Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!eris!spencer
From: spencer@eris (Randal m. Spencer [RmS])
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: EXTRA_HALFBRITE (was V1.3 OS?)
Message-ID: <7425@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 6 Mar 88 19:40:34 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: spencer@eris.berkeley.edu (Randal m. Spencer [RmS])
Organization: Infinity Software :-)
Lines: 53

Recently on Comp.Sys.Amiga disd@hubcap.UUCP (Gary R. Heffelfinger) said:

...which would abort with a nasty message on my Ami.  Note that I have no
...experience with using EHB, so I don't know for sure if a program will
...abort when it doesn't find it, but I'd hate to buy the long-awaited
..."Creeping Mutant Romuloids from Planet 10"  only to find that it shuts
...down saying "Oop Ack! Upgrade your chip!"  So if a function call is
...required to activate EHB, please pay attention to what it returns so
...that you don't leave us old timers completely out in the cold.  Wizards,
...please feel free to correct me if this is not the case.  I'm only a
...weekend Ami programmer.
...-- 
...Gary R. Heffelfinger                  Employed by, but not the 

Also in Comp.Sys.Amiga hbo@hub.ucsb.edu (Howard Owen) said:

...    My old 1000 didn't have it. In fact, I seem to recall that it was the
..."handful of early 1000's" that HAD EHB. Didn't someone here do a mail survey
...of how many machines had the feature, and didn't it turn out the vast majority
...of A1000s didn't have it? Granted, the new machines come with EHB installed 
...(Halfbright Hill looks GREAT on my 2000!) but I wouldn't assume it was present
...unless I wanted to piss off a significantly large segment of the Amiga 
...population!
...-- 
...Howard Owen, Programmer/Analyst             PHYSNET/HEPNET/SPAN:  SBPHY::HBO 

Sorry, I don't think that there is really any way to tell if a machine has
EHB unless you put up a requester that uses it which asks the user what he
sees.  So I don't think that anyone who decides to use it is going to be
able to test for it, and program around it.  Also, just like all the hard-
ware people have been saying: I will make product for the machine that 
Commodore is shipping now.  If you don't have a EHB chip that is your
problem.  I am not going to not use EHB just to make you happy, most
people who have 1000's that don't have it have already upgraded to the
500 or 2000 and just have their 1000 sitting around, the rest will when
the new chipset comes out.  I don't think that you  are going to be able
to sit there and not upgrade your hardware.

At the same time, I don't think I can come up with much in the way of
uses for the EHB mode, I guess that a paint program should have it, and
it does allow for extra colors when creating a game graphic.

I was the one that conducted the poll to see who had the chip and it is 
true, ALOT more than a handful made it out without the EHB, but at the
same time, they have sold as many 500's and 2000's as they ever sold
1000's, so the market has the majority of it using EHB, and the percentages
growing on that side daily.  Of course I still have two 1000's that don't
have that chip, so if anyone can help me out I would appreciate it!
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Randy Spencer      P.O. Box 4542   Berkeley  CA  94704        (415)222-7595 
spencer@mica.berkeley.edu        I N F I N I T Y         BBS: (415)222-9416
..ucbvax!mica!spencer            s o f t w a r e                  AAA-WH1M
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