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Konix
The Konix Multisystem was a cancelled video game system under development by Konix, a British manufacturer of computer peripherals. Background The Konix Multisystem began life in 1988 as an advanced Konix peripheral design intended to build on the success of the company's range of joysticks. The design, codenamed Slipstream, resembled a dashboard-style games controller, and could be configured with a steering wheel, a flight yoke, and motorbike handles. It promised advanced features such as force feedback, hitherto unheard of in home gaming. However, it soon became apparent that the Slipstream project had the potential to be much more than a peripheral. Konix turned to their sister company Creative Devices Ltd, a computer hardware developer, to design a gaming computer to be put inside the controller to make it a stand-alone console in its own right. It was shortly after this development began that Konix founder and chairman Wyn Holloway came across a magazine article that descr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konix Multisystem Logo
The Konix Multisystem was a cancelled video game system under development by Konix, a British manufacturer of computer peripherals. Background The Konix Multisystem began life in 1988 as an advanced Konix peripheral design intended to build on the success of the company's range of joysticks. The design, codenamed Slipstream, resembled a dashboard-style games controller, and could be configured with a steering wheel, a flight yoke, and motorbike handles. It promised advanced features such as force feedback, hitherto unheard of in home gaming. However, it soon became apparent that the Slipstream project had the potential to be much more than a peripheral. Konix turned to their sister company Creative Devices Ltd, a computer hardware developer, to design a gaming computer to be put inside the controller to make it a stand-alone console in its own right. It was shortly after this development began that Konix founder and chairman Wyn Holloway came across a magazine article that descr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flare Technology
Flare Technology was a computer hardware company based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1986 by Martin Brennan, Ben Cheese, and John Mathieson, former engineers at Sinclair Research. Flare Technology first worked for Amstrad before developing a technology-demonstrator system called ''Flare One''."Flare", ''Personal Computer World'', August 1988. The Flare One was intended as a home computer or games console with extensive audio and video capabilities. It was related to the ''Loki'' project they had worked on previously at Sinclair Research, which in turn was derived from the ZX Spectrum home computer. The Flare One was used in some arcade game cabinets including a line of video quiz machines produced by Bellfruit. The Flare 1 chipset was further developed into the Konix Multisystem ''Slipstream'' prototype. In 1989 Martin Brennan was contracted by Atari Corp. to complete and implement the chip design of the unreleased Atari Panther. Martin Brennan and John Mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and the 32-bit 3DO Interactive Multiplayer that launched the same year. Powered by two custom 32-bit Tom and in addition to a Motorola 68000, Atari marketed it as the world's first 64-bit game system, emphasizing its 64-bit bus used by the blitter. The Jaguar launched with '' Cybermorph'' as the pack-in game, which received divisive reviews. The system's library ultimately comprised only 50 licensed games. Development of the Atari Jaguar started in the early 1990s by Flare Technology, which focused on the system after cancellation of the Atari Panther console. The multi-chip architecture, hardware bugs, and poor tools made writing games for the Jaguar difficult. Underwhelming sales further eroded the console's third-party support. Atari atte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loki (computer)
Loki was the code name for a cancelled home computer developed at Sinclair Research during the mid-1980s. The name came from the Norse god Loki, god of mischief and thieves. Loki was based on the ZX Spectrum, but intended to rival the Amiga for video games. ''Loki'' followed two earlier, aborted research projects from Sinclair: the 68008-based SuperSpectrum home computer (cancelled in 1982) and the LC3 game console (cancelled in 1983). Design According to an article published in ''Sinclair User'' magazine, Loki was to have a 7 MHz Z80H CPU, a minimum of 128 KiB of RAM and two custom chips providing much enhanced video and audio capabilities compared to the ZX Spectrum, but with a compatibility mode. The video chip, referred to as the ''Rasterop'' chip, would have blitter-type functionality and three different modes: 512×256 pixels with 16 colours, 256×212 with 256 colours, or 256×212 with 64 colours and two bits per pixel used for "blitter objects". Comprehensive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeff Minter
Jeff Minter (born 22 April 1962) is an independent English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the Sinclair ZX80. Minter's games are often arcade style shoot 'em ups which contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants (llamas, sheep, camels, etc.). Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including '' Trip-a-Tron''. Minter's works include the music visualisation program '' Neon'' (2004) which is built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games ''Gridrunner'', '' Attack of the Mutant Camels'', ''Tempest 2000'', and '' Polybius''. Game development career Pre-commercial career (early years) Minter had expressed an interest in programming computers from a young age. He wrote the game ''Deflex'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blitter
A blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within a computer's memory. A blitter can copy large quantities of data from one memory area to another relatively quickly, and in parallel with the CPU, while freeing up the CPU's more complex capabilities for other operations. A typical use for a blitter is the movement of a bitmap, such as windows and fonts in a graphical user interface or images and backgrounds in a 2D video game. The name comes from the bit blit operation of the 1973 Xerox Alto, which stands for bit-block transfer. A blit operation is more than a memory copy, because it can involve data that's not byte aligned (hence the ''bit'' in ''bit blit''), handling transparent pixels (pixels which should not overwrite the destination), and various ways of combining the source and destination data. Blitters have largely been superseded by programmable graphics processing uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardware Scrolling
In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures but moves (pans or tilts) the user's view across what is apparently a larger image that is not wholly seen. A common television and movie special effect is to scroll credits, while leaving the background stationary. Scrolling may take place completely without user intervention (as in film credits) or, on an interactive device, be triggered by touchscreen or a keypress and continue without further intervention until a further user action, or be entirely controlled by input devices. Scrolling may take place in discrete increments (perhaps one or a few lines of text at a time), or continuously (smooth scrolling). Frame rate is the speed at which an entire image is redisplayed. It is related to scrolling in that changes to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Processing
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations. The concept of "word" is distinguished from that of a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of language that has a meaning, even if it cannot stand on its own. Words are made out of at least on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
8-bit
In computer architecture, 8-bit Integer (computer science), integers or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet (computing), octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on processor register, registers or Bus (computing), data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors. The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the best known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets especially ISO/IEC 8859-1, Latin 1 for English and Western European languages. The IBM System/360 introduced byte-addressable memory with 8-bit bytes, as opposed to bit-addressable or decimal digit-addressable or word-addressable memory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculations more efficiently and process more data per clock cycle. Typical 32-bit personal computers also have a 32-bit address bus, permitting up to 4 GB of RAM to be accessed; far more than previous generations of system architecture allowed. 32-bit designs have been used since the earliest days of electronic computing, in experimental systems and then in large mainframe and minicomputer systems. The first hybrid 16/32-bit microprocessor, the Motorola 68000, was introduced in the late 1970s and used in systems such as the original Apple Macintosh. Fully 32-bit microprocessors such as the Motorola 68020 and Intel 80386 were launched in the early to mid 1980s and became dominant by the early 1990s. This generation of personal computers coincided ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (216 − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −32,768 (−1 × 215) through 32,767 (215 − 1) for representation as two's complement. Since 216 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed. 16-bit architecture The MIT Whirlwind ( 1951) was quite possibly the first-ever 16-bit computer. It was an unusual word size for the era; most systems used six-bit character code and used a word length of some multiple of 6-bits. This changed with the effort to introduce ASCII, which used a 7-bit code and naturally led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM (desktop environment), GEM from February 1985. The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of RAM, was the first home computer with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1. "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", referring to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit computing, 16-bit external bus and 32-bit computing, 32-bit internals. The system was designed by a small team led by Shiraz Shivji. Alongside the Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIGS, and Acorn Archimedes, the ST is part of a mid-1980s generation of computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 Kilobyte, KB or more of RAM, and computer mouse, mouse-controlled graphical user interfaces. The ST was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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