6 ms·
Granted, the ball is using more pixels to render itself than all the pixels available on an atari 2600, and it's going through 10 levels of abstraction layers r
by nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
Granted, the ball is using more pixels to render itself than all the pixels available on an atari 2600, and it's going through 10 levels of abstraction layers rather than using assembly code to blit pixels directly to the framebuffer...
- faragon 16y agoFramebuffer? There is no such thing in the 2600 (see "Atari_TIA" Wikipedia entry for details).
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoCall it what you like, but it's basically a line-based "framebuffer" in memory, and the display just happens to be reading from that memory every time it draws a line. IIRC you get something like 80 clock cycles to blit your pixels into that memory space before the next line gets drawn, but it's still acting as a framebuffer.
- faragon 16y agoNo, it is not even a line-based framebuffer. Starting on every H-Sync interrupt, the CPU has to change the TIA chip latches with accurate timming for "producing" pixel output. So, there is no framebuffer at all.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoAh, then perhaps I'm confusing it with another console that predates my existence :P