[HN Gopher] Why was the Amiga Kickstart 1.x "Insert floppy" grap...
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Why was the Amiga Kickstart 1.x "Insert floppy" graphic so bad?
Author : andy_herbert
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-03-06 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| andrewstuart wrote:
| Bad? What about iconically good? Instantly recognisable
| definitive Amiga ... that's good isn't it?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, it's pretty great by the standard of the time!
| panic wrote:
| If you want to see what the image would look like at high
| resolution -- I couldn't resist making a small JS implementation:
| http://ianhenderson.org/kickstart-vector.html
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I never would have guessed that the Kickstart 1.x graphic was
| vector, but it's so clear in retrospect. It's not hard to spot
| the nodes of the pre-Bezier shape paths once you're looking for
| them!
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| ROM space was definitely at a premium, similarly the PS1
| booting splash screen was a rendered 3d graphic, with
| synthesized sound, not a static image with PCM data.
|
| You can have some fun with causing it to corrupt
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VcbhDbCY7Q
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| It also has an odd mix of anti-aliased text and non-anti-aliased.
| Additionally, I don't like the aspect ratio of the floppy disk.
| NathanielK wrote:
| > Additionally, I don't like the aspect ratio of the floppy
| disk.
|
| The Amiga used a standard 320x200 pixel mode [1] for it's boot
| screen. On a normal 4:3 CRT this mean the pixels are non-
| square. Since CRTs are analog, it doesn't really matter to the
| monitor, but if you just look at the digital bits without
| stretching them it looks a little flat.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_13h
| LocalH wrote:
| What's even more impressive is a basically identical graphic was
| in the 8KB A1000 boot ROM, to ask for a Kickstart disk
| badsectoracula wrote:
| There is a youtube video in the comments with a recreation of the
| vector image from the original graphics:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXhxE4j6dm0
| aphrax wrote:
| Using AMOS Basic nontheless
| tyingq wrote:
| An unfinished, but "sorta working" attempt to recreate that
| vector drawing data onto an html canvas.
|
| https://jsfiddle.net/kw4b95gv/3/
|
| I didn't do the color fill, and something isn't quite right, but
| it's recognizable.
| gsmo wrote:
| How funny, I've been on an 80s Amiga Cracktro/Demoscene kick this
| week and it is an image frequently seen and tweaked in many
| demos.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50WWFEBsgfk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pssH6moTGLc
|
| (I couldn't find the specific intros with the funny graphic...)
| reaperducer wrote:
| Root cause: The Amiga didn't have curves in its graphic
| primitives.
|
| Just this week i read an article in a 1986 Byte magazine which
| included a comparison of the Amiga and Macintosh graphic
| privatives. The Amiga had color routines, but the Mac had
| circles, curves, rounded rectangles, and a few other desirable
| shapes that the Amiga lacked.
|
| Except for the text, the Kickstart image is not a bitmap, it's
| the output of a vector drawing program using the built-in ROM
| routines. No curves, and that's what you get.
|
| Edit: September, 1986, page 251.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| For me mostly the aspect ratio looks too wide. Not sure if it
| also looked like that on an Amiga monitor, did it have square
| pixels?
| ansible wrote:
| Most TV output and home computer monitors in the 1980's did not
| have square pixels.
|
| Source: lived through those times...
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(page generated 2021-03-06 23:01 UTC)