Re: Playing Vector Games on the Big Screen

> > > 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.

> > 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 Thu May 30 12:52:03 2002