On Wed, 4 Jul 2012, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
First consumer machine with
bit-mapped-only video (no text mode)?
Sinclair Spectrum, Corvus Concept and Multitech (now Acer)
Microprofessor II are a few of the earlier bitmapped machines. The
Concept was a bit more expensive than the Mac, but not absurdly so like
the Lisa.
The Spectrum isn't really bitmapped. IIRC you define up to 20? 8x8 pixel
tiles (one bit per pixel) and can draw them in place of characters (i.e.
at any multiple-of-8 pixel vertical or horizontal offset from 0) with the
same color and bright/flash attributes as normal characters. That was the
case in BASIC, at least, maybe you could do more in assembly, but I don't
recall seeing a frame buffer in the memory map...
Of course you could use the 16 standard graphics tiles that give you 2x2
'pixels' per character cell, but you are still limited to 2 colors per 1
block of 4 'pixels' and you only get 64x48 of them.
Alexey