And then came the video toaster, which was often used to replace very expensive chiron machines.
Babylon 5, Max Headroom, and others, used it for special effects. Kurt On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 13:54, Michael B. Smith <mich...@smithcons.com> wrote: > When the Amiga first came out, it featured a HAM (Hold and Modify) graphics > mode that supported 4,096 colors plus alpha. At the time, that was huge. > > > > Not too long after that, 16 bit video cards were available, then 16 bit plus > alpha … etc.etc. > > > > Amiga led in the graphics wars for a very long time. > > > > Remember – back then, b&w was the typical computer screen – one bit per > pixel. Sixteen colors (turtle graphics) pushed that up to 4 bits per pixel. > > > > 4,096 colors (12 bits) plus alpha (4 more bits) equaled 2 bytes of memory > per pixel !! For a typical 640x480 screen, that was 615K of RAM just for > video! Many computers didn’t have that much RAM for main memory. > > > > Regards, > > > > Michael B. Smith > > Consultant and Exchange MVP > > http://TheEssentialExchange.com > > > > From: Crawford, Scott [mailto:crawfo...@evangel.edu] > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2010 4:31 PM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: RE: Whining... > > > > I got some promotional VHS from them that were fun to watch. One of the > quotes I fondly remember is “But, beware. Complex animations like these > require lots of memory. Sometimes more than a megabyte.” > > > > From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2010 3:26 PM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: Whining... > > > > Indeed. > > > > -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker > > On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 9:16 AM, Steven M. Caesare <scaes...@caesare.com> > wrote: > > Awesome. Amiga was some truly amazing hardware for its time, and the OS > remains under-appreciated IMO. > > They also had no idea what to really do to market it against the PeeCee > > -sc > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com] >> Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2010 9:44 PM >> To: NT System Admin Issues > >> Subject: RE: Whining... >> >> Just like Commodore. :-( >> >> [I did significant development on the Amiga platform, including I-Net > 225 and >> a number of other commercial applications.] >> >> Regards, >> >> Michael B. Smith >> Consultant and Exchange MVP >> http://TheEssentialExchange.com >> > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] >> Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2010 9:40 PM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: Re: Whining... >> >> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Steven M. Caesare > <scaes...@caesare.com> >> wrote: >> > I had a chance to play with NT4.0 on a 4-CPU Alpha box back in the > day. >> > Not a lot of appas available for it wither (hence the FX!32 >> > emulation/dynamic compile layer), but it _SCREAMED_ at the time. >> >> Yah, the Alpha was a sweet platform. >> >> I remember someone telling the story that their i386 program was > faster on >> an Alpha running under FX!32 emulation than it was on native i386 > hardware. >> >> Compaq buying DEC was a sad moment in computer history. >> Unsurprising that DEC failed -- their marketing was horrible, and > their sales >> practices not much better -- but still sad. >> >> -- Ben >> >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ >> <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
