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From: brian@babbage.csus.edu (Brian Witt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Simple Frame Buffer boards
Summary: How are multiple monitors handled?
Keywords: multiple videos boards
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.212627.24551@csusac.csus.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 90 21:26:27 GMT
References: <1411@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> <1990Dec5.165513.16570@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>
Organization: 12.5% by volume
Lines: 58

In article <1990Dec5.165513.16570@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> fsset@bach.UUCP (Scott E. Townsend) writes:
>In article <1411@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> p554mve@mpirbn.UUCP (Michael van Elst) writes:
>>Hmm, I can't see much benefit from this besides ease of programming.
>>IMHO, it is sufficient to map a smaller rectangular part. The drawing
>>routines can be adapted without much peformance loss.
>>[..]
>>Michael van Elst
>
>One benifit I can think of is indeed ease of programming, which also results
>is a good size performance gain.  For example, a quick circle drawing
>routine would slow down a fair amount if it had to worry about drawing
>across this rectangular window into the real image.  This would be a lot like
>clipping, which isn't a real quick operation.
>

(I'm playing the devil's advocate, so keep the flames low.  This is more
 of a `what if..' than a complaint..)

What about multiple monitors attached to the same box.  macintosh's do
this quite naturally.  I was told by an ex-Sun employee that SunViews
was kludged to look like it does multiple monitors.  Would be neat to
drag your mouse from an interelaced monitor to a productivity monitor.

Having multiple monitors would be like having your display segmented
(evil word, but I'm playing the devil's advocate :-).  Each segment
of display memory represents a different physical video board.  Would
the solution be similar to vide-paging on, say, an IBM PC VGA board?
This is graphics (slow) overhead, but it would be a great feature.

Is this the way these things are done?  However, if the graphics
operation is repeated for each video video monitor, just ignore me. 
I do systems, so please someone set me straight here.

But is this a direction that people would like to see tha Amiga travel?
After all, the Copper given multiple scren resolutions without the
cose of multiple screens.  However, to complete in a graphics workstation
market, having a 21" mega-graphics display next to a clean textual
display is real glitzy :-).  But a $15K Amiga might be *TOO* outrageous.

(many folk have asked for wonder hardware features, but don't want to pay
for them.. :-(

Food for thought.  Yearn for Peace.

>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Scott Townsend               |   Phone: 216-433-8101
>------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------
         brian witt         |   brian@babbage.ecs.csus.edu
    You are what you click  |  (and if you click it twice...)
  Not representing Cal State Sacramento, the ECS dept, or Iraq
----------------------------------------------------------------
--
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         brian witt         |   brian@babbage.ecs.csus.edu
    You are what you click  |  (and if you click it twice...)
  Not representing Cal State Sacramento, the ECS dept, or Iraq