Long:
This is a set of screenmode.prefs, overscan.prefs, and monitor icons with
tooltypes that are fully optimised for the largest and best-looking
screenmodes on a Multiscan Monitor (I use a C= 1960 Myself)! The overscan
prefs and monitor tooltypes are manually modified by me, so don't try to
change them, either with the Overscan settings or by editing their
tooltypes, as they will revert back to their system-friendly (and much less
nice) settings & sizes. Here is a listing of the included screenmodes¹:
MODE Max. Size Comments
---- --------- --------
A2024 1024 x 800 ;Only here because it might all not work otherwise.
DBLNTSC 705 x 528 ;Beauty! I used to hate it but now it's on my WB.
DBLPAL 705 x 640 ;Being nice to PAL users; neat to try 512 x 640?
EURO:36Hz² 1408 x 688 ;Nice 'n wide; See ² however for details.
EURO:72Hz 640 x 400 ;Use as default no overscan display. (Clearest)
MULTISCAN 640 x 480 ;Use as default IBM lover's mode. (Clearest)
NTSC ---------- ;No modifications possible here, sorry.
PAL ---------- ;Ditto for PAL.
SUPER72 912 x 1066 ;The biggest screen area of the lot! Gigantic!
¹ You need all the above monitors in your devs:monitors drawer; they should
have come on your Workbench disks.
² To use the 1408 x 688 Euro36 monitor you need to download the hack named
"WBHacksAGA" from gfx/aga and put the Euro36 moitor driver that comes with
it into your Monitors drawer. WBHacksAGA is rather cool and great anyway
so get it at the same time as this! My salutations to Per Espen Hagen
for the inspiration. I haven't tested what screensizes are possible with
the standard WB Euro36 monitor, but I'll bet that they're not as big!
Installation:
Copy all the monitor icons into your Sys:devs/monitors directory using a
program like DOpus. Since these are just icons, the copying will just
overwite the old icons of your monitors. If you treasure your old icons'
looks, you can do it all manually by changing the tooltypes line-by-line,
but why bother? (BTW, all of my icons are copyright of their respective
creators, whoever they are.)
Copy the supplied screenmode.prefs and overscan.prefs to ENVARC:sys/ and
also to ENV:sys/ if you want instant gratification.
Reboot your Amiga to enable the monitor tooltypes to kick in.
Play around with your `Screenmode' settings as desired, but DON'T, DON'T,
DON'T change your overscan settings within `Overscan'! This will probably
nullify all my hours of hard work!
Comments:
I've worked long and hard to get all the screenmodes to look just `right'
on my monitor. I don't know a bloody thing about the Amiga's display at
all; it's just that I just wanted to get a good, big, non-flickery non-pal-
flashy-like display on my WB. So, I first used MonED (An AWESOME program!!)
to change the look of my various displays to a way that I liked. I then
tried to change my overscan settings in Overscan, but was dissatisfied with
their sizes. I then had the urge to manually edit my overscan.prefs; fuck
the program! I realized that the horizontal limitations could not be over-
come, unless somebody rewrote a new monitor driver. What could be
limitlessly altered, however, is the vertical overscan; that can be made to
be whatever size the user wanted! It's only limited by what the actual
monitor can display.
So, I used MonED (by Raul A. Sobon) to increase the totclks and totrows
as far as I could with the monitor still handling it. If you increase the
totrows as far as the monitor can handle it, then using the totclks inter-
changeably, you can get a pretty big screen until the monitor screws up or
the display starts rolling. Then edit the overscan.prefs manually until you
can see the whole screen area (open a window and put it at the lower right-
hand corner of your WB for reference) and you're set.
When and if you decide to edit the overscan.prefs manually, note that
each moitor you have has a text overscan value (controls your max overscan)
of its own in your overscan.prefs file. To edit the sizes, the width and
height are contained in 8 bytes (eg: 0290 019E) next to each other, 31 bytes
down from the word "OSCN", always on an even 4-byte boundary, HEX of course.
The way that I have it, I use DBLNTSC for all my WB stuff, because it's
the largest screen that I can have without flicker or strobing (a symptom of
PAL or MULTISCAN displays). I then made EURO72 and MULTISCAN as small as
possible in order to handle 320 x 200 and 320 x 240 (only 16 pixels less
than PAL), while maintaining pristine clarity and non-strobiness. Next, I
wanted to go all-out and make my WB as fucking huse as possible, so I picked
the best contenders, Euro36 and Super72, and tweaked them as far as my
monitor could handle. They flicker like there's no tomorrow, however, so
they're only really good for their novelty, if you wanted to view a large
Web page, or if you wanted to show off to an IBMer. The other screenmodes,
though, are perfectly tweaked for practicality.
Disclaimer:
I accept absolutely NO responsibility for anything that you do with these
prefs. They work fine on my 1960, although from the sound mine makes in
Super72 or EURO36, you can tell that the thing's pushed to the edge! You
should have no problem using these prefs as long as you don't use MonED to
push them even farther over the edge. Also, don't use Overscan preferences
editor anymore, as when you save the prefs, they will overwrite and reset my
hacked modes. I made this collection of hacks so that they can be used
permanently by you, not as just some dumb cool hack to look at for five
minutes and then forget.
Credits:
Where credit is due. I thank Raul A. Sobon for moned. I thank Per Espen
Hagen for the WBHacksAGA and the idea to goof around with the Amiga Display.
Challenge:
If anybody can outdo this effort, either in display size, screen area, or
in stability (Non-flickeriness) of the display, then go ahead, I dare Ya!
By all means, If you can come up with something better, then I'd be happy to
use that! As Amiga users, we have to support each other with our
imaginations!
Contact:
Ya can contact me at spini@direct.ca, and ask for Chris (My bud's acct.)
Look in pix/wb soon for pictures (proof?!) of Chris Covell's WB!!
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