Commander X16

Can you multiplex the X16 for 16 bit pictures or 24 bit pic. Or even do a multiplexing memory addressing for larger fat 32 ssds and diplexing to break the data back up into 8 bit? At 14 or 8mhz it may be fast enough to take advantage of this to make some super ninendo like games or graphics to even emulation?  This should also work for sound such as 16 bit sound based on multiplexing to 24 bit multiplexing? Though would you even want to mix and add channels and memory addressing for much larger mermories and data pics and so on though multiplexing?

Well for one thing a smoother picture. Or more pixels and more colors all at once for a start. Let's start by doing a higher resolution such as 480p or 640 by 480 display or vga sized graphics. Or show all 4096 colors at once. Well you could us something like and M for multiplexing and (----) for the 16 to 24 to 32 bit code. Every 8 characters a comma or , is used. This breaks it up for the computer and well you can use either a multiplex bracket program to group and list all 4096 colors to read from to draw the picture from at a high resolution. But multiplex codes could be extensions to graphics sizes and formats to do more detail pictures and graphics. But also you can use multiplex codes to address high amounts of ram that you could never do on a regular 8 bit machine. And bracket all the 8 bit or even 16 bit codes and so in in brackets or advanced memory addressing for higher banks of ram, roms and hard drives or sd cards. Higher bit character sets. And may be used to make abstract characters that have no assignments so you can create custom codes or functions like the original commodore 64 that would vary for what ever use you need. But multiplexing could allow you to use more peripherals or usb devices and usb hard drives to cd rw drives maybe. Also for high speed computing, It could be used to slow down programs though a multiplexing program to adjust speed of games that may be converted from the old c64. To using high speeds to do more on the the machine at a playable rate. A boost of 14mhz to 12 or 10mhz could be multiplexing speeds to stabilize the hardware for such things maybe as multiplexed games may run smoother at high speed?

 

By adding a pause in multiplexing it could be a way to slow down games. This pause or multiple pauses could be a way to adjust game speed to make a game playable at high speeds when the processor is running at high clock speeds.

 

IF you have a 16bit register in concept you could do the opposite of multiplexing and run two 8 bit codes as in input at the same time. It is a mater of sequencing them read of them in the right order. But just a thought.

It's possible to show all 4096 colors on a single screen, if you use line IRQs from the VERA to periodically swap out the palette. Obviously you would need to do this 16 times. But there is no way to show all 4096 colors on a single line. NTSC trickery may help you achieve more than 256 colors on a single line through color-mixing/smearing effects, but the emulator doesn't simulate that so you'll have to forge ahead and otherwise wait for final hardware. And swapping the palette back and forth between even and odd frames may create the illusion of color-mixing, which could greatly expand the number of apparent colors, but it is an effect with limitations: Sharp-eyed viewers will notice the flickering, others will develop headaches if exposed to the effect for long periods of time, and I'm not sure if it can cause seizures with photo-sensitive people.

Otherwise, I don't understand what you mean by "multiplexing". The only context in which that term appears to apply to color is in using multiple wavelengths of laser light to encode multiple bits simultaneously for fiber optic communication.

As far as any additional features for the VERA to understand new graphics formats, that's a non-starter, the VERA design is finished and the hardware/firmware/logic is in the final bugfixing stages. You'll just have to help the card sell well enough to convince Frank that there's a market in a bigger, better, stronger, Very VERA sequel card with support for fancier-pants graphics features, more color bits, 16-bit hardware multiplication, affine transformations, blackjack, and everything else on everyone's wish lists. And a pony, because why not. ?

Okay real quick I want to do the colors the same way the memory is banked. So you have a pallet that works like them memory where you can use 2mb of ram by addressing another chip or memory bank. The same thing for the pallet. That said you just use multiplexing for more advanced commands and addressing and making pallets. Sorry for not playing digital jazz.

Now as for advanced graphics how can you zoom in farther into more pixels to cram more detail into a picture in addition to just populating sprites. Some sprites back ground bonuses. To populations of city dwellers or animals on a bit map or picture. The goal is like zooming in on ms paint to get more pixels per given picture in the same space or 80 lines or what have you. But much more detail dense. Like if you could do sprites over an entire page that would populate a forest as a single layer. Layers could be used to make complex pictures from back ground and surface textures and so on. With a layer sprite for weather effects that over laps. And act like a complex dynamic picture. But that is not possible. But if you can add layers or dimensions you could cram a lot more detail in theory. Now look at the pic of 8 bit guy. It is very pixelated. So you take the same pick and zoom in and divide each pixel by 4 and zoom in again and do the same to get greater details. And adding a new dimension may be to add complexity in other ways. Either by layered sounds that can have six voices but each of those could switch between the different wave types. Though this may not be possible.

Oh. So this is just a giant feature request thread.

The VERA's design is final and it's only changes are bugfixes.


 

Having multiple palettes and swapping between them would be nice to have, but a similar effect can be achieved by storing multiple palettes in low RAM and just pushing them to VRAM as needed, usually on the VSYNC interrupt. 

good night I need to sleep.