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It was a fully 32bit machine except for the multimedia co-processors which were the Amiga's most distinctive feature! The Enhanced Chipset (ECS) was just a min

It was a fully 32bit machine except for the multimedia co-processors which were the Amiga's most distinctive feature! The Enhanced Chipset (ECS) was just a minor improvement over the 16-bit DMA design of the original chipset (OCS). Due to the slow memory access, high-resolution VGA modes could use only 4 bitplanes (16 colors) and left very little free bandwidth for actual rendering, resulting in an unusably slow desktop experience. Zorro III accelerated video cards appeared only later, with outdated PC graphics processors (Matrox, Cirrus...) and brittle OS integration (CyberGraphX, Picasso...). Audio was unchanged from the Amiga 1000 era: 8bit PCM with only 4 channels. I was a very loyal Amiga user, but the Amiga 3000 is about the time when we started losing our technical edge over PCs. AGA machines arrived too late and were still designed around planar graphics... a fatal mistake.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> high-resolution VGA modes were limited to 16 colors The two highest resolution VGA modes are 640×480 in 16-color and monochrome; the only VGA mode with more than 16 colors is 320×200 256-color. High-resolution modes with more than 16 colors are beyond VGA.
- icedchai 5y ago
  "VGA" can also mean any graphics card with a VGA connector (including SVGA modes.) By the time the Amiga 3000 came out, the original VGA was 5 years old, and SVGA was very popular. SVGA is what the Amiga 3000 was competing with... at least 800x600 with 256 colors. ECS couldn't keep up with that. By the time AGA was released, it was too little, too late.
  - snvzz 5y ago
    The saddest is that Commodore had the new Ranger chipset[0], by the original Amiga team (they finished it and largely left), design-ready in 1987. This chipset was superior to ECS[1]. But they cancelled it despite finished, because they deemed it "too expensive". Commodore's mismanagement and cluelessness ran deep. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Enhanced_Chip_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Enhanced_Chip_Set
    - icedchai 5y ago
      ECS was pretty lame. I remember messing around with the 1280x200 and x400 modes. What a bizarre aspect ratio.
      - snvzz 5y ago
        Superhires sure works better with interlace and some overscan. The "Productivity" modes (equivalent to hires+interlace, without the interlace, double line clock instead, are extremely useful, even if you don't have FAST and are thus limited to 2 color for performance.
        icedchai 5y ago
        The productivity modes didn’t do much for the A3000 though. It had a built in de-interlacer. Maybe they were more useful on other machines, though I personally never knew anyone with a monitor that could use them.
        snvzz 5y ago
        >It had a built in de-interlacer Interlacing is easy, deinterlacing not so much. The scan doubler was a very welcome addition, and it worked much better with non-interlaced modes. Obviously, productivity modes were pass-through. >Maybe they were more useful on other machines Big box A3000 was not as common as the other machines with ECS. These would be A500+ and A600, alongside A500 with upgraded Denise (upgrade kits were sold alongside AmigaOS 2.x disks/roms). >I personally never knew anyone with a monitor that could use them. DVD era, many TVs supported "progressive" mode. Before that, it was not exactly common, but some Multisync VGA monitors could take both the 15.6KHz and 31KHz modes.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> high-resolution VGA modes were limited to 16 colors The two highest resolution VGA modes are 640×480 in 16-color and monochrome; the only VGA mode with more than 16 colors is 320×200 256-color. High-resolution modes with more than 16 colors are beyond VGA.

icedchai 5y ago
"VGA" can also mean any graphics card with a VGA connector (including SVGA modes.) By the time the Amiga 3000 came out, the original VGA was 5 years old, and SVGA was very popular. SVGA is what the Amiga 3000 was competing with... at least 800x600 with 256 colors. ECS couldn't keep up with that. By the time AGA was released, it was too little, too late.
- snvzz 5y ago
  The saddest is that Commodore had the new Ranger chipset[0], by the original Amiga team (they finished it and largely left), design-ready in 1987. This chipset was superior to ECS[1]. But they cancelled it despite finished, because they deemed it "too expensive". Commodore's mismanagement and cluelessness ran deep. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Enhanced_Chip_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Enhanced_Chip_Set
  - icedchai 5y ago
    ECS was pretty lame. I remember messing around with the 1280x200 and x400 modes. What a bizarre aspect ratio.
    - snvzz 5y ago
      Superhires sure works better with interlace and some overscan. The "Productivity" modes (equivalent to hires+interlace, without the interlace, double line clock instead, are extremely useful, even if you don't have FAST and are thus limited to 2 color for performance.
      - icedchai 5y ago
        The productivity modes didn’t do much for the A3000 though. It had a built in de-interlacer. Maybe they were more useful on other machines, though I personally never knew anyone with a monitor that could use them.
        snvzz 5y ago
        >It had a built in de-interlacer Interlacing is easy, deinterlacing not so much. The scan doubler was a very welcome addition, and it worked much better with non-interlaced modes. Obviously, productivity modes were pass-through. >Maybe they were more useful on other machines Big box A3000 was not as common as the other machines with ECS. These would be A500+ and A600, alongside A500 with upgraded Denise (upgrade kits were sold alongside AmigaOS 2.x disks/roms). >I personally never knew anyone with a monitor that could use them. DVD era, many TVs supported "progressive" mode. Before that, it was not exactly common, but some Multisync VGA monitors could take both the 15.6KHz and 31KHz modes.