4 ms·

In the US there was definitely a sense of embattlement having something that wasn’t the standard PC. I paid through the nose for a second disk drive and a lapto

In the US there was definitely a sense of embattlement having something that wasn’t the standard PC. I paid through the nose for a second disk drive and a laptop hard drive that fit under the keyboard. So for that effort it needed to be worth it. I do remember smugly bragging to someone about it having 4096 colors, and he responded that his Mac Quadra had 16 million.

the_af 5y ago
Was that 4096 simultaneous colors? If so, it would have given VGA a run for its money -- only 256 colors for the active palette (though of course many more to pick from).
- antiterra 5y ago
  Yes and no, there were tricks to displaying nearly all the colors and each row of pixels could have its own palette, but in general use it was 32 colors + 32 half brights.
- billyjobob 5y ago
  In HAM mode it could do 4096 simultaneously but that was mostly limited to static images. For games it was 32 or 64 colors. But this was in 1985. VGA didn’t exist until 1987 and didn’t become ubiquitous until 1990. And was much more expensive. If Commodore had been properly run they would have had their next gen chipset out by then. But they weren’t, so it wasn’t until 1992 they came out with AGA which was a only little better than VGA and by then it was too late anyway.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    A lot of games used more than 32/64 colours using the copper too though. E.g. things like background fades. Interestingly quite a few of the games with the most colours did not use the 5 bitplane 32 colour mode or the 64 bitplane Extra HalfBrite mode, but a combination of "dirty tricks" with sprites + copper. E.g. Shadow of the Beast used 120+ colours, but used dual playfields, which gives only 8 colours per playfield without anything else. But then it overlays sprites, and uses the copper to change palette repeatedly: https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-beast/ https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-bea...

the_af 5y ago

Was that 4096 simultaneous colors? If so, it would have given VGA a run for its money -- only 256 colors for the active palette (though of course many more to pick from).

antiterra 5y ago
Yes and no, there were tricks to displaying nearly all the colors and each row of pixels could have its own palette, but in general use it was 32 colors + 32 half brights.
billyjobob 5y ago
In HAM mode it could do 4096 simultaneously but that was mostly limited to static images. For games it was 32 or 64 colors. But this was in 1985. VGA didn’t exist until 1987 and didn’t become ubiquitous until 1990. And was much more expensive. If Commodore had been properly run they would have had their next gen chipset out by then. But they weren’t, so it wasn’t until 1992 they came out with AGA which was a only little better than VGA and by then it was too late anyway.
- vidarh 5y ago
  A lot of games used more than 32/64 colours using the copper too though. E.g. things like background fades. Interestingly quite a few of the games with the most colours did not use the 5 bitplane 32 colour mode or the 64 bitplane Extra HalfBrite mode, but a combination of "dirty tricks" with sprites + copper. E.g. Shadow of the Beast used 120+ colours, but used dual playfields, which gives only 8 colours per playfield without anything else. But then it overlays sprites, and uses the copper to change palette repeatedly: https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-beast/ https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-bea...