🚀 go-pugleaf

knudsen%ihades.UUCP.UUCP@ATT.BITNET writes:
>>BTW, I was also working on an Atari 2600 emulator.  ...
>Didn't you have some heavy work to emulate the special grafix hardware
>in the Ataris (and COmmos too)?
>Sprites, scrolling, etc -- even on a 386 PC these might eat up a ton
>of machine time to emulate.

This is the Atari 2600, Video "Computer" System.  It's the video game that
used to be available at just about any department store and featured games
like "Pong", "Video Olympics", etc.  It really shined though with the 
cartridges from the Activision people.  (I think Activision used to write
CoCo software too didn't they?)

Anyway, it's the predecessor to the Intellivision, Colecovision, Ninetendo, 
Sega, etc.

The hardware in the Atari 2600 is incredibly simple.  Maximum 8K addressable
memory, trimmed down 6502 processor, 128 bytes of RAM and manual video signal 
construction.  (Yes, 128 bytes, not 128K.)  The graphics were simple, all I
had to do was include an "instruction counter" to figure out where the video
raster would be after any executed 6502 instruction, and then the video 
handler would use that to construct the picture from the same outputs given
to the standard video hardware.

- Jeff