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Retro-engineering a video game system.

76 points| one010101 | 15 years ago |lucidscience.com | reply

9 comments

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[+] wwalker3|15 years ago|reply
I liked how today's low memory prices completely changed the hardware design tradeoffs. This system uses only 1980s-level technology, but you could never have afforded to build a bank-switched double-buffered memory system like this for a home game console back in the day.

As a result, the animation is super-smooth and doesn't show any tearing artifacts. Which is funny, considering that you could still see tearing on the Windows desktop until Vista (the underlying hardware had long been double-buffered, but operating systems took forever to make full use of it).

[+] pvg|15 years ago|reply
but you could never have afforded to build a bank-switched double-buffered memory system

You mean like, say, on an Apple ][.

[+] hugh3|15 years ago|reply
Can we get a filter that lops "Amazing" off the beginning of all headlines?
[+] hugh3|15 years ago|reply
Wow, it worked. Thanks!