Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hsi!genly!chris From: chris@genly.UUCP (Chris Hind Genly) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: HAM-E Message-ID: Date: 22 Sep 90 15:22:59 GMT Organization: Eggplant Software Tools, CT, USA Lines: 65 I'm posting for Ben Williams again. * * * \|/ * _______ --O-- ____/ KC1VP \____ * /|\ * _____________/ (203) 389-8680 \_______________ ______/ 95 Fountain Terr., New Haven, CT, USA, 06515 \_______ / Chris Hind Genly chris@genly.uucp uunet!hsi!genly!chris \ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Responses to some of the UseNet traffic from Black Belt Systems --------------------------------------------------------------- >Also, I was glad to see such a authoritative response on the video issue, >but the tone the article took was a little distressing. DCTV and HAM-E >are both much needed, much appreciated products entering the Amiga market >at a time when they are greatly needed. However, I don't see the advantage >in flaming a competetors product on the 'net. A direct comparison chart >or somesuch is great, but sarcastic comments we can do without. There were no sarcastic comments in that posting. We are in a competitive position, have significant advantages in many areas, are equal in all others barring built-in digitizing capability. You might look back at the postings that were replied to as well; the HAM-E was described as a 240 color capable device, the DCTV unit as a "WUNDERBOX". There was a need for a counter opinion, and we are uniquely qualified to offer it. Also, competitive situations are normal in business, which is what we're dealing with here. We're trying to be honest. Even if it hurts DCTV. :^) -------------------- >What the Amiga needs is a way to have multiple instances of graphics.library >open, one for each possible display device. You could buy a high-res >gee-whiz graphics board, plug it into a Zorro slot, and as it autoconfigures >it would add its own version of graphics.library to the system. The >problem is that this requires leadership from Commodore, namely reworking >intuition/layers/etc. to work with more than one graphics.library as well as >defining the standards for third-party graphics libraries. We were continuing a discussion today with CBM, in fact, working with us on what needs to be done to allow graphics calls to work 100% with the HAM-E. They are very good about this, they called us with some additional information we needed here. It turns out to be reasonably simple, though (as you point out) line drawing and filling, in particular, end up either (1) being done to a backup bitplane and then blit-bombed en-masse (very inefficient... poo) or (2) by CPU driven replacements for the blitter capabilties. But overall, the system is remarkably consistant as to what low-level things it uses to get things done... makes it not as hard as you might think. So this issue is being dealt with, quite carefully. Our contact for this issue at CBM is the GFX guru, Ray Brand, if anyone else wants to make a compatible GFX library. As for text and so on, we've got solutions to that already done for "standard" fonts, and color-fonts are just around the corner, as in maybe a couple of weeks, max. ============================================ Ben Williams, AA7AS, for Black Belt Systems. ============================================