38
votes
Accepted
What did Windows 2 do about varying aspect ratio?
Most of Windows’ display model is device-independent, or at least provides all the information required to produce consistent displays, and it’s the display drivers that handle discrepancies. As a ...
- 113k
30
votes
Accepted
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
The horizontal-line cursor was standard on the video terminals I used. The DEC VT50/VT52 series of terminals had only an horizontal-line cursor. The VT100 (and, I assume, subsequent terminals) had a ...
- 31.6k
19
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
TL;DR:
Available Hardware + Capabilities + Compatibility + User Expectation
Text mode cursor on PC Hardware allows only a full character cell width cursor that may cover any amount of a character cell ...
- 198k
13
votes
Accepted
What is the size of the border of the ZX Spectrum in scanlines/pixels/bytes?
See the detailed info here: https://worldofspectrum.org/faq/reference/48kreference.htm
The timing is expressed as a T-states of the CPU and, when recalculated to pixels, the top of the border is 64 ...
- 1,521
12
votes
What is the size of the border of the ZX Spectrum in scanlines/pixels/bytes?
The device uses 14 MHz crystal as the master clock, and it gets divided by 2 to get 7 MHz pixel clock.
The active raster is 256 pixels, and if we assume that standard 15.625 kHz horizontal scan rate ...
- 25.2k
11
votes
Was there ever a monospace display system (eg terminal) that used a vertical cursor?
I am going to suggest a reframe of the entire question.
Before addressing the question of what the earliest cursors looked like, I want to ask what the cursor represented. From the very earliest text ...
- 5,093
10
votes
What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"?
Some turned to hardware tricks to simulate 3D worlds, and the Super NES's Mode 7 could be considered a rudimentary form of texture mapping.
Note the following passage later on to give some context:
...
- 6,096
9
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
The functionality of chips available at the time and the implementation difficulty certainly were the main factors. But even without those constraints, vertical cursors do not work that well with low ...
- 1,586
8
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
I know this is a feature of video chip, but since it is custom functionality anyways, what would be the reason to choose horizontal vs vertical for this functionality?
The MC 6845, which early IBM PC ...
- 24.9k
7
votes
What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"?
Magicians show magic tricks but it is not really magic as it only creates an illusion of magic because of some detail you don't yet know or have just not thought about it. So it's a trick.
Same ...
- 25.2k
6
votes
Accepted
How to change graphics modes from BASIC on a Timex/Sinclair 2068?
Sinclair BASIC
The answer is just as low-level as POKE, but is not POKE.
OUT 255,2 enters "Hi-Color" mode
OUT 255,6* enters "Hi-Res" mode
OUT 255,0 goes back to normal Spectrum ...
- 6,036
5
votes
CP/M in fewer than 80 columns
A Russian Spectrum-based CP/M machine of 1991 - Sinclair Profi - used 64 columns by default, but could be switched to 80 columns.
Basically and roughly, Profi is a Spectrum-128 with up to 1024 MB RAM (...
- 51
3
votes
Could monochrome systems produce better output for monitors than TV sets?
A colour CRT display, whether a television or computer monitor, in the end always sends separate R, G and B channels to the picture tube as well as using a sync signal to control the scan. With a ...
- 23.6k
3
votes
640x480 color display in 1980
640×480×1 (1-bit "colour") and 320×200×6 appear to be well within within
the bounds of practicality for a workstation-level machine in 1980; the
main issue you're going to run into is speed ...
- 23.6k
3
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
I can answer why they don't on pre-PC hardware like Apple II or Atari or Commodore PET/Vic/C64.
Because those platforms don't have hardware cursors. Well, the Atari and C64 have sprites, but they ...
3
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
As noted elsewhere, the 6845 video controller as a "cursor" output which active when three conditions apply:
The character address being output matches a specified cursor address.
A ...
- 32.8k
3
votes
What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"?
A classic example of a hardware trick is VSP (Variable Screen Positioning\Placement) on the Commodore 64, which allows for extremely fast screen scrolling. It uses a design flaw in the VIC-II chip as ...
- 3,503
2
votes
What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"?
This does seem not like a retro-,not even a computing question, but rather language related, isn't it?
A trick is a clever and or quick application of some item, procedure or idea - usually something ...
- 198k
2
votes
Why did IBM PC have horizontal cursor instead of vertical or block cursor?
The video chip is not custom, it is a stock MC6845, and that's the only cursor it already provides most easily.
And it can provide any height for the cursor, so block cursor is possible if a program ...
- 25.2k
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