Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!jarthur!cdouty
From: cdouty@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Christopher Douty)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Mac graphics/ECS/Amiga Graphics Programs
Message-ID: <364@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 4 Mar 89 02:40:53 GMT
References: <9742@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: cdouty@jarthur.UUCP (Christopher Douty)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
Lines: 51

In article <9742@louie.udel.EDU> C503719@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Baird McIntosh) writes:
>
>     Now, I know this is the mongo-technoid forum, but surely you all possess
>a great deal of artistic ability, imagination, or vision...if you didn't, you
>would all have bought Incredibly Boring Machines instead of Amigas.  Anyway,
>here are my three questions....
>     1)  Does anyone have any knowledge of what the standard capabilities of
>         the Mac II are in terms of graphics?  I know it has some horrendous
>         (by this, I mean HIGH) resolution with 256 colors on screen.  I was
>         looking thru MacWorld (bear with me, ok?), and there were ads for a
>         board called SuperMAC that gave Macs 800,000 colors onscreen at
>         normal hi-res.  There were also pictures in the magazine of screens
>         with 1024 X 768 resolution and 256 colors.  I guess the main question
>         here is, what is the highest resolution/no. of colors on screen
>         available on the Mac II?  Does this SuperMAC thingey give Macs
>         800,000 colors at 1024 X 768?
>
>
>Baird McIntosh  (I was a McIntosh before Apple was a Macintosh.)


I can answer the first part of your inquiry.  The standard Apple color card 
uses 640*480 at 8-bits per pixel.  This gives the well known "256 outta 16
million" capability.  There are several SuperMAC cards.  The cheepest will
do switch between 640*480 and 1024*768 resolution with 8 bits per pixel.
(i.e. the same palette as standard) The card itself is about $1000 I
believe, but it may be lowwer.  The 15" Trinitron or 19" standard monitors,
however are about $4000 to $5000.  (Yep.  That's FIVE THOUSAND for a f*cking
CRT.)  The other SuperMAC color card is called the TrueColor and has all
the capabilities of its sibling plus a 24-bits per pixel mode.  That is the
same size as the available color palette so each pixel can have a different
color.  The card itself is around $1500 to $2000 because it has 2 Megs of
RAM to store the screens.

The SuperMAC screens are truly impressive.  If the darned things didn't cost
so bloody much they make a better lowend raytracing platform than the
Amiga.  Of course since NuBus and the graphics card can't move that data
about anywhere near as fast as the Amiga can, Arcade quality games are a
virtual imposibility.

I hope that I answered some of your questions in a useful way.  Latter.

					Chris Douty
				cdouty@jarthur.claremont.edu

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;  use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
with SILLY_QUOTE;  use SILLY_QUOTE;

p.s.  I just saw an add for the first Mac II raytracer.  It was $900.
Impressive pictures and such, but I have 3 PD tracers and only paid $70 for
Sculpt.