[Coco] Hidden 256-color mode

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 26 July 2005 16:04, Roger Taylor wrote:
>At 06:02 AM 7/26/2005, you wrote:
>>I'm still keen to know if the prototype was designed to support 256
>> colors at the RGB output stages. This would at least tell us if
>> the mode can be seen with an RGB monitor or if it could possibly
>> only be visible with a composite output (which may explain why
>> it's been hard to find since most CoCo3 users nowadays are running
>> RGB monitors).
>>
>>Nickolas Marentes
>
>Still, it seems that 1 byte per pixel would be required which would
> throw the RGB monitor into another video mode even if the colors
> don't appear correctly.
>
>I suspect that the mode invoked by holding down F2 while hitting
> RESET has something to do with the undocumented/hidden 256-color
> mode.  I see no useful purpose for this blue shade video.  Maybe a
> missing color component is mixed in somehow to give a new color
> range.  Who knows?  Think about it... they put in the 3 Mugateers
> picture and made IT visible by holding down CTRL-ALT-RESET, so it
> seems logical that the same method of hiding something was also
> used to help hide the 256-color mode.
>
A good dis of the roms would seem to offer some clues.  Has the 
unraveled series actually covered every byte of them, or just the 
commonly used subroutines?

>
>
>
>--
>Roger Taylor

-- 
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