Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!uflorida!gatech!taco!hobbes!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Re: Using the copper (was Re: 3d Graphics) Keywords: copper lists Message-ID: <1991Mar26.024834.24120@ncsu.edu> Date: 26 Mar 91 02:48:34 GMT References: <12305@monu1.cc.monash.oz> <7183@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> <2069@pdxgate.UUCP> Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 24 In <2069@pdxgate.UUCP> bairds@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Shawn L. Baird) writes: >I still wish that instead of 32 palette registers we had a pointer to a >palette and that the resolution of the copper was one hires pixel, but you >can't have everything. (Just imagine being able to have windows that >themselves have different palettes, and imagine all that on the fly, like a >workbench where each window has whatever 16 colors it wants) Wishes like this might be a good reason for CBM to start using PClone hardware, at least in the palette output section. For example, I'm running on a 68K machine which uses a common-brand palette RAM-D/A chip, which gives me the usual 256 colors out of 16 million. Now the interesting thing is that I can pop in a slightly more expensive version which has four separate full palettes... and up to 16 window areas (start xy, size xy, priority) can be set to use any of those four palettes. The palette chip itself handles the switching, no palette reloads needed. If it had perhaps 32 areas possible, I'd consider using it myself, but I can wait for now... I expect fancier models before long. Then there are the HAM-like chips coming soon, and ones which do ECS-like stuff such as changing 640x16-color into 1280x4-color. Buying these off the shelf must make more sense than creating your own chips ;-). Just a random thought - kevin