#8bit graphics

[adamhunter91]

[adamhunter91]

[adamhunter91]

[adamhunter91]

[adamhunter91]

[aiacobus]

My final motion piece for The New Aesthetics. 

[supermartyr]

Casio XW promo - Promoting the video here, the synth, not as much.  Low budget all-in-one digital boards tend to have the common problems of plastic feel, loose control elements, and zippering (low control resolution) when changing parameters.  If it had been released as a competitor to something like the Quasimidi Sirius or Rave-O-Loution in the late 90s, it probably would have been received well.

That being said - this video is fun!

[tymkrs]

8 Bit Graphics - Part II - "Fixed Palette"

So in Part I, I explored how 8-bit color graphic "select color" systems worked.  And it was pretty much addressing a specific color in a 256-palette to a database of colors coded in hardware and firmware. 

8-bit color graphics can of course also be represented by fixed palettes.  The example I'm going to look at is the "Color Graphics Adapter" (CGA) which according to Wiki was IBM's first color graphic card.  This was actually a FOUR-bit color graphic system represented by R...G...B...I

This system was used in the Commodore 128 as well via MOS Technology 8563 to generate an 80-column RGB video display.

RGB of course stands for Red, Green, and Blue respectively.  And I stands for Intensifier - increasing the brightness of the R G B that it's set for.

Here are the assignments of the pin - I'm "equating" them with the bits.  The addressing is quite simple, it's just to R G B and I.  As such, the CGA comes with the following two palettes:

1) Palette 1 Low Intensity

2) Palette 1 High Intensity

3) Palette 2 Low Intensity

4) Palette 2 High Intensity

IE not the most exciting thing. 1, 2, and 3 are fixed, and the user defines 0 with black as the default.

And from what I can tell, C64's also had fixed color palettes (though I imagine hacking would resolve that):

C64's use MOS Technology VIC-II and is the microchip responsible for generating Y/C/composite video graphics and DRAM refresh signals (according to wiki).  Important to this conversation, graphics!  There are 16 colors associated with this:

I can't quite tell which pins are manipulating these based on the diagrams/charts on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_VIC-II

But it does look like there are 8 designated "commands" that Bit 2 (if you look at the chart it's under Bit 2's charge) controls color with.  So perhaps those eight registers make the color portion eight bit? Maybe?

^And that is me saying I don't know, but many others do :)

@atdiy/@tymkrs