA, its little brother MCGA, and the Mac II.
Not sure when VGA would have been considered mainstream... 1989 maybe?
Mac LC was 1990, so probably before that.
VGA and Mac color were better for most practical things. Square pixels and far fewer resolution/flicker/color tradeoffs.
> Amiga 1000 was released in mid-1985, although I think few units were shipped before 1986.
It was announced on July 26th, 1985 at Lincoln Center with Andy Warhol painting Blondie (Debby Harry) live on-stage (a demo which was re-created at the Computer History Museum this past Summer as part of the Amiga 040th celebration). But you're right it wasn't commonly available until the late Fall. I managed to get mine at the end of November.
Yes, that's true. But there is enough about Magyar that I don't understand that I'm cautiously optimistic. Though it would be hard to imagine worse than Orban...
JD Vance strikes again. I wonder how long it will take US politicians and assorted billionaires to realize that their 'endorsements' will backfire.
"...will take US politicians and assorted billionaires to realize that their 'endorsements' will backfire..."
They may have to switch off their AI and start using their own brain - should they still have one, that is.
For both: I prefer to see it all rather than to assume it will be fine. Oh, and we still have Fico to deal with. But at least Hungarians have chosen against Orban that in itself gives some hope. Those leaked phone calls that were made public in the last weeks were very damning, I always assumed that such stuff was going on but to have hard proof is on another level.
I wonder what they're going to do with the participants. And what Orban's plans are now that he's in the opposition. I would not count him out just yet, he's got Putin's backing and you can bet they'll work overtime to try to destabilize Magyar's government. The rot goes pretty deep and it will take a lot of work to undo all that damage.
Orban is only 63; it's up to him what he will do but there is a certain type of people that could live happily on their own island with all the money they have stolen but they prefer to do evil to their last day. See for example Babis, delegating the ownership of his huge company to a trust fund so he can be a prime minister again at 70. Or indeed our great leader Fico who is in politics like Orban since '89, was prime minister around 15 years of the last 20, probably stolen billions for himself, was shot, nearly killed, and doesn't look like he wants to give up his power anytime soon.. and he's still only 62.
If nothing goes catastrophically wrong (again), Orban won't be allowed to return as a prime minister. One of the first legislation the new government aims to pass is to maximize the number of terms to two (8 years in power) which Orban already surpassed. Of course, they could always pull a Putin and put him in a presidential chair and shift power from the parliament/prime minister, so let's hope Fidesz never gets that level of support ever again.
With Orban much reduced in power Fico's days are numbered.
But Orban will hang around, if only to do more of Putin's bidding, it's up to Magyar & the new government now to deal with Orban and his spies in a way that they won't be able to do a come-back.
Not really, Fico has survived a lot during his 4 decades in politics and was always able to adapt (to our detriment). His political survival does not depend on Orban, even though they were close the last couple of years.
That's absolutely true. But in a European context he's already vowed that he will now take up Orban's mantel in blockading EU assistance to Ukraine and other tricks. That means he will no longer be able to hide his involvement and I'm pretty sure that the same kind of conversations between Lavrov and Hungarian politicians can be found about Fico & company. They are clearly not acting in Slovakia's long term interests and that's something that can be much more openly discussed. Keeping in mind that Slovakia is only 1/3rd of so of the size economy as Hungary makes it less of a problem to begin with.
Strength to you, it must be super hard to be living under politicians that are ripping off your country in such a blatant manner on behalf of what is nominally now an enemy nation (based on their own statements), especially given what your country had to endure in the years before the fall of the USSR.
I think generally western EU has no idea how unbelievably corrupt these regimes (Fico, Orbana, Babis) are... they are not stealing on behalf of Putin, they are stealing for themselves, and they are oriented towards Russia because they dream of having Putin's unchecked power.
Luckily I don't think Fico will help Putin that much because nobody trusts him anymore, his foreign minister is very weak and as you mention Slovakia is no economical heavyweight. The hardest thing for us is to see the brainwashed masses still voting for Fico or worse still actual nazis.
Yes, he basically have the same views, except on Russia. One advantage though is that Orban put his people at the head of Hungary corporations, so maybe that will end and the corruption will be kept at "normal" levels.
MSFT has same policy. Office365 does not treat Microsoft.com emails any differently. Only exception is Office365 transactional emails.
This seems logical, you don’t want your service to get a bad rep because some internal division marketing team goes dumb. Also, security in case individuals get hacked.
If we're going to have a surveillance state, let's use it for superlative control - one dollar in taxes for every superlative you use in personal life; $0.01/viewer for each one you use in any live televised event.
Revision is a demoparty which takes place on Easter in Saarbrücken, Germany. It is the successor of the Breakpoint party series, and retains many of the organizing staff.
The party hosts around 800 people from around the world each year. It is currently the largest pure-demoscene event in the world.
To clarify: every young person regardless of gender is legally obliged to go through fitness testing for conscription and if deemed suitable must go through it if selected. I imagine it’s roughly similar in Denmark?
Up until the fall of the USSR ~all men did go through conscription/basic military training. After the fall only the ones that wanted to and were selected did. Now it’s ramping up massively.
I remember NASA broadcasts being top notch up until the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. That stabilized footage from when the shuttle was landing is iconic.
However: That quality was lost earlier than last year. Not sure exactly when, but it been like this for years now.
https://byte.tsundoku.io/
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45028002)
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