A2024/Viking Moniterm (was Re: Amiga Unix (was: Amiga development))

From: Ethan Dicks <ethan_dicks_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue Feb 6 12:55:04 2001

--- "Ryan K. Brooks" <ryan_at_hack.net> wrote:
> The former was the A2024, which combined a series of fields into a 4
> quadrant display for high resolution stuff...
>
> John Foust wrote:
> > I remember one mono-ish graphics card that required a special
> >(interlacing?) monitor...

You are both right: the Viking Moniterm was a Sun-style 19" mono monitor
and a card for the video slot, and the A2024 was a monitor with a 23-pin
Amiga video connection and all the necessary goodies inside. I had an
A2024 once, I still have the Moniterm.

Both use the same driver and the same techique - squeeze out four fields
from the Amiga chipset and externally buffer them into one frame that is
put up as a 1008x1008 2-bit greyscale image. As long as you didn't try
to scroll text across the quarters of the screen, it worked nicely, even
for Macintosh emulation. There was a bit of judder if you tried to use
a text window across that split. The bits didn't flicker, but the left
and right sides would refresh at a visible difference.

The A2024 will work with any Amiga. The Moniterm will work with any
Amiga that has a video slot (although I never tried it with my A1000
and Rejuvinator ;-)

Great stuff if all you wanted was lots of desktop realestate. I used mine
while developing text apps - lots of room to edit, compile and test. I
even created a flyspeck font (1x2) to run my makes in a 1000-pixel-tall
window on the edge of the screen. I could tell from the overall shape
of the compiler output if it were done or not and if it was a clean
compile or not. If there were errors, I could restore the font to
something legible; otherwise, I could run the program from a "normal"
window.

-ethan



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Received on Tue Feb 06 2001 - 12:55:04 GMT

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