[Coco] "VideoPak" hardware question

[Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus)]

The MSX computer supports flicker modes, there is one video mine showing
the flicker-free option of my converter.

I would be needed to develop a cartridge to make the FPGA talk to the
coco3, then I could be used as an overlay of graphics, implementing 256
colors, sprites on top of the GIME screen. But hell lot of work for
nothing...


Luis Felipe Antoniosi



On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 8:30 PM, <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> Now here's an idea for Luis!...
>
> He has his scandoubler working to display the CoCo's 15Khz output onto
> a 31Khz VGA screen.
>
> This doesn't make the CoCo into VGA resolution, just doubles the
> scanlines by running each one twice (non-scanline mode).
>
> What about having the CoCo display two 320/640 x 225 images,
> alternating between the 2 and Luis's circuit display the first image
> as:
>
> CoCo video data scanline then blank scanline (as the scanlines mode
> does currently)
>
> then on the next frame which will have switched, be displayed as:
>
> blank scanline, CoCo video data scanline.
>
> The idea would be to display each CoCo page in succession but they be
> offset by 1 scanline.
>
> There will be slight flicker but the end result would be a 320/640 x
> 450 "VGA" display.
>
> Of course, this only useful for the display of images and it doesn't
> add any extra colors as such.
>
> Pretty useless unless it can be had without incurring any extra cost.
> More a fun feature than anything practical.
>
> Nick
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> To:"CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Cc:
> Sent:Sun, 9 Nov 2014 19:08:53 -0600
> Subject:Re: [Coco] "VideoPak" hardware question
>
>  Sure, you could interface a VGA chip of some kind to the coco,
>  but as others were saying, what about software.
>  If a graphics solution doesn’t support the original software,
>  probably not a good solution.
>
>  Seems to me that the best way of “modernizing” graphics for
>  the Color Computers is probably FPGA emulation of the GIME
>  and/or 6847 chips.
>
>  That way you could interface to a variety of video output options,
>  run all the old software, and add new capabilities (sprites, etc)
> that
>  newly written software could take advantage of.
>
>  - Ed
>
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