V1 Indivision Can Produce RTG Driver

[intric8]

This is for the hardware fans who like to find every little trick in the book to squeeze out every shred of power and potential with their Amigas.

A local friend of mine, life-long Amiga user and SEA-CCC member, Rob, shared some really amazing photos the other day in the AmigaLove Slack channel.

Photo by Rob

Photo by Rob

After posting these, he simply said:

No Vampire, no PiStorm. In fact, nothing manufactured in the past 10+ years. A600 with 800x600x256 color RTG graphics:

He went on to explain:

The reason this was possible in the first place was because Icomp noticed that the chip they were using could be twisted to give some framebuffer-like functionality in addition the core flicker fixing functionality of the Indivision ECS. This was only true of the Indivision ECS V1. When they cost reduced it for the Indivision ECS V2 (and V3) they went with a cheaper easier to source chip that made them lose a bunch of aspirational functionality like the framebuffer and the dual monitor support. So only the aging/unavailable Indivision ECS V1 could even attempt this P96 hack.

It's flaky, but I think I discovered that the key to it launching is to not have complex wallpaper already displayed before the initial mode switch

Rob continued, after some of my questions:

All the indivision ECS boards have Graffiti emulation mode for 256 colors. What appears to be different about the Indivision ECS V1 is the chip they used also had a framebuffer implemented. So the combination of Graffiti and the framebuffer seems to be what allowed the creation of a P96 RTG driver. It's also my understanding that the driver is really basic because the framebuffer was under-documented.

I posted the two images later on Twitter, which Jens of iComp saw. He said:

Indivision ECS V1 had a framebuffer mode and an unofficial P96 driver.
I had to look up when ECS V1 came out, as the “10 years” made me wonder - and it’s actually over 13 years ago. Wow.

V2 and V3 don’t have this framebuffer mode - not enough space left in FPGA.

So, essentially he confirmed this info. How cool is that?!

[McTrinsic]

It’s really cool, until … it isn’t .

The driver is rather alpha than beta. It’s a big hack. I used it with my Phoenix-Diva back then. In short, it’s a tech demo that in some specific circumstances might do some things you otherwise couldn’t.

Don’t expect too much.

[EzdineG]

It’s really cool, until … it isn’t .

The driver is rather alpha than beta. It’s a big hack. I used it with my Phoenix-Diva back then. In short, it’s a tech demo that in some specific circumstances might do some things you otherwise couldn’t.

Don’t expect too much.

It was also very slow, firmware specific and the RTG required an 030 with an MMU.

The moment you updated to the newer v1 firmware you lost the ability to run 256 color Doom, and I don't believe I was able to get the RTG going until I down-flashed it too.

Though neat, the sheen wore off fast.

[A1-X1000]

love it that’s some cool stuff for sure