Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!cthulhu
From: cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 1024X800 Monitor
Keywords: How much memory?
Message-ID: <6534@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 2 Aug 88 21:26:06 GMT
References: <1779@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich)
Lines: 26

In article <1779@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU> cheung@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Wilson Cheung) writes:
>
>	This 1024x800 black and white monitor that Commodore plans to release
>sounds exciting, especially since it will work with my A1000.  However,
>my concern is the amount of CHIP RAM this is going to hog up. My understanding
>is that it will need eight 640x400, 4-bit plane screens.  Will this hog
>up all 512K of standard CHIP RAM, so that multi-tasking will be out of the
>question?

First of all, 8 640x400 4-bit plane screens would take 8x640x400x4/8 =
1 Meg of RAM, so you're not going to be seeing that in chip RAM on
current hardware.  However, I suspect very strongly that you are
mistaken about how it works.  Those 8 screens would give you a
1024x8000 pixel screen, not x800!!  The resolution would be nice, but
I believe the way it works is using ONE 4 or 6-plane screen (giving
different resolutions) which will take something on the order of 200K,
depending on the amount of overscan they use...  So you still might be
able to multitask small programs, and you could fit a couple of
screens of super hi-res in Chip...  leaving fast RAM to store the
actual programs.  If you're spending $700-1000 on a monitor, you
should probably set aside some money for a memory expansion--
Everything non-essential will have to be in fast RAM.  512K just isn't
enough to multitask large applications... Just wish those memory
prices would come down and Pacific Periphs would get the SubSystem
1000 out the door already!!!

						-- Jim