2 ms·
Something I've always wondered, but really haven't dug too deep into is, did these clones do any tricks that would be considered better than what they were base
by xellisx 9y ago
Something I've always wondered, but really haven't dug too deep into is, did these clones do any tricks that would be considered better than what they were based on? That goes with the clone CPUs also. Did they have any undocumented features, that would make it "better"?
- flohofwoe 9y agoSome cases I know of: (1) the East-German produced Z80 clone U880 apparently fixed a mask layout bug, the bug only affected the undocumented instruction set of the chip, which was most likely the reason why it wasn't fixed by Zilog before (2) the KC Compact (an East German Amstrad CPC clone) was using 'standard chips' available in the Eastern Bloc countries to emulate the integrated gate array of the original, this made the interrupt system more programmable than in the original, which in theory would have enabled some more interesting "graphics demo effects" (http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html) (3) some of the countless ZX Spectrum clones had slightly better graphics capabilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones)