Questions tagged [video]
For questions regarding hardware and drivers used for video output.
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Toshiba laptop with Windows 98 shows corrupted characters while booting, then the system goes entirely blind
I have a Toshiba laptop and I am not sure what is going on with it. Thinking that maybe the computer was corrupted 20 plus years ago. Trying to fix it up.
When the laptop boots, I can see this on ...
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Which font with slashed zero is being used in this screengrab?
Do you know which font is being used in the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnudvJbAgI0? A screengrab of the video that shows a lot of text:
We can see that the zeros are slashed, so it ...
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How do 80x25 characters (each with dimension 9x16 pixels) fit on a VGA display of resolution 640x480?
Due to my limited knowledge of retrocomputing and old CRT displays and graphics cards, I could be making some wrong assumptions in this question. For any wrong assumption you find in this question, I ...
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Why would any "local" video signal be "interlaced" instead of progressive?
As I had understood things, "interlaced" video was nothing but a clever way to save data bandwidth by only sending every other line, swapping between starting on line 0 and 1 for every frame,...
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How to write text in MODE 0x13?
I have read How to write directly to video memory using "debug.exe" in MS-DOS? and I know how to write text to video memory in mode 0x3 but I can't figure out how to write text to video ...
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Why was video, audio and picture compression the poorest when storage space was the costliest?
"Full-motion video" sequences in PC and console games in the 1990s were bad-looking, in spite of taking huge amounts of storage space. Same thing with random short video clips that I ...
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On my NES, the color red displays as black. What could be the cause?
I have a NES, it is working normally, but one of the game colors appears as black. In the game Mario Bros 3, the name is in black, some blocks are black and the goombas too. What can it be?
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What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"? [closed]
Recently, I've been hearing a good deal about hardware tricks. For instance, the YouTuber Ahoy (see A Brief History of Graphics) mentions that some game programmers resorted to "hardware tricks&...
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Video playback software/formats for a 386?
Wanting to have my 386DX @ 20MHz play a video (any video), just as a demo. I'd prefer it to be watchable (eg 10fps and not a tiny 10x10 pixel) as opposed to a slideshow.
What player software could I ...
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How did Atari RF output work?
I know that RF stands for radio frequency but what chip in the Atari handles the video output and does anybody know if something similar would work on a modern tv?
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What is the size of the border of the ZX Spectrum in scanlines/pixels/bytes?
The bitmap area of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is exactly 256 x 192 pixels.
Surrounding the bitmap is quite a wide border area which is generally just one colour but loading and saving from tape changes ...
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TI-99/4a RF modulator, fuzzy video
I recently purchased a TI-99/4a. Well, 2 actually. Both work, but I only have one RF modulator. I ordered a composite adapter, but that hasn't arrived yet. Both work on the RF modulator, but the ...
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What systems had digital RGBI output at frequencies other than ~15.7 kHz?
Plenty of early '80s microcomputer systems with 16-colour graphics offered digital RGBI output: four TTL (or at least digital on/off) signals for red, green, blue and intensity. These included many ...
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Resources about 1980s GPCPU video controller designs
Reading about the Fujitsu Micro 7, I found out that it used a pair of 6809 microprocessors: one as main CPU and one as graphics processor.
That made me remember that when running old arcade games with ...
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Why does my PlayStation RGB video cable cause the picture to be all orange-y unless pressure is applied?
In 2005, I bought an RGB cable for my old (~1996) PlayStation. It seemed to work at first.
I don't remember when, but at some point, it started acting oddly. Since, whenever I plug it in, it displays ...
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In the classic "Windows 98 crashes live on CNN" video, why does the BSOD appear so oddly?
I've been seeing this since the late 1990s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKy9fV_zX_o
Was this a hoax or joke of some kind? The only reason I ask is that, when the blue screen appears, it does so in ...
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Why did the COMX-35 video memory seem unreliable?
In my early days, many many years ago, one of the machines I managed to get my hands on was the COMX-35, a funky little machine based on the 1802 CPU.
I remember trying to develop some games for it ...
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What made the Amiga "Genlock-able"?
Right at the moment the original Amiga A1000 was being introduced, Commodore was already advertising its ability to use a Genlock peripheral, and promising that Commodore's own Amiga 1300 Genlock ...
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What causes the horizontal lines at the left of the Atari 2600 screen?
I occasionally see video captures of Atari 2600 games that have horizontal bars down most of the left-hand side of the screen, as in this video of Star Voyager by Imagic:
It's not clear to me whether ...
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Why did the TRS-80 CPU have priority over the display?
The original TRS-80 had a separate bank of static RAM for video memory, so that there would be no interference between display and CPU when the CPU was just doing calculations in main memory.
When it ...
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Is "component video" synonymous with "RGB"?
Before asking this, I read the Wikipedia article. I've been confused about this for many, many years. I'd like to finally get it straightened out.
What exactly is the difference between "RGB"...
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How were the special effects achieved for the Kraftwerk Die Roboter 1978 music video?
The following video for Kraftwerk's Die Roboter is very interesting because it features some effects which I think might require a framebuffer to achieve. Having a framebuffer in 1978 would to my ...
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Digital to analog in an old 35mm film recorder [closed]
I'm looking at an old film recorder from 1985, the Polaroid Freeze Frame, the back of the machine pictured here:
From here: https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/polaroidco_freezeframe_video_recorder.html
I ...
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What is an XRGB video signal? (NOT the modern XRGB mini-DIN.)
I have a mid-1980s CRT monitor, a C. Itoh Chroma Pro CM1000, with an 8-pin DIN RGB input that's visually similar to the digital RGB input on a Commodore 1084. The input is selectable between "RGB,...
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Is a S-VIDEO-to-RCA cable worse video signal quality than an S-VIDEO-to-SCART cable?
When I got my Sega Saturn way back, it came with a video cable that is S-VIDEO in the Saturn end and SCART in the TV end (no adapter). It has always given me very crisp and nice picture on all the TVs ...
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Why did some video games apparently use "interlaced" video modes?
I was under the impression that "interlaced" video modes was only a thing for remote television content because it saved bandwidth to only send 50% of the data to the homes, so you could fit ...
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Monitor can't display boot/DOS video mode making dual boot impossible
I have an HP ZR24w monitor connected via HDMI input to a newer custom machine running Win7, and via VGA input to an older Micron machine running Win98SE. I use the monitor's "source" setting ...
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What is the name of the video signal recognized by this monitor?
I have a hobby project with an old CP/M-80 system where the monochrome monitor is showing its age as the image is flickering a lot. I was wondering if I could attach a modern monitor or tv-screen, ...
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Were there low-end eighties computers that used dual-ported video RAM?
Going through schematics of several home or small office computers of the era, I was wondering why almost none of them (1) used dual-ported video RAM. I understand that those chips were initaly ...
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Did any ZX Spectrum clones use a 16 bit datapath between memory and video generation?
On the Commodore 64, there is a 12 bit datapath between memory and the VIC II: the ordinary screen data, which is in DRAM, and another 4 bits which comes from another SRAM chip which may be paged into ...
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Why didn't early color TV sets accept RGB input?
Early PCs generated RF signal, and later Composite video or S-video, to use a TV set as monitor. Why didn't color TVs of those days expose a analog RGB interface for direct connection from VCR/PC or ...
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Why did the VIC-20 and C64 have only 22 and 40 columns when the earlier PET had 80 column text?
When I was a kid, the "real" computers in movies looked so cool with that 80-column monochrome green text.
My first computer was a VIC-20 and it always felt very "toy-like" to me ...
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Workbench 3.1 Chipsets and graphics question
I have Workbench 3.1 install with Scalos and some other tweaks installed from scratch using one of numerous online guides. My machine is a CDTV with 3.1 Kickstart, TF536 030 MMU 64MB RAM. The chipsets ...
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RGBI to VGA converter [duplicate]
Is there an off the shelf converter / adapter from C128 RGBI to VGA that will work with modern-ish low voltage VGA?
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Operating system/hardware used for playing a video during a recorded trial that took place in 2013 [closed]
I am watching a 2013 murder trial on YouTube Jodi Arias Trial : Day 23 : 1 Of 3. There is a considerable amount of evidence involving phones and computers.
The following picture briefly appears on-...
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Did the Power Macintosh 8500 have accelerated blitting?
Looking at online specifications for the Power Macintosh 8500, I was able to find few details on its graphics capabilities beyond quantity of VRAM and supported color depths, refresh rates, and ...
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Are there any 1980's video chips still available besides the TMS9918?
The TMS9918 is still available, which is nice.
But are there any other (better) video chips still on the (after-)market in any numbers? Obviously Commodore's VIC-II is not one of them.
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Sony PVM Connections / Composite Signale
I am trying to learn more about different video formats. I have a SONY PVM9044QM and want to understand the different connection options.
So I understand, that Y/C equals S-Video input.
But what does ...
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What old version of Windows provides out-of-the-box DVD movie playback?
I bought a Playstation 2 in 2000, which famously included a DVD drive capable of playing DVD movies. I wanted the same movie playback capability on my Windows 98 PC.
As I recall, I mistakenly thought ...
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Vintage computer composite graphics
I am working on designing a vintage computer and I have been using the TMS9918ANL. After working with it for a month or two and not making much progress, I really want to switch to another chip. I am ...
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What kind of 256 color palette did the Enterprise 64/128 have?
The Enterprise 64 or 128 Home Computer apparently had a palette of 256 colors.
However, that is pretty unusual and doesn't fit evenly into the typical 3 channels for RGB. Wikipedia doesn't provide any ...
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Which addresses does the Motorola 6845 CRTC output during retrace?
I'm trying to understand how the video hardware (CRTC and Gate Array) in Amstrad CPCs works. Specifically, I have a question about the behavior of the refresh memory addresses and row adresses output ...
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Why does the Amiga 500 have half the HSYNC pulses separately compared to those in CSYNC?
After many years I bought myself a new old Amiga 500 (rev 5)
and wanted to hook it up to an LCD monitor (Samsung Syncmaster 152N) that has a VGA input.
I tried hooking it up directly by making an ...
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Is there a generic VBE driver available for Windows 3.x?
I’d like to run Windows 3.11 on a relatively modern laptop. One problem I have is that the only display driver that works with my hardware is the basic VGA driver, which only supports the rather ...
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Was it ever possible to access the full EGA color space in 200-line modes?
It's long been an established fact that the EGA only had four memory planes, which limited the number of colors on the screen to (24) 16. The best compatible monitors at the time had six TTL color ...
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`DRAW` instruction timing
I asked a question here about CHIP-8 instruction timing, and this answer mentions that DRAW waits for vblank:
For Chip-8 code that draws anything, the limiting factor will be the wait-for-vblank that ...
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Could CGA synchronize with vertical blank?
According to http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?62049-The-myth-of-the-vertical-retrace-interrupt-on-EGA-VGA
IBM first implemented a vertical retrace interrupt on the PCjr in 1984.
That ...
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Why do PCs boot in 720x400 resolution?
Using my 21" Trinitron OSD, I can see that the resolution at boot is 720x400.
From memory, this weird resolution is extremely uncommon if ever to be seen as a choice on software that supports ...
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How exactly does Leningrad contend the memory?
From what I understand of this answer, the Leningrad delays the Z80 during the M1 cycle so that the video generation circuitry can do its thing.
I can see how M1 is "latched" (don't know if that's ...
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Thinking through the design of a TTL video card: what memory chips and how to manage memory? [closed]
Inspired by Ben Eater's "Let's build a video card" aka "World's worst video card" two part projects on YouTube, I was inspired to consider designing a display adapter for my passive backplane TTL mini-...
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