Questions tagged [chip]
General questions about computer chips and chipsets in retro hardware. Use a specific chip’s tag instead if available.
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Graphics chips in 1980
Suppose you were trying to build a computer with a color graphics display in 1980, you have limited engineering resources and time to market is critical, so you want to get as many of the parts off ...
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Limiting factor on sprite sizes
Early consoles and home computers that were optimized for games, tended to provide sprites. From a game programmer's viewpoint, these were good to have. Of course, one always wanted more and larger ...
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How were 4-digit IC part numbers assigned?
It seems that integrated circuits of the 1970s tended to have 4-digit part numbers. This includes not only the ones that came to be well-known like CPUs (Intel 4004, 8008, 8080, 8085, 8086, 8088, ...
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Why did the PlayStation 2 implement backward compatibility that way?
It is well known that the PlayStation 2 implemented compatibility with the previous console by essentially incorporating a PS1 on a chip.
The fact of backward compatibility is unremarkable as far as ...
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When did MOS Technology upgrade to 5µm?
I'm trying to understand exactly why various chips were designed the way they were at different times, in the service of which I have a rather specific question:
When did MOS Technology upgrade to ...
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Why did some early CPUs use external math chips?
While enjoying the response to "Why did CPU designers in the 70s prioritize reducing pin count?" In 1979 IEEE was hard at work at coming up with a standard for handling floating point numbers, and ...
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Why did the VIC-II and SID use 6 µm technology in the era of 3 µm and 1.5 µm?
In short, 3 µm looks like it was the "standard" process size at the time, and it was available to Commodore before the chips were designed. Therefore it looks like using the larger 5 to 7 µm process ...
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What exactly was the Amiga Ranger?
Amiga's history includes something called "Ranger" that supposedly was either meant to be the next generation system to be released after the Amiga 1000 was released, or the codename for the next ...
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Who made the Atari 2600 TIA video chip?
At the heart of the Atari 2600 was the TIA video chip, designed by Jay Miner, well known for his later work on the chips for the Atari 400/800 and the Amiga.
Who manufactured the TIA? As an in-house ...
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How much did the 6502 and Z80 cost?
It is said that the 6502 was cheaper than the Z80.
As of 1978, what were the actual prices of the two chips, in wholesale quantity?
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What is the Kelly chip?
The Amiga 3000+ DevCon 1991 notes says:
On the A3000+, these resources include the Amiga "Pandora" chip set
(Alice, Lisa, Kelly, and Paula),
However, a Kelly chip is not part of the official ...
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Were there any "off the shelf" graphics chips that supported 2D sprites in the 70's and 80's?
I'm looking for "off the shelf" graphic IC's that supported hardware sprites. By "off the shelf" I mean chips that were designed to be used in various machines and not designed specifically for one ...
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Were video chips specific to the CPU?
Modern graphics cards are essentially miniature supercomputers in their own right, with their own memory and instruction sets, but in the eighties and late seventies, a very common kind of personal ...
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Part-bad chips other than RAM
In the early eighties, you could buy half-bad 64k RAM chips at a discount. Some cost-conscious manufacturers such as Sinclair and Tandy took advantage of this, buying eight such chips to make a 32K ...
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Video chip for hypothetical 1988 arcade game
I have a project where I aim to create a retro arcade game cabinet, the technology would be ~1988. For now I am planning to only simulate the system on my PC in order to develop the game. The ...
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Did any 8-bit CPUs use dynamic memory for registers?
According to https://jamiestarling.com/project-8088-the-8088-cpu-pinout/
One thing to note – the 8088 registers are made from dynamic memory cells – they have to be refreshed. The minimum clock speed ...
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Can fast page mode depend on the first data retrieved?
As early as the seventies, some computers used RAM in page mode, in which you can read two or more words from sequential locations in rapid succession by only supplying the column address once, and ...
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Electronic toy from the early 2000s where you push back in elements that pop out
I'm hoping this question belongs here as this is the closest site I could find that matched my situation.
Many years ago, around late 2003 or 2004, I came across this electronic toy that sort of ...
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What are the circuits captured on this photo of the NES PPU die?
I found a die photo of the NES video chip: http://visual6502.org/images/RP2C02/NES_RP2C02_G_8F1_1B_20x_1600w.jpg
I think the big block of fairly regular circuitry at the bottom left is the sprites? ...