I seeded that Idea, several years ago.

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Ogura
Posts: 10
Joined: 10 Sep 2019, 17:49

I seeded that Idea, several years ago.

Post by Ogura »

I decided to write this story.
Actually on some phorums (forums) I posted the idea of such computer, and actually it were often exactly Dutch forums. The computer without processor. Actually the Gigatron is not the only implementation of such idea. It was yet another one.
Basically when I needed to have a computer but had even no money to purchase a processor, and only could buy cheap soviet TTL and obsolete MOS chips.

But the idea seamed for me very interesting even when I got some computer.
I actually was involved into some political troubles, matter of which I did not understand. Those in London each time hint about everything is over and everything begins again and again.
And at last I plan to get China, after all it were occasional positive reports about me since I was KPI student, from those who launched man into space and space mission on Dark Side of The Moon. (I even could not guess they may report, because of I saw then really very few times, just they somehow gathered information about perspective students, and ...that day I was convinced anti-communist when today I see that I was wrong.)

When those of deeply corrupted structures as Khlevytskyi (Chlewicki pl, Chlevicki sk) who as one of the Security Service of Ukraine ideologists, had no ideas how he was poisoned with presumably substance made by latest Nobel Prise works and other advanced British Scientists jobs (each employing supercomputer power), which I announced for him, and which Ukrainians may not identify with their expertise. Those whom served Khlevytskyi required me to to do what did they wish but also persecuted for actually the same, and they had no ideas about how they did as why some of them died occasionally.
I also had been boring with my political postings. Many of my political position were changed when I got... on historical motherland of Steve Wozniak, because of it was occasionally in strip of Ukrainian-Polish border on Polish side. It opened my eyes. That territory had been switching between several countries along the history and also occasionally mentioned as Tanenbaum's list of his tribe origin. I heard it was promise of Poland to let me to stay on their territory, but they roved.
Gongadze case (with conversations of Kuchma published on one Dutch site) gave all of the international corrupted structure very much participated by all of those Khlevitskyi, launched the wave of terror, with fake truth and true fakes. I very much opposed to Donald Tusk, and very much Supported ideas of Brexit and colloquial "Nexit". But it did not help me .... it's long story why.
Ogura
Posts: 10
Joined: 10 Sep 2019, 17:49

Re: I seeded that Idea, several years ago.

Post by Ogura »

Now about computers.
What if apply some kind of video-acceleration to this minimalist's design?
If you believe it's too complex, believe video acceleration may be even simpler then then without it.

What if make some kind of processor, with instruction made for video only.
as Jump to Address set color or sync state and repeat it several times.
as for example
there are instructions following one by one.
it are instructions of various colors let it be 14 colours, but occasionally it may be an instruction to repeat the previous colour in 7 next pixels sequentially given on VGA output, let it be even loaded along two pixels, while the colour remains the same. As maximum let it be as it may be encoded into a single bit.
Actually it is nothing else as primitive form of compression, but quite dynamic scenes will be made with operating not about 20 kilobytes but counted kilobytes.

If total quantity of bits will be about 8 per pixel and 6 of them to be used for color, when higher two are set as 0.
If the highest set to 1, it has to be the 7 lowest as highest bits of video memory address.
When two highest are set 01 it have to be spread between repeats of the pixel color (about up to 32 will be enough), VGA H-sync V-sync signals, return from subroutine ect. Unfortunately it will require some kind of hardware stack, which in simplest case may be about 2 stages deep. (If it will get deeper then allowed, it points to some safe picture.)

Why jumps are necessary at all?
to make some complex pictures with similar fragments.
To make blank screen you'd need make V-sync and to put sequence of jumps on same line with repeats of the same colour and return H-sync and return.

The depicting of sprites will such subsystem will be en easy task, the real problem will be modifying a background, a little bit more sophisticated then on all of those Speckies, just wold require to process much smaller amount of memory.
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marcelk
Posts: 488
Joined: 13 May 2018, 08:26

Re: I seeded that Idea, several years ago.

Post by marcelk »

Interesting thoughts.

The homecomputers of the day typically had two levels of indirection: characters (aka tiling) and color palettes. Each level adds logic in order to conserve RAM usage. Some add sprites for one or two additional levels of indirection. Some add play fields. The standard Gigatron software has just one level of indirection: the video indirection table for scanlines. We can program more levels, but then resolution suffers. Or we add more logic to compensate that, but then we drift away from the central concept, and perhaps colour depth suffers. We're in a sort of Nash equilibrium, or sweet spot, with 160x120 VGA pixels, 1 byte per pixel, 64 colours, 32K RAM and minimum gate count. It's constrained, but we still can do interesting things there. Well, we can improve vertical resolution without hardware changes. And with a different video loop, we can probably do non-overlapping sprites on an opaque background.
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