Another shitty design by Karl Guttag (R)
and another fake news
why fake? It is confirmed but a lot of people the stupid bug of status 0 autoreset feature.
And it is clear the reason it is done in this way. Simply because another way means more costs.
This VDP has been released in 1979!
This VDP has been released in 1979!
Yes. Pretty impressive chip back then.
I don't agree with PingPong about "shitty design", but thank you for mentioning Karl Guttag. I googled and found this
electronics is electronics. And a shitty design is a shitty design. no matter on what era the circuitry is.
adding a bunch of transistors to handle them in a proper way would not had a so big impact in chip size.
TMS chip is FULL OF DIRTY TRICKS to economize transistors count. Look at the sprite clone effect when using masked mode registers. Despite the fact that is simply ridiculus (it depends on temperature!!!) such trick prevent a useful display mode in games, limiting to only 8 sprites.
not to mention, C64 had explicit and manual int acknowledge like the V9990 and the VIC-II was only three years younger
