The rotozoom craze continues!
The discussion’s getting heated here and there, and we seem to have exceeded the number of 4-pixel columns you can see on a physical monitor. Blueberry says the maximum number of actually visible lo-res pixels is 376 horizontally, not 384…
I wish the Commodore 1084 I bought off eBay would have lasted longer than two days so I could check this myself. But sadly, it died the line transformer death with a loud “zzzap” noise. As did the Philips CM8833 I bought one week later… Those monitors had nice little knobs where you could adjust the display width, height, and position as you pleased, including making the display area smaller than the screen.
“What’s the use of that?” you may ask. For one, you could maximize your screen real estate on later OS versions (having a Workbench, i. e. desktop of 680×268 instead of 640×256). Most importantly you could use a smaller display area on your monitor to spot lamers who changed the background color too early in their Copper lists! Due to the way the display hardware works on the Amiga, position zero will already be visible – counterintuitively – at the rightmost corner of the screen, making your beautiful Copper gradient look ugly. Lame! You can see this in WinUAE, too:
But I digress. :)
Here are some new zooming and rotating entries:
| Production | Who and when |
|---|---|
 |
Django the Bastard Atari has entered the chat! And with a plain ST, no less: no blitter, no Copper, no overscan – but 80 columns! |
 |
Dead Hackers Society One-upping the Atari (and Amiga) efforts with 100 columns. Atari STe required. |
 |
Desire Maxed out the displayable columns on Amiga, using HAM mode: 96×4 = 384 pixels. With source code! |
