Don't forget "dynamic hires" and "sliced HAM", two software modes that were really only useful for static images.
Dynamic hires ran at 640x400x16 colors, but changed the palette on every single scanline, which could allow display of all 4096 colors in hires). Sliced HAM did the same thing, but in 320x400 HAM (the base palette was 16 colors and could be used directly without fringing, so changing those 16 colors every line would reduce fringing while still allowing more than 16 colors to appear on a scanline).
Nothing stopped people from using this dynamic palette technique with 32-color lores or 64-color EHB as well. But it was most commonly used in the two forms I mentioned.
By the time HAM8 came around in the AGA chipset, this wasn't really needed, as HAM8 fringing was much less noticeable, having a base palette of 64 colors. There's no reason you couldn't do sliced HAM8 however, although I'm not sure if you could change all 64 base colors for each scanline.
The 6510 operates internally as an 8-bit processor. The 68000 operates internally as a 32-bit processor for the most part - instructions are 32-bit aligned, registers are 32-bit.
We don't consider the original IBM 5150 PC to be an "8-bit" machine even though the situation is very similar to the 68000 - internal 16-bit operation, but 8-bit data bus.
The 68000 series has always been 32-bit, even if some implementations have used 16-bit connectivity to the rest of the board. Thus, the Amiga has also always been a 32-bit platform.
Would you consider early version of MacOS to be running on a "24-bit" platform, since the high byte of pointers was often used for non-addressing functionality? No, the 68k Mac has also always been a 32-bit platform, since day one, albeit one that wasn't always "32-bit clean". The Amiga never had this issue, however.
The real click of death was when this was due to a catastrophic failure - say, one of the heads had become completely dislodged and was suddenly hanging loose. Then, every single cartridge you inserted into such a drive would be damaged. If you then took that cartridge and inserted it into a fully working drive, it had a good chance of subsequently destroying that drive.
Steve Gibson has a good site with historical information from the time when these drives were still marketed and sold: https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm
What post-scarcity utopia do you think you're living in?
The commercial reality is them finding the way to get the most from the market. This isn't a bizarre twist of software licensing, every company is doing this to you.
Dynamic hires ran at 640x400x16 colors, but changed the palette on every single scanline, which could allow display of all 4096 colors in hires). Sliced HAM did the same thing, but in 320x400 HAM (the base palette was 16 colors and could be used directly without fringing, so changing those 16 colors every line would reduce fringing while still allowing more than 16 colors to appear on a scanline).
Nothing stopped people from using this dynamic palette technique with 32-color lores or 64-color EHB as well. But it was most commonly used in the two forms I mentioned.
By the time HAM8 came around in the AGA chipset, this wasn't really needed, as HAM8 fringing was much less noticeable, having a base palette of 64 colors. There's no reason you couldn't do sliced HAM8 however, although I'm not sure if you could change all 64 base colors for each scanline.
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