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Don't forget that the Apple I was basically a glorified video terminal, so the text mode came first. Also in the Apple II. That's the reason there are 7 pixels
by dirkt 6y ago
Don't forget that the Apple I was basically a glorified video terminal, so the text mode came first. Also in the Apple II. That's the reason there are 7 pixels horizontally per character.
The graphics mode is just a juiced up text mode, so the 7 pixels were kept.
And for the video shift register, it's no difference if the input comes from the character ROM, or video RAM.
- thought_alarm 6y agoThat's another thing I've wondered about. Did the Apple I also output 7 pixels per character? Since it doesn't do color and doesn't care about the color burst frequency, it's free to use any size of pixel it wants. With a 5x7 font, I would have guessed that 6 pixels per char would be simpler.