Amiga A1200 with 32-bit graphics???

[Gwion]

Can a A1200 sumhow go on 32-bit graphics?? Without a graphics card just a standard desktop A1200? :-?

[SamuraiCrow]

Ham8 mode uses compression to render a 24-bit image as 8-bitplanes. Is that what you're referring to?

-edit- You can do software alpha-blending in a fast-memory buffer using a custom routine, and then do a chunky-to-Ham8 conversion with Kickstart 3.1 but that's terribly slow.

[Flashlab]

I don't think so. HAM 8 on AGA is not 32 bit I thought.

[Gwion]

What is 32-bit ram then??

[SamuraiCrow]

The memory is accessed 32-bits at a time but the display modes are 8-bit. It just loads 32 pixels at a time using bit-planes. (Actually, it has a special fetch rate that is called "page mode" that lets it fetch two 32-bit words with a single cycle. That yields a psuedo-64-bit mode.) It's a pity that it only fetches at 14-MHz.

[Gwion]

So its like the ide device is 16-bit

[SamuraiCrow]

There are only 8 bitplanes whether you have 16-bit or 32-bit bus. The bus width only affects the speed of the chip because of how much data it fetches at a time.