320x240 12-bit chunky display on an ST

[Badwolf]

A little bit more d*cking around with CPLDs...

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VERY alpha. Just messing around with it, really. You can see artefacts where I'm slightly pushing the boundaries of the bandwidth and response times available.

It's not where I was planning to take this, but I quite like it.

BW

[shoggoth77]

Dude. This is awesome.

I see you're running TOS4 or at least some later incarnation of the AES, and it does indeed support chunky resolutions not only in 16bpp but also in 8 and 32bpp mode (it's somewhat unfinished though).

Is this what you're doing?

Or did you go fVDI?

[mrbombermillzy]

This is great work BW!

[Steve]

Oh, wow! Now this is going to go into the Atari nobel prize list for sure! This is astonishing!

[Badwolf]

I see you're running TOS4 or at least some later incarnation of the AES,

It's soft-loaded AES4.1 & that's only because it's a bit more photogenic. Here's EmuTOS instead

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...and it does indeed support chunky resolutions not only in 16bpp but also in 8 and 32bpp mode (it's somewhat unfinished though).

Is this what you're doing?

Or did you go fVDI?

It's FVDI's 16 bit driver -- I didn't know there were extended modes in later AESs! That could be very useful. Any idea how to unlock them? My plan all along was to do 8 bit chunky true colour (332 bit), but AFAICT there is no VDI to do neither TC nor indexed 8 bit chunky, well aside from me hacking the 16bit FVDI driver and turning off all the acceleration!

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Suffice to say this is not viable! There's no mouse and you can make a cup of tea as the screen draws. I'd have to video it for you to believe me.

BW

[shoggoth77]

Cool stuff indeed.

TOS4 requires some patching to unlock the chunky stuff, but it's incomplete, and I'd rather recommend some hackery using NVDI and custom screen drivers (which have been done).

To make sure the thing can become compatible enough, I suggest arranging the 12-bits of color in a way which is compatible with the Falcon hicolor mode, because anything else is likely to cause trouble.

[shoggoth77]

... or 8bpp chunky/indexed of course, that can be done too (NVDI).

[mrbombermillzy]

Suffice to say this is not viable! There's no mouse and you can make a cup of tea as the screen draws. I'd have to video it for you to believe me.

BW

Depends on how youve achieved it exactly.

Without any of the details, Im not sure how hard it would be, but if you could instead use a 8 bit indexed palette display system (more ideal for low bandwidth systems) there might be more scope for options. This is what Ive spent (a long) time researching on the TT. I have managed to (theoretically, at least for the higher optimisation types) reduce line write in software by 50-90%.

[Badwolf]

To make sure the thing can become compatible enough, I suggest arranging the 12-bits of color in a way which is compatible with the Falcon hicolor mode, because anything else is likely to cause trouble.

Yeah, this is basically full Falcon 16 bit mode and my card reacts to the most significant 4 bits of each channel.

... or 8bpp chunky/indexed of course, that can be done too (NVDI).

Ooo, please tell me how? Or point me at a manual. I didn’t know how to tell the VDI what the hardware was capable of so just let FVDI do it for me (modifying the Line A variables let me do 640x480 16 col planar, but I didn’t want that).

Cheers!

BW

[Badwolf]

OK, I might be taking the Michael now...

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BW