Atari 8bit is superior to the ST

[oky2000]

If you want me to say it's possible from a "super theoretical any number of man hours program" run on a "we can rebuild a machine that isn't even an Atari anymore and reality is totally thrown by the wayside computer", then I think you need your head examined because we both now it's never going to happen. Maybe if we involve one of those alternate 'what if' timelines where anything is possible because the entire history of the planet is different, otherwise I say no.

 

If you look again at Back to the Future Part II, in the scene where Doc Brown and Marty return (from 1955) to the alternate 1985 (where Bif rules the world) - I think you can see an Atari 8-bit doing serious DTP in the background of Doc Brown's lab. Jim Morrison and Elvis are smoking doobies right next to it. It's in a dark corner of the lab, so you have to look very carefully. I think it's the plans for the Flux Capacitor on-screen. :)

 

I can instantly think of two machines with superior DTP abilities than an Atari A8 (and probably cost less to boot).

 

BBC Micro 32k and 128k had 640x200x2 mode and a few packages and a faster 6502 both technically and in reality. Also mouse support for Pagesetter is it?

C128 in either 80 column mode plus GEOS or CP/M mode. So that's 8 bit machines with 640x200 (or 640x400 in the case of a C128D in the EU)

 

And then the ST, with an 8mhz 68000, faster and more reliable 3.5" disks and a 640x400 mode AND optionally the cheapest laser printer setup by far which absolutely covers all levels of DTP at LESS than a PC or Mac (because their laser printers were 300% or more to purchase for a start).

 

So neither the best 8bit or the best ever I think we can agree?

[PeteD]

This is completion of my reply to JamesD:

 

...

Sprites and games have nothing to do with desktop publishing.

You are trying to make this a IIgs vs 8 bit argument when it's about desktop publishing on the 8 bit vs ST in reference to the poll.

 

Not only that, I said the Atari 8 bit wasn't superior at everything in reference to the poll and gave examples to support that.

It was clear that anyone voting for #1 in the poll is wrong. I stopped short of using the word fanboy.

 

*YOU* claim I said "has surpassed the A8 in everything".

Nowhere in my posts does it say anything of the kind and I didn't even vote that way.

You are using a straw man argument and it doesn't even relate to the topic.

 

And yet you accuse *me* of not being able to read.

...

I don't really care how one votes, but it's possible that someone can vote A8 has surpassed St in everything and be right. I know a lot of people when I was building science projects who had all sorts of hardware installed in their A8 machines including one he was using to control a Robot. Obviously, he's not going to pick the ST which is lacking hardware support in most areas where A8 isn't. I don't think anyone made a sprite hardware upgrade for ST. And as far as your "straw-man" stuff, I interpreted your constant discussion about DTP to mean that you take that as some form of ultimate test. I don't. I never use DTP even today, but I do claim it's doable on A8.

 

 

 

Posts like this make me chuckle. Doesn't care how anyone votes yet is happy to tell people they've voted wrongly then despite all the evidence otherwise still thinks saying the A8 is superior. Weirdo. 640x res, oops wrong already, never mind all the debatable stuff.

 

And LMFAO at controlling robots = superiority. Anything that can output a bit of data from any port anywhere can control pretty much anything. The BBC was doing it in the early 80s (BBC Buggy for one) and I'm sure ANY computer could have done it before that. God forbid ST owners being able to do it, that would just be wrong!! lol

 

 

Pete

Edited January 4, 2010 by PeteD

[andym00]

And LMFAO at controlling robots = superiority. Anything that can output a bit of data from any port anywhere can control pretty much anything. The BBC was doing it in the early 80s (BBC Buggy for one) and I'm sure ANY computer could have done it before that. God forbid ST owners being able to do it, that would just be wrong!! lol

 

All his talk of Robots now is making me think of Atariksi in the vein of Professor Elvin Atombender from Impossible Mission..

"Destroy him my robots!"

 

 

A8 powered robot world domination, only possible using the A8s superior and high-speed joystick ports!!!

 

[PeteD]

Just to rehash the whole Luma/Chroma thing again (yeah, I know you're getting bored of it but someone keeps telling 1/2 truths). Nobody has denied Luma is more important to vision than chroma, that's an important point to keep making because it seems someone is going to keep on and on as if that's in contention. What is also undisputed (or should be) is YUV is LOSSY so no amount of faffing with it will do anything to IMPROVE a picture. Saying stuff looks "just like the original" is a matter of opinion.

 

YUV was originally for broadcast TV (PAL mostly) hence component cables. It looks ok on a TV, less so on a monitor (I wonder why). The fact that a TV shows less errors in the colours is not the palettes fault, it's the quality of the TV, the encoder, the cables.

 

Adding info to a post about compressing an image with huffman etc then making sure you say "LOSSLESS" afterwards has 0 to do with the image, it's a secondary compression, like taking a raw RGB image and ZIPing it.

 

YUV isn't used for image manipulation (you know, where you want the best quality) HLS/HVS, Lab etc are, even RGB most of the time because it's easier to understand. There's a reason for that..

 

It's kind of like the dithering argument (I'm waiting for that one to kick off). I didn't dither the images I posted because we're comparing palettes (something that was someone else's demand, palettes ONLY). To me dithering is a kind of colour/resolution function so if anyone wants to start saying the images should be dithered then you've really got to put them in their native machine resolution as well. Also dithering will make the image "look" better (unless it's either a small image or a big one zoomed in) but it doesn't effect the palette in any way, just distributes it better so the image that looks better un-dithered will still prove to have the closest matching palette. You can then of course dither the better looking image to make it even better.

 

 

Pete

[kool kitty89]

A 48k Atari 800 in 1982 was something like 700-800 in the UK....compared to 325-350 for a C64 on launch month(looking at adverts from Computer and Video Games from 1982) and down to 299 by xmas due to huge volumes being sold by some companies. There were plenty of machines with sprites and half decent sound for half the price or less than a 48k A800 in the UK. Not saying these other machines were better, but they weren't 450 pounds worse! It was pretty much the 400 left to battle it out, and with that horrible keyboard and only 16k of RAM it was a train wreck waiting to happen for Warner.

What others by 1982 had hardware sprites? I can't think of any besides the TI-99/4A outside of actual game consoles.

[PeteD]

Wow... Do I ever despise people who continue to argue after losing their side of the battle and desperately grasp at tangents to try and make themselves feel better about the fact; it just makes them look infantile and foolish.

 

Anyway, continue on with this constructive, enlightening debate.

 

I don't know who you are taking to but you are DEAD WRONG if you think anyone here has shown that A8 palette is inferior to ST palette. If you can't understand the technical side of things, you should keep your mouth shut. Of all the thousands of images I have worked with, luminance always wins out and humans are more tolerant to errors in chroma. In fact, until I recently got a different TV, I didn't even see that the colors were so much in error by default. You nor anyone else blurting out their opinions doesn't change anything.

 

Okay... First thing's first: Just how did you infer what and who I was referring to? Your stunning intellect?

 

 

Guilty conscience more like.

 

 

Pete

[Lazarus]

YUV was originally for broadcast TV (PAL mostly) hence component cables. It looks ok on a TV, less so on a monitor (I wonder why).

It should be mentioned that the YUV color space is bigger than the RGB color space. An analog TV can display saturated bright colors which you won't be able to show on a VGA monitor.

[andym00]

A 48k Atari 800 in 1982 was something like 700-800 in the UK....compared to 325-350 for a C64 on launch month(looking at adverts from Computer and Video Games from 1982) and down to 299 by xmas due to huge volumes being sold by some companies. There were plenty of machines with sprites and half decent sound for half the price or less than a 48k A800 in the UK. Not saying these other machines were better, but they weren't 450 pounds worse! It was pretty much the 400 left to battle it out, and with that horrible keyboard and only 16k of RAM it was a train wreck waiting to happen for Warner.

What others by 1982 had hardware sprites? I can't think of any besides the TI-99/4A outside of actual game consoles.

 

 

Apart from the TI-99/4a, the only others that spring to mind are the Sword M5, MSX collective, Spectravideo.. And possibly, not sure of the dates on these, the Einstein and the Memotech MTX..

Though they're all sharing the same video chip in them, the 9918 or 9918a..

Edited January 4, 2010 by andym00

[PeteD]

YUV was originally for broadcast TV (PAL mostly) hence component cables. It looks ok on a TV, less so on a monitor (I wonder why).

It should be mentioned that the YUV color space is bigger than the RGB color space. An analog TV can display saturated bright colors which you won't be able to show on a VGA monitor.

 

Yes because YUV was designed with TV in mind (analog) as I said (I wasn't actually asking why, it was more rhetorical but thanks for pointing it out). The problem in this discussion is we're talking about comparing two palettes and it's gotten sidetracked (or rather manoeuvred) onto YUV and compression and so far the only images I've seen in some odd attempt to prove some point about those aren't even in A8 or ST palettes.

 

 

Pete

Edited January 4, 2010 by PeteD

[atariksi]

It is 160*240*16 but it's pixel replicated to 320 width so all the images have same width.

Lot's of that picture seems to be 80 pixels replicated to 320 - only small sections look like 160 , which is why I'm not classing it as 160*240*16.

There's not interlaced stuff there. The new images are Kaily565.bmp and Kaliy411.bmp

These aren't actually A8 images though, so they're not actually relevant in any way to the topic.

 

Hello, the shades is the important point. It's a 160*240*16 image at 60Hz. You can definitely show a 160*240*16 image on A8 using resolution enhancement.

 

Yeah, those images aren't A8 because I'm trying to prove the other point regarding palettes which some people keep distorting. A8 uses a different color space than ST. ST's color space is suboptimal to say the least.

[atariksi]

In Europe...as a home machine....PC was nowhere in the DOS days....not until early 90s was it an acceptable choice (the time games were becoming VGA (ie NOT pathetic worse than C64 palette of EGA)

I'd say 6-bit RGB has definite advantages over the C64's palette, not universal of course -just as the 8-bit vs ST's palette... (the CGA/EGA/VGA default 16-color palettes are a separate issue)

...

Correct, if you study color spaces (and you can actually write your own transform like I did), you can see that many RGB values correspond to almost identical colors (visually) in other color spaces like YCrCb. So that can be used as a form of compression while at the same time proving how A8 palette is superior. I.e., it's not just as simple as 512>256. As I said, only a mentally deranged lunatic or biased person would disagree with this research.

[Crazyace]

Ok - so the A8 has a palette better suited for monochromatic images, and the ST has a bigger palette more suitable for full colour images.

The ST still wins on the size of the palette, and it also wins on the resolution.

[atariksi]

Wow... Do I ever despise people who continue to argue after losing their side of the battle and desperately grasp at tangents to try and make themselves feel better about the fact; it just makes them look infantile and foolish.

 

Anyway, continue on with this constructive, enlightening debate.

 

I don't know who you are taking to but you are DEAD WRONG if you think anyone here has shown that A8 palette is inferior to ST palette. If you can't understand the technical side of things, you should keep your mouth shut. Of all the thousands of images I have worked with, luminance always wins out and humans are more tolerant to errors in chroma. In fact, until I recently got a different TV, I didn't even see that the colors were so much in error by default. You nor anyone else blurting out their opinions doesn't change anything.

 

Okay... First thing's first: Just how did you infer what and who I was referring to? Your stunning intellect?

...

There's a conditional there.

 

Now you're trying to antagonize me, assuming to know exactly what and who I was talking about. Successful troll wasn't successful.

...

Yep, you succeeded in being a troll. But your misleading remarks had to be replied to since you're considered an Atari guy when under normal emotional condtions.

 

A few words of advice: Don't start with me. You're not speaking to a novice. Understand?

 

p.s. I honestly couldn't care less how many images you've purportedly worked on.

I don't care if you were the owner of Amiga Corp. Logic is logic. If sun rises in the east, I can state the facts without caring about who you are. I know there's some dumb idiots out there just hovering to find fault and can't take the facts or good things in life, but I didn't treat you like that otherwise you would be on ignore.

[atariksi]

And LMFAO at controlling robots = superiority. Anything that can output a bit of data from any port anywhere can control pretty much anything. The BBC was doing it in the early 80s (BBC Buggy for one) and I'm sure ANY computer could have done it before that. God forbid ST owners being able to do it, that would just be wrong!! lol

 

All his talk of Robots now is making me think of Atariksi in the vein of Professor Elvin Atombender from Impossible Mission..

"Destroy him my robots!"

 

 

A8 powered robot world domination, only possible using the A8s superior and high-speed joystick ports!!!

 

 

I didn't say using A8s joystick ports. But if you attended NJIT Computer Olympics back in the 1980s, they did have a whole slew of gadgets hooked up to various A800/800XLs including controlling a robot.

[atariksi]

Ok - so the A8 has a palette better suited for monochromatic images, and the ST has a bigger palette more suitable for full colour images.

The ST still wins on the size of the palette, and it also wins on the resolution.

 

I would say it's easier to take a RGB image (as most are in modern age) and convert to ST's color space which is also RGB whereas converting to a color image using A8 palette requires some heuristics and manual touching up. I doubt your photochrome has an option to convert image to A8s palette. The point is about the palette as a whole which includes both luminance and chrominance-- I give the edge to A8 despite it having more quantization on the chroma side. As I said, you can subsample chroma-- not even approximate with dithering but completely trash 93% (15/16) values and still get image looking almost same as original.

[PeteD]

In Europe...as a home machine....PC was nowhere in the DOS days....not until early 90s was it an acceptable choice (the time games were becoming VGA (ie NOT pathetic worse than C64 palette of EGA)

I'd say 6-bit RGB has definite advantages over the C64's palette, not universal of course -just as the 8-bit vs ST's palette... (the CGA/EGA/VGA default 16-color palettes are a separate issue)

...

Correct, if you study color spaces (and you can actually write your own transform like I did), you can see that many RGB values correspond to almost identical colors (visually) in other color spaces like YCrCb. So that can be used as a form of compression while at the same time proving how A8 palette is superior. I.e., it's not just as simple as 512>256. As I said, only a mentally deranged lunatic or biased person would disagree with this research.

 

Depending on the accuracy (or bits) of the RGB, so 1/2 the story AGAIN. It doesn't matter then which colourspace it's in, if 2 colours are indistinguishable then that's that. That doesn't happen with the A8 or ST palettes because there aren't any RGB values close enough to each other (unless you skew the YUV) so wtf is the point mentioning it? In no way does YUV (congratulations, sometimes otherwise known as YCbCr) prove anything about the A8 palette. We're not talking compression for the 100th time. Images have been shown that look more like the originals on ST than A8, if anyone is a mentally deranged lunatic it's the one who can't see that. And of course it isn't just a case of 512->256, nobody said it was JUST that simple (maybe if you stopped ignoring people you'd learn something).

 

This is another case of never giving in to the truth so you can prove you're right (and now getting personal by aiming mentally deranged lunatic at "whoever" but I think I can guess who). It started out pages ago with no mention of YUV or compression and after the proof of ST palette came out suddenly it's all about those instead.

 

No amount of saying something is so or saying, "I've studied colour spaces" (so have I btw, I worked as an R&D coder on a machine that actually did have a YUV display mode), changes the fact that once again everyone apart from you is showing actual proof, not posting RGB images or "YUV" ones (oh wait,they're still RGB) that aren't in the same palette as the 2 machines we're talking about.

 

*edit* for typo

 

Pete

Edited January 4, 2010 by PeteD

[PeteD]

Ok - so the A8 has a palette better suited for monochromatic images, and the ST has a bigger palette more suitable for full colour images.

The ST still wins on the size of the palette, and it also wins on the resolution.

 

I would say it's easier to take a RGB image (as most are in modern age) and convert to ST's color space which is also RGB whereas converting to a color image using A8 palette requires some heuristics and manual touching up. I doubt your photochrome has an option to convert image to A8s palette. The point is about the palette as a whole which includes both luminance and chrominance-- I give the edge to A8 despite it having more quantization on the chroma side. As I said, you can subsample chroma-- not even approximate with dithering but completely trash 93% (15/16) values and still get image looking almost same as original.

 

So now it's everything else in the worlds fault that they don't conform to the A8s "colourspace". Originally the argument was that A8 could display digitized images better than the ST, now it only could if there was just some way of getting them in there or touching them up (presumably altering the original images colours just so it looks better after conversion).

 

Photochrome won't have an option to convert to A8 because as we all already know the A8 has more shades of the few colours it has. A modern PC with a 24bit+ palette however can. And you can trash 93% of chroma? OMFG! lol Maybe on a mostly greyscale image like you keep posting which is 93% luma anyway.

 

 

Pete

[Crazyace]

I would say it's easier to take a RGB image (as most are in modern age) and convert to ST's color space which is also RGB whereas converting to a color image using A8 palette requires some heuristics and manual touching up.

Also the A8 is lacking in reds, which can be a lot more noticable than the 8 shade limitation on the ST.

 

I doubt your photochrome has an option to convert image to A8s palette.

It's not 'my' photochrome - just an ST application for showing images.

 

The point is about the palette as a whole which includes both luminance and chrominance-- I give the edge to A8 despite it having more quantization on the chroma side. As I said, you can subsample chroma-- not even approximate with dithering but completely trash 93% (15/16) values and still get image looking almost same as original.

 

You seem to be talking about image compression here - which is completely unrelated to A8 and ST palettes.

( The only link I could think of is the interlacing of a low res colour only GTIA mode with high res luminance mode. )

 

As you say - you give the edge to the A8 here, that's your view. I give the edge to the ST.

[Crazyace]

Hello, the shades is the important point. It's a 160*240*16 image at 60Hz. You can definitely show a 160*240*16 image on A8 using resolution enhancement.

 

Do you have this image on A8 - I'm interested in how it looks on the real machine?

[PeteD]

 

You seem to be talking about image compression here - which is completely unrelated to A8 and ST palettes.

( The only link I could think of is the interlacing of a low res colour only GTIA mode with high res luminance mode. )

 

As you say - you give the edge to the A8 here, that's your view. I give the edge to the ST.

 

But there isn't really a high res luminance mode is there? Lum being so important you want the highest res for it and the most shades, kind of a contradiction on A8 with the 16 shade modes being the lowest res. Great design that then

 

In the long run anyway this whole argument means squat because once someone starts to go, "I give this one the edge", rather than, "this one is superior", you can start back on the resolution and then it's kind of moot.

 

 

Pete

[atariksi]

I would say it's easier to take a RGB image (as most are in modern age) and convert to ST's color space which is also RGB whereas converting to a color image using A8 palette requires some heuristics and manual touching up.

Also the A8 is lacking in reds, which can be a lot more noticable than the 8 shade limitation on the ST.

...

Nope, that's your speculation. Luminance definitely has more impact visually than having a red being off unless for some special cases where image is more biased towards reds which was probably case of the Parrot.

Overall, it's well researched field that chroma errors are more tolerable.

 

I doubt your photochrome has an option to convert image to A8s palette.

It's not 'my' photochrome - just an ST application for showing images.

 

The point is about the palette as a whole which includes both luminance and chrominance-- I give the edge to A8 despite it having more quantization on the chroma side. As I said, you can subsample chroma-- not even approximate with dithering but completely trash 93% (15/16) values and still get image looking almost same as original.

 

You seem to be talking about image compression here - which is completely unrelated to A8 and ST palettes.

( The only link I could think of is the interlacing of a low res colour only GTIA mode with high res luminance mode. )

 

As you say - you give the edge to the A8 here, that's your view. I give the edge to the ST.

 

It's related. The main reason to even switch color spaces when compressing in MPEG, JPG, etc. is because it's based more on visually appearance rather than what's better or convenient for the monitor and hardware. I have a bunch of hardware here like a video digitizer board for PC/Amiga from 1980s that uses 16bit in another color space to show 24-bit RGB images. It's faster to upload/download to the board, uses less space, and looks like 24-bit images. It's not my opinion that I'm giving edge to A8-- I gave you several reasons already. One of the reasons was that an application that does lighting/ray tracing would already pick the best color and only the luminance would be the major player. TVs already have erroneous chroma when you compare two of them (so they are more tolerable). MPG/JPG trashes chroma over luminance. You are mixing things up with resolution-- that's why you would give edge to ST. If all things are kept same, A8 palette gets the edge over ST's palette. You haven't given a single reason why St gets the edge except for just saying that it lacks in reds. And this is debatable-- whether you would take a hit on the reds or luminance values.

[andym00]

It's simple really.. ST beats C64 in the colour and resolution stakes..

 

C64 new mode says:

 

Ergo, C64 beats A8, therefore ST is better than A8

 

Next up in the silly argument stakes.. "Why low resolutions are better than high-resolution ones".. Or has that already been done ?

[+Stephen]

It's simple really.. ST beats C64 in the colour and resolution stakes..

 

C64 new mode says:

 

Ergo, C64 beats A8, therefore ST is better than A8

 

Next up in the silly argument stakes.. "Why low resolutions are better than high-resolution ones".. Or has that already been done ?

Wow - that's looks incredible. Details on the mode please (or a link).

 

Stephen Anderson

[PeteD]

 

It's related. The main reason to even switch color spaces when compressing in MPEG, JPG, etc. is because it's based more on visually appearance rather than what's better or convenient for the monitor and hardware. I have a bunch of hardware here like a video digitizer board for PC/Amiga from 1980s that uses 16bit in another color space to show 24-bit RGB images. It's faster to upload/download to the board, uses less space, and looks like 24-bit images. It's not my opinion that I'm giving edge to A8-- I gave you several reasons already. One of the reasons was that an application that does lighting/ray tracing would already pick the best color and only the luminance would be the major player. TVs already have erroneous chroma when you compare two of them (so they are more tolerable). MPG/JPG trashes chroma over luminance. You are mixing things up with resolution-- that's why you would give edge to ST. If all things are kept same, A8 palette gets the edge over ST's palette. You haven't given a single reason why St gets the edge except for just saying that it lacks in reds. And this is debatable-- whether you would take a hit on the reds or luminance values.

 

For the now about 1000th time (would help if I wasn't just being ignored though) I've not seen anyone argue about the merits of YUV but that's YUV NOT a fixed palette which is what the A8 has.

 

Some more YUV facts.

 

It was designed on the fact that green is the colour that the human eye can see the most levels of brightness so the Y component (basically the greyscale) gets most of it's information from the green channel. U and V (or Cb Cr) are the red and blue channels, blue being the colour the eye notices least, red somewhere in the middle of blue and green.

 

When YUV was broadcast black and white TVs could still display their image by discarding the UV components (clever these boffins aren't they).

 

YUV isn't necessarily lossy but to not be lossy it takes the same space (and generally the same range) as RGB and it's possible to convert directly back from a lossless YUV conversion to the source RGB.

 

YUV has a wider luminance per bit of info (lossless) than RGB but less red and blue (probably why the A8 palette has pretty crap spread of red and blue and loads of green based colours).

 

The A8 has 256 colours, not an unlimited amount that it could have (or at least much larger) if the palette entries were YUV triplets. ergo it can't display things it doesn't have the colours for. The ST has 512, no as said earlier it's not a simple case of 512 vs 256 because lum IS more important but nothing changes the fact that if the A8 doesn't have the colours from a source image and the ST does there is nothing you can do about it.

 

Sick of trying to argue with someone so blinkered they ignore everything posted by someone they just can't deal with because they're happy to argue with their nonsensical statements. I'm sure everyone has made their mind up by now either way and everyone is entitled to an opinion on if an image looks better in one palette or another but at least some of us actually post images in those palettes for comparison.

 

 

 

Pete

[atariksi]

 

Ergo, C64 beats A8, therefore ST is better than A8

...

Deceptive stuff aside, C64 loses big with A8 on palette and ST is much closer call.

 

Next up in the silly argument stakes.. "Why low resolutions are better than high-resolution ones".. Or has that already been done ?

 

You need a brain to understand why low resolutions are also important when the CPU can't repaint the high resolution screen as fast as A8 can deal with its lower resolutions. Just trying to find fault-- can't understand simple points because you're full of bias.