Procrastination, blessed be your name! Or rather, the side quests you bring: Instead of cleaning up my office, I suddenly had the urge to try a little hardware modification. To my surprise, I didn’t break anything, and was rewarded with a flicker-free, phosphor-bright display option for my Amiga 500.

Needless to say: That hardware task itself had also been simmering in the “maybe later” stash for some time. I think it was two Revisions ago when I bought me an Indivision ECS V4 at the Individual Computers booth, a flicker fixer for non-AGA Amigas. The VGA output modes are fully configurable, your precious Amiga pixels get neatly scaled, and it can add filters and configurable scanlines if you’re into that. Plus, everything can be configured from within the Amiga. Neat, eh?

The manual started off with a bunch of warnings I had to ignore (“installing the product is very complicated […] steps require a lot of experience and skills”) because what was the alternative, clean my office?

Sadly, my package didn’t come with the right CIA adapter, I’ve only got a small square one suitable for Amiga 600s. This means the Indivision cannot intercept mouse and keyboard inputs, and I get no magic key combination to enter the live configuration mode. Too bad, but probably my fault (as I said, I bought it at Revision, i. e. drunk). Also, the supplied configuration tool is pretty great, maybe I don’t have to tweak the settings on the fly that often.

The installation went well. Basically, you only have to remove the socketed Denise chip with a rusty screwdriver (carefully), and then jam the flicker-fixer board into the socket with a hammer. I was relieved when the Amiga booted up again! It was already looking great on a TFT flatscreen:

Then I remembered there was an old PC monitor tucked away next door: An ADI MicroScan from around 1997, barely thirty years old! Now we’re talking! The colors, the picture stability, the vibrancy, and the vibe are top notch!

Even better: Since the Indivision is a fully functional Denise replacement, the original monitor output still works, and I can connect a TV and the VGA monitor at the same time. It’s fantastic. This setup even makes sense in a way: The TV runs at a clean 50 Hz and has sound; the PC monitor doesn’t do any weird postprocessing and is just a joy to look at.

Now there’s a naked Denise chip lying around I don’t need anymore. Poor thing. I can’t help but wonder about all the graphics it has seen in the years…

I don’t care if this reads like an ad for this product (well, it is great), I just wanted to share my excitement. In the mid-1990s, I didn’t really see the value of flicker fixers – just buy an AGA Amiga?! Three decades and two dead 1084 CRT monitors later, I am finally convinced they have their place. :)