Re: Playing Vector Games on the Big Screen

---- Original message from: Neil Bradley ----
> > > > very interesting approach, it may just work... 8-bit is actually
> > > > plenty for most vector games, and 2Mhz, is more than enough... you
> > Asteroids is Mono... (but maybe using 12-bit DAC's instead of 8-bit)
>
> 8 Bit dacs would give you 256x256, roughly 8 times smaller than the
> 1024x1024 surface area covered by the existing DACs, which would make for
> a very, very stairsteppy image. It might be good enough resolution for a
> laser system, but not a vector monitor.
atari used 10bit the lowes bit and the highest bit are tied low

>
> > > Asteroids runs at 6MHZ. I wouldn't call 2Mhz "enough"... unless this is
> > > just to drive lasers. I'm thinking vector monitors...
> > Asteroids is Mono... (but maybe using 12-bit DAC's instead of 8-bit)
> > Lets say... 500 points per frame x 60 fps = 30,000 points per second (pps) x 3 (XYI) = 150,000 distinct 8
> > bit outputs per second, or about 150KB / Second bandwidth...
>
> So are you copying this twice because of a typo or are you just being a
> smartass? ;-)
>
> > other factors... Asteroids was Monochrome 2 color, but I think it was
> > capable of 8 shades... others like Tempest Star Wars, used 2 or 4
> > shades... so there is signifigant bandwidth reduction there as well
>
> They used color palette latches/RAM which were mapped in the 6502s address
> space. Each color was a 16 color CLUT.
>
> > and 6mhz? is that the main Processor or the State Machine Processor?
>
> The state machine processor.
>
> > the State Machine Processor drew all the vectors which it read not
> > actual vectors, but instructions on how to build the vectors from
> > shared
> > memory from the main processor
>
> Yep, I'm aware of it. I did quite a bit of video game emluation long
> before MAME was around. ;-)
>
> -->Neil
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Neil Bradley chown -R us:us /*base*
> Synthcom Systems, Inc.
> ICQ #29402898
>
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Received on Fri May 31 02:53:13 2002