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Amiga Graphics Archive

amiga.lychesis.net

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Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#71

Post by icedchai »

amiga386 wrote: post #66
kstrauser wrote: post #43

A super minor nitpick: it’s jarring to see the Amiga referred to as 16 bit. It wasn’t described that way at the time: it was universally (that I saw anyway) called a 32 bit machine, and reasonably. It had a flat 32 bit address space (although the 68000 itself didn’t support all those address lines because what kind of supercomputer would need 4GB of RAM?). All the registers and operations were 32 bit. Some of the int…

While the 68000's registers are 32-bit, the data bus is 16 bit, the A1000, A2000 and A500 that defined the range had 16-bit fetching chipsets, they literally had 24-bit address buses. None of this says "32-bit". It can't be overlooked. Many games crashed on the 32-bit clean A3000, A1200, A600, A4000 because programmers used the upper byte of addresses for their IQ or whatever. (Similar issues with ARM2 to ARM3 in Aco…

I can see it both ways.

I remember the Amiga always being compared to other "16-bit" machines, like the Apple IIgs, Atari ST, and early Macs.

I also remember the 68000 being referred to as 16/32-bit. Still, from a programmer perspective, the 68000 looked like a 32-bit machine, similar to what Intel did with the 386DX and SX.

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#72

Post by WeZzyNL »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #40

I couldn't afford the Amiga in its day, but I often drooled over it's imagery in magazines etc. I really need to pick up a mister fpga setup and see what I missed out on back then. Any recommendations for hardware for that? I can and do build my own hardware, but I think there's a bunch of options nowadays and likely some are better than others...

I guess the SuperStation One?[0]

[0]: https://retroremake.co/pages/superstation%E1%B5%92%E2%81%BF%...

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#73

Post by kstrauser »

amiga386 wrote: post #66
kstrauser wrote: post #43

A super minor nitpick: it’s jarring to see the Amiga referred to as 16 bit. It wasn’t described that way at the time: it was universally (that I saw anyway) called a 32 bit machine, and reasonably. It had a flat 32 bit address space (although the 68000 itself didn’t support all those address lines because what kind of supercomputer would need 4GB of RAM?). All the registers and operations were 32 bit. Some of the int…

While the 68000's registers are 32-bit, the data bus is 16 bit, the A1000, A2000 and A500 that defined the range had 16-bit fetching chipsets, they literally had 24-bit address buses. None of this says "32-bit". It can't be overlooked. Many games crashed on the 32-bit clean A3000, A1200, A600, A4000 because programmers used the upper byte of addresses for their IQ or whatever. (Similar issues with ARM2 to ARM3 in Aco…

The Opteron had a 32 bit HyperTransport bus. Modern CPUs only implement 48 address lines. And yet we’d call all of those 64 bit systems. We wouldn’t call them 32 bit systems, and surely not 48 bit.

The 68k’s ISA is 32 bit through and through, however the underlying implementation looks. It did since I bought my A1000, marketed as a 32 bit system, in 1985.

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#74

Post by vidarh »

kstrauser wrote: post #73
amiga386 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the 68000's registers are 32-bit, the data bus is 16 bit, the A1000, A2000 and A500 that defined the range had 16-bit fetching chipsets, they literally had 24-bit address buses. None of this says "32-bit". It can't be overlooked. Many games crashed on the 32-bit clean A3000, A1200, A600, A4000 because programmers used the upper byte of addresses for their IQ or whatever. (Similar issues with ARM2 to ARM3 in Aco…

The Opteron had a 32 bit HyperTransport bus. Modern CPUs only implement 48 address lines. And yet we’d call all of those 64 bit systems. We wouldn’t call them 32 bit systems, and surely not 48 bit. The 68k’s ISA is 32 bit through and through, however the underlying implementation looks. It did since I bought my A1000, marketed as a 32 bit system, in 1985.

> marketed as a 32 bit system, in 1985.

I'm sure there must have been some, but most of Commodore's early Amiga ads didn't mention the number of bits at all, and from looking through old magazines it doesn't seem most vendors did either.

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#75

Post by vidarh »

mrandish wrote: post #64
flohofwoe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also saved memory with "odd" number of bits eg 3 bitplanes for 8 colors per pixel.

Yes, I too remember the memory savings being the key aspect of bitplane design choices in the early and mid 80s. The increased granularity in varying the trade-off between memory for graphics vs program code being the secondary aspect. The downside to bitplanes vs chunky pixel formats was having to write to four different memory addresses to fully change one 16 color pixel. One case where bitplanes could be faster wa…

Memory savings and by extension memory bandwidth for low color modes, as you indirectly point out with the text example.

The early Amigas had a memory bandwidth of ~7MB/s, and the chip RAM bandwidth was shared with the custom chips... Anything that'd reduce needed memory transfers was a big deal.

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#77

Post by BrissyCoder »

realityloop wrote: post #70
pwillia7 wrote: post #18

I made a DeluxePaint/Amiga LORA you can use with Stable Diffusion/FLUX a while back for the lulz[1] I also used that LORA and some video models to try to make a little movie with the same style[2] Here's a guide on how to generate LORAs too if you're interested[3] Finally, there's a DeluxePaint clone someone released that is pretty cool to play around with[4] [1]: https://civitai.com/models/875790/amiga-deluxepaint-o…

FFS ruining it for ppl that are old enough as well. I really wanted to try this out :/ Access Restricted for Australian Visitors As of March 16, 2026, Civitai is no longer accessible to users in Australia. This is due to Australia's Age-Restricted Material Codes, registered under the Online Safety Act and enforced by the eSafety Commissioner. These codes require platforms that host user-generated content — including…

Thank you eSafety Commissioner!

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#78

Post by pwillia7 »

realityloop wrote: post #70
pwillia7 wrote: post #18

I made a DeluxePaint/Amiga LORA you can use with Stable Diffusion/FLUX a while back for the lulz[1] I also used that LORA and some video models to try to make a little movie with the same style[2] Here's a guide on how to generate LORAs too if you're interested[3] Finally, there's a DeluxePaint clone someone released that is pretty cool to play around with[4] [1]: https://civitai.com/models/875790/amiga-deluxepaint-o…

FFS ruining it for ppl that are old enough as well. I really wanted to try this out :/ Access Restricted for Australian Visitors As of March 16, 2026, Civitai is no longer accessible to users in Australia. This is due to Australia's Age-Restricted Material Codes, registered under the Online Safety Act and enforced by the eSafety Commissioner. These codes require platforms that host user-generated content — including…

police state australia

https://wormhole.app/E4zA1z#Q3aQLs6wRmlLkeghIYyZEQ

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#79

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

kstrauser wrote: post #43

A super minor nitpick: it’s jarring to see the Amiga referred to as 16 bit. It wasn’t described that way at the time: it was universally (that I saw anyway) called a 32 bit machine, and reasonably. It had a flat 32 bit address space (although the 68000 itself didn’t support all those address lines because what kind of supercomputer would need 4GB of RAM?). All the registers and operations were 32 bit. Some of the int…

For me at least I always remember it being referred to as 16-bit, in all the gaming and computer magazines etc. Part of the 16-bit home computers; I remember the Atari ST being referred to that way as well.

I don’t remember seeing references to 32-bit until the 386/486 days on the home computer side and Sega 32X on the console side.

Re: Amiga Graphics Archive

#80

Post by bitwize »

appstorelottery wrote: post #25

This is great stuff! As a side note, I wonder if anyone has created a HAM viewer that runs in the browser? I remember HAM flickering by necessity and being amazed by 4096 colors on-screen at once. There was a certain quality of HAM images on the Amiga that made them instantly identifiable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify

You were probably seeing an interlaced video mode, which flickered HAM or no HAM. The signature of HAM was there would be odd color barf at the edges of objects if the colors changed too quickly going left to right because of the hold-and-modify encoding. You saw that a lot with ToasterPaint but when it rendered to the video output it was fine (and even in 24bit color).
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