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Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Tue May 19, 2020 9:14 pm
by intric8
I love the thought of an inverse demon pencil. :D

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 3:53 pm
by fxgogo
Yay!! Fantastic, it works. I can’t imagine using a tablet on an Amiga. That’s it, I must getting my accelerator installed and working, then the tablet.

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Fri May 22, 2020 5:45 pm
by Mixel
Yep it’s pretty exciting.. :D Accelerator definitely sounds like a good idea!

My ‘020 can barely cope and 8MB isn’t really enough to use something like Photogenics well.. But despite that - it’s surprisingly easy to get used to it’s bizarre backwards pressure curve, and Photogenics 5 works slightly better than 4.. But it uses up a bit more ram so I hit a wall in terms of layers and can’t really go above lowres canvas sizes.

Also, ham8 is a pretty strange mode to run it in but it seems to be working fine. It’s fun to scribble in - it’s a pain in the ass compared to a modern digital tool, but in a way that makes it feel more like traditional art, which is also doesn’t have undo or many conveniences. 😅

I ordered a copy of arteffect 4. I can’t get 2.x to load at all, but nobody seems to have 4 to test, and €15 seems like a reasonable price to pay to find out if it’s decent. (And also support an Amiga m store).. oh well if it doesn’t work.

When I got back into the Amiga I really wasn’t expecting to use it for anything other than games.. are there any modern accelerators that aren’t super expensive and have 64+ MB ram? An 030 maybe?

https://www.amiga-shop.net/Amiga-Hardwa ... ::783.html Something like this but in stock somewhere?

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Fri May 22, 2020 10:17 pm
by McTrinsic
The manufacturer also sells directly.

See here

Unfortunately, the only currently available device is the 1233n/55 with its respective pricetag as top of the line reference Card. I would consider it ok as you also get a speed upgrade to your IDE and an option for a better USB connection (port with higher speed for a rapidroad). It’s the best you can get out of an 030.

But at that price others start looking at a used 040 accelerator.

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 3:06 am
by Mixel
Ooh thanks. If I end up with a used Apollo ‘040 I’d have recreated the exact setup I had in the 90s.. *kicks self for letting it go*

That 030 looks like a great card, we’re approaching the price of a vampire card though but I can’t for the life of me decide if I’m okay with fpga cards on principle.. Hmm. The vampire’s fallback mode just sounds like my current setup, so it should be compatible enough, it’s more.. Does it even feel like an Amiga anymore when it’s actually fast? 😂 It seems more like emulating somehow!

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 9:38 am
by fxgogo
I feel you about the vampire and emulation. For myself, I can’t justify the prices when emulation on my pc would give me a similar result. I like to revisit the Amiga as it was and for modern tweaks, emulation will do.

But I would not say no to a vampire if someone gave it to me.... :D

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 8:07 pm
by Mixel
I think we’ve found one of the only things you can do on an Amiga that seemingly doesn’t work well in emulation. 😅 I certainly can’t get any sort of pressure sensitivity to work in WinUAE with either of my usb wacoms (yet) which is a shame.

I won’t give up yet though. On thinking about it I quite like my slow A1200 - it’s so compatible with most things right now, it’s funny it’d cost £100s to make it fast(er) when I could buy a new gpu for my PC and that would likely be more useful. For the price of a vampire I could have real-time raytraced graphics, lol.

If I can get pressure to run in emulation I’ll be able to gauge how fast the Amiga would need to be for it to be ideal.. I really like the feel of Photogenics other than the speed.

Without pressure it’s still very nice in dpaint/ppaint without spending anything, so I should probably quit while I’m ahead and just get doodling. 🙂

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Fri May 29, 2020 4:49 pm
by Mixel
Sorry to keep posting on this but I’ve had a couple of fun developments with emulation.. I tried different hardware specs at cycle exact to see how fast it’d need to be to be genuinely fast/pleasant... basically an 060 or a Vampire.. (or ppc maybe?! I have no idea how and when ppc is called) 040 is “ok” but things like undo-ing can still take an age.

Here’s a direct emulation of my 640x480 AGA set up running ham8, which is kind of gross but still impressive.
DE81627D-F4E1-4BF5-9AC6-3BD976BBF0E3.jpeg
But on that note I thought I’d try Photogenics at my MacBook Pro’s full resolution using Uaegfx... LOL. This is pretty amazing, quite a nice drawing engine even by modern standards, I doodled these 3 in quick succession.. even without pressure it’s surprisingly nice..
CA39ED49-508A-4DEB-A70D-0E34C1997399.jpeg
I was NOT expecting it to appear so modern, In terms of UI.. Isn’t it weird? Layers Present and working great, and some features that would be very nice if they were included in modern apps.. (you can change the brush type after drawing the lines, like it was vectors or something! It’s so alien feeling!) It’s refreshing bg to try something that’s unique and not trying to look/act like Photoshop!

So.. yeah I can’t justify a vampire 😅 .. But that’s probably the only way I’d get it approaching this nice + pressure sensitivity.

How much Amiga software is there like this that seems to have targeted weird futuretech? It can’t have ran too great on most setups back in the day, for painting purposes anyway.

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 1:41 pm
by Zippy Zapp
Wow that is pretty cool and those art works are awesome. The Amiga OS was ahead of its time and was pretty resolution independent compared to other OSs at the time.

Re: Troubleshooting a serial port / graphics tablet..

Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2020 3:39 pm
by fxgogo
Great examples Mixel. Never used Photogenics back in the day, but I the results do look good.