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Standard Television Interface Chip
The Standard Television Interface Chip or STIC is a video encoder chip produced by General Instrument as AY-3-8900/AY-3-8900-1 and used on the Mattel Intellivision. The chip provides all the display functions on the machine, and works as an internal timer. Resolution is 167 × 105 pixels in NTSC and 168 × 104 pixels in PAL, over which movable objects (MOBs) can be placed. These are restricted to a visible area of 159 × 96 pixels. Other objects, such as a 20 × 12 matrix of 8×8 background cards can be used to create scenery or provide game information. The STIC also computes collision information between the objects and screen borders. There are multiple display modes depending on how objects are handles, such as ''Color Stack'', ''Colored Squares'' and ''Foreground/Background'' mode. Characteristics *operates at 4 MHz or 3.579545 MHz (NTSC) *14-bit multiplexed data/address bus shared with CPU *20×12 tiled playfield, tiles are 8×8 pixels for a resolution of 159×9 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Instrument
General Instrument (GI) was an American electronics manufacturer based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, specializing in semiconductors and cable television equipment. They formed in New York City in 1923 as an electronics manufacturer. During the 1950s, the company began a series of acquisitions under the direction of Moses Shapiro. Among the more notable purchases was General Transistor in 1960, which led to GI becoming a major producer of transistors, and later, integrated circuits (ICs). By the late 1960s, the company was mostly depending on sales into the television industry, which was further bolstered by the 1967 purchase of Jerrold Electronics. The company changed markets continually. Through the 1970s they focused mostly on the off-track betting market through their purchase of American Totalisator, but this market faced significant competition in the late 1970s. At this time, GI became well known for their ICs including the CP1600 used in the Mattel Intellivision game con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intellivision
The Intellivision (a portmanteau of intelligent television) is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. It distinguished itself from competitors with more realistic sports and strategic games. By 1981, Mattel Electronics had close to 20% of the domestic video game market, selling more than 3.75 million consoles and 20 million cartridges through 1983. At its peak Mattel Electronics had about 1800 employees in several countries, including 110 videogame developers. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued. In 2009, IGN ranked the Intellivision No. 14 on their list of the greatest video game consoles of all time. History The Intellivision was developed at Mattel in Hawthorne, California. By 1969, multiple research and development groups came together as the Preliminary Design departme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NTSC
NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second NTSC standard was adopted, which allowed for color television broadcast compatible with the existing stock of black-and-white receivers. It is one of three major color formats for analog television, the others being PAL and SECAM. ''NTSC color'' is usually associated with the System M; this combination is sometimes called NTSC II. The only other broadcast television system to use NTSC color was the System J. Brazil used System M with PAL color. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos used System M with SECAM color – Vietnam later started using PAL in the early 1990s. The NTSC/System M standard was used in most of the Americas (except Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), Myanmar, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, and some Pacific Isl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tile-based Video Game
A tile-based video game, or grid-based video game, is a type of video game where the playing area consists of small square (or, much less often, rectangular, parallelogram, or hexagonal) graphic images referred to as ''tiles'' laid out in a grid. That the screen is made of such tiles is a technical distinction, and may not be obvious to people playing the game. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a ''tileset''. Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down, side view, or 2.5D view of the playing area, and are almost always two-dimensional. Much video game hardware from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s has native support for displaying tiled screens with little interaction from the CPU. Overview Tile-based games are not a distinct video game genre. The term refers to the technology that the hardware or game engine uses for its visual representation. For example, '' Pac-Man'' is an action game, '' Ultima'' is a role-playing video game an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the smallest element that can be manipulated through software. Each pixel is a Sampling (signal processing), sample of an original image; more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. The Intensity (physics), intensity of each pixel is variable. In color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as RGB color model, red, green, and blue, or CMYK color model, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. In some contexts (such as descriptions of camera sensors), ''pixel'' refers to a single scalar element of a multi-component representation (called a ''photosite'' in the camera sensor context, although ''wikt:sensel, sensel'' is sometimes used), while in yet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snafu (video Game)
''Snafu'' is a video game released by Mattel for its Intellivision gaming console, video game system in 1981. One of a number of Snake (video game genre), snake games released in the late 1970s and early 1980s, ''Snafu'' features players controlling ever-lengthening serpents as they attempt to corner their opponents and trap them. A version of ''Snafu'' was released for Mattel's short-lived Mattel Aquarius, Aquarius personal computer in 1983. Gameplay ''Snafu'' contains 16 different game variations based around two game formats, "Trap" (12 variations) and "Bite" (4 variations). Before gameplay begins, players select the speed of the game, then the desired gameplay variation and finally the number of rounds (up to 99) for that game. "Trap" games may be played by either one or two players; if a controller is not used, the computer assumes control of that player's character. When the round starts, colored serpents appear on the screen inside a rectangular playfield and begin to gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sprite (computer Graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene, most often in a 2D video game. Originally, the term ''sprite'' referred to fixed-sized objects composited together, by hardware, with a background. Use of the term has since become more general. Systems with hardware sprites include arcade video games of the 1970s and 1980s; game consoles including as the Atari VCS (1977), ColecoVision (1982), Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom (1983), Sega Genesis, Genesis/Mega Drive (1988); and home computers such as the TI-99/4 (1979), Atari 8-bit computers (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), MSX (1983), Amiga (1985), and X68000 (1987). Hardware varies in the number of sprites supported, the size and colors of each sprite, and special effects such as scaling or reporting pixel-precise overlap. Hardware composition of sprites occurs as each scan line is prepared for the video output device, such as a cathode-ray tube, without i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertical Blanking Interval
In a raster scan display, the vertical blanking interval (VBI), also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time between the end of the final visible line of a frame or field and the beginning of the first visible line of the next frame or field. It is present in analog television, VGA, DVI and other signals. Here the term field is used in interlaced video, and the term frame is used in progressive video and there can be a VBI after each frame or field. In interlaced video a frame is made up of 2 fields. Sometimes in interlaced video a field is called a frame which can lead to confusion. In raster cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays, the blank level is usually supplied during this period to avoid painting the retrace line—see raster scan for details; signal sources such as television broadcasts do not supply image information during the blanking period. Digital displays usually will not display incoming data stream during the blanking interval even if present. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analog Television
Analog television is the original television technology that uses analog signals to transmit video and audio. In an analog television broadcast, the brightness, colors and sound are represented by amplitude, instantaneous phase and frequency, phase and frequency of an analog signal. Analog signals vary over a continuous range of possible values which means that electronic noise and interference may be introduced. Thus with analog, a moderately weak signal becomes Noise (video), snowy and subject to interference. In contrast, picture quality from a digital television (DTV) signal remains good until the signal level drops below digital cliff, a threshold where reception is no longer possible or becomes intermittent. Analog television may be wireless (terrestrial television and satellite television) or can be distributed over a cable network as cable television. All broadcast television systems used analog signals before the arrival of DTV. Motivated by the lower bandwidth requ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CRT Display
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a frame of video on an analog television set (TV), digital raster graphics on a computer monitor, or other phenomena like radar targets. A CRT in a TV is commonly called a picture tube. CRTs have also been used as memory devices, in which case the screen is not intended to be visible to an observer. The term ''cathode ray'' was used to describe electron beams when they were first discovered, before it was understood that what was emitted from the cathode was a beam of electrons. In CRT TVs and computer monitors, the entire front area of the tube is scanned repeatedly and systematically in a fixed pattern called a raster. In color devices, an image is produced by controlling the intensity of each of three electron beams, one for each ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomson EF9345
The EF9345 from SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, Inc., was a semigraphic single chip microprocessor for video image control, encapsulated in a 40-pin DIP and used primarily in the Matra Alice 32, Matra Alice 90 and Philips VG5000 microcomputers. It was also the video processor of the Minitel 1b terminals, built by either Alcatel and Philips at more than 2 million of units. The EF9345 was capable of displaying 8 colors ( RGB primaries), 128 alphanumeric characters and 128 semigraphic characters. It had one semigraphic mode and 40- and 80-column text modes. It was able to address up to 16KB of dedicated video RAM. Video Modes * 50/60Hz output ** Interlaced or progressive scan *Semigraphics: ** 128 standard character set with 5×7 pixel font dimensions. User definable 8×10 pixel alphanumeric or semigraphic sets. *40 characters × 25 rows text mode (similar to teletext): ** 8 × 10 pixel font ** Selectable background and foreground colors ** Styles: double height, double width, blin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motorola 6845
The Motorola 6845, or MC6845, is a display controller that was widely used in 8-bit computers during the 1980s. Originally intended for designs based on the Motorola 6800 CPU and given a related part number, it was more widely used alongside various other processors, and was most commonly found in machines based on the Zilog Z80 and MOS 6502. The 6845 is not an entire display solution on its own; the chip's main function is to properly time access to the display memory, and to calculate the memory address of the next portion to be drawn. Other circuitry in the machine then uses the address provided by the 6845 to fetch the pattern and then draw it. The implementation of that hardware is entirely up to the designer and varied widely among machines. The 6845 is intended for character displays, but could also be used for pixel-based graphics, with some clever programming. Among its better-known uses are the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, and Videx VideoTerm display cards for the Apple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
