Date   : Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:10:27 GMT
From   : jgh@... (J.G.Harston)
Subject: Risc PC (Was 'Minitel in France')

Sprow wrote:
> You could triple or quadruple map stuff if you wanted. To get back to the
> BBC angle here, it might have been nice to have two views of the video
> memory: one character cell based for fast text printing, and one flat bitmap
> for fast sprite and line plotting,

It would have been nice at the BBC model A/B stage if Acorn had
realised that almost 100% of the time video RAM is only written to,
and put it "underneath" the ROM space, like with the Amstrad CPC.

Of course, it would have meant that unused video memory in small
display modes wouldn't be available for program code, but it would
have been nice for HIMEM to always have been at &8000, except MODE
0,1,2 having HIMEM at &7000 ;)

-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...      - mdfs.net/jgh
Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust
him to look out for himself honestly. It's when you appeal to his
honour or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.