Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekig5!waynekn
From: waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: BlackBelt may not be a great solution.
Message-ID: <5326@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM>
Date: 8 Jan 90 20:51:37 GMT
References: <5965@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 37

In article <5965@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, pa1158@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (RenderMan) writes:
> 
>  If this thing hits the streets, it'll blow away competing
> framebuffers and really nail down the Amiga as a viable raytracing
> tool.   Imagine, 24bit animations!  DPaint with 256 colors!  Boy,
> those palette sliders will have to be modified to support 256 shades
> instead of only 16!

That is the major problem with the BlackBelt video box.  First programs
will have to be modified to work with it before you are going to see 
much use out of it.  Now new software may find it easy to put in a black
belt mode but it will take a lot of time before any old program will be
able to use the new modes.

Also I have some doults as to how well it is going to work for animation.
The main problem is the color palette.  256 colors * 3 bytes per color is
2048 bytes.  A 704 x 480 hi-res screen uses 88 bytes per line which means
that it takes about 24 lines plus whatever overhead to load the palette.
If the palette is changing on every frame this will be a problem when people
start recording to video as it may start getting into the veiwable image
producing a short screen.  This wouldn't be so bad except people have come
to expect proper overscan from the amiga.  Perhaps it would be possible to
use a little larger screen and reduce this problem.  Another more pressing
problem is that the Amiga runs slowly in the high res. 4 bit plane mode 
since there is a limit to how fast the CHIP RAM can be accesed.  Adding 
overscan slows the system down more and the net effect is much slower 
updating of the CHIP memory that leads to slower animation.

Finally a different issue and that these guys don't even seem to have
hardware to loan to people and it seems that they want programmers to send
them $300 before even seeing the product and then to also take a great deal
of time and update what ever program they have written to use the new (but,
very nice) display modes.  Since software sales have been very soft on the
Amiga this last year I think a lot of people including myself will have to
think very hard before supporting this product.

                                           Wayne Knapp