Re: This week's screwy idea From: Cameron Kaiser Reply to: Cameron Kaiser Date: 01 Dec 1998 12:32:54 PST Organization: Concentric Internet Services References: <741a8g$403@chronicle.concentric.net> <36643625.699E@spamsuxdoitnow.com> John/Lori writes: >Are you talking about a replacement (mother?)board? No, I'm talking a new computer that's Commodore compatible. >Are you expecting it to be compatible? Somewhat. >So for example do you expect the 6502 display controller >to look like the VIC? Similar ... >If so how compatible? ... but I think there's a limit to this. The VIC-II is a tricky device to get right. Just ask Christian Bauer and Per Sundell. >Is it good enough if it gets the info in the display buffer >to the screen, or does it have to run all those tricky >mid-line mode switched demos? I would be happy if it could do text mode and hi-res. Sprites, sure. But I'm not looking for something that can run Krestology. >Why a 6502? Might, say, a PIC do better? It could. The thing with the 6502 is that it's tested. Also, people could take advantage of this to make the display more their taste. I like the way ANTIC was set up in the Atari 8-bits -- a whole processor with its own display list! Now that is cool. >I have had similar thoughts (about a display controller, at least) >I think a fairly compatible system might be contrived - except for >sprites. Perhaps you could have one processor (or maybe some >standard display chip) to just run the display and one that handled >the sprites and could kibitz when it thought it needed to. Sure. >Another possibility might be FPGAs or PLDs of some sort. >My pet fantasy is a VIC compatible display controller >with added capabilities implimented in an FPGA. >But perhaps you could do something simpler. >A processor as diplay controller trading memory for speed. >Maybe doing mode switches by paging in different routines >on the fly, with really time-critical functions implimented >in a (hopefully) relatively simple PLD. >and spread every thing out (in parallel) in memory as far as >possible. See, what I envisioned this for was for portable Commodores. Three 6500 cores in something the size of your typical Palm Pilot that could run, say, 50% of extant software. You could write organisers for it, or run (heaven forbid) GEOS on it, if you could fool GEOS into running off a ROM disk or something. And if you don't like the way it's set up, you've got BASIC. Write your own. -- Cameron Kaiser * cdkaiser.cris@com * powered by eight bits * operating on faith -- supporting the Commodore 64/128: http://computerworkshops.home.ml.org/ -- head moderator comp.binaries.cbm * cbm special forces unit $ea31 (tincsf) personal page http://calvin.ptloma.edu/~spectre/ * "when in doubt, take a pawn"