Re: Theorizing how to replace a VIC-II by hardware.

From: Ingo Korb <*ml_at_akana.de*> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 12:29:23 +0200 Message-ID: <86h7tvj3b0.fsf_at_dragon.akana.de> · ml_at_akana.de

Claudio Sánchez <tokafondo_at_gmail.com> writes:

> The next step would be reading from the proper places (ROM, RAM or COLOR
> RAM), and render the bitmap image taking care of the effects supposedly

The VIC does not know if it is reading RAM or ROM, that choice is made
by the PLA. There are no separate color RAM reads, it is connected to
the upper four bits of the 12-bit data bus and is accessed in every
single VIC memory read, though its data may be discarded.

> PAL/NTSC (and SECAM) limitations, because digitally it could be upscaled
> and up-frame-rated to modern standards, applying filtering - or just

50/60Hz are fine and frame rate interpolation looks horrible, especially
on non-natural images.

> NOW is your turn (that I would actually appreciate as I love to learn)
>
> - What do you think?

You seem to have understood the basic problem in its high-level-overview
form, but you don't seem to be aware of the low-level details.

> - Is it doable?

Sure, in fact most of it has already been done by other
people. All of them have chosen the FPGA route, as a
microcontroller-based implementation as you have hinted at ("PIC") is
extremely unlikely to succeed.

> - Does it worth the work to do it?

Some of the existing VIC-II reimplementations are sold as a commercial
product, some are open source, some are both.

-ik