Feelings about vintage systems

[Chuck Guzis]

On 8/24/2006 at 4:35 PM Don wrote:

>There are workarounds for this but it is just an ugly
>device to use.  I maintain a product for an old client
>that (unfortunately) uses these.  Every time they want
>to change the display contents, it is a major effort
>to figure out how to fit things together.  I keep hoping
>they'll tell me they need a redesign because they can
>no longer find those parts... but, they must have a
>sh*tload of them hidden away someplace  :-(

Yeah, what you said.  There is an "invisible" mode where attributes don't
take up visible space on the line, but then lines become variable length
(as does the DMA count) and you're still limited to 16 attributes per line.
 It's very very ugly and perhaps the worst CRT controller (well, it and the
even brain-deader 8276) I've ever seen.

Cheers,
Chuck