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From: apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Comments on STE -- (un)known facts
Message-ID: <1824@atari.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 89 21:45:17 GMT
References: <2310@pkmab.se> <370002@acf5.NYU.EDU> <2348@pkmab.se>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 41

daniel@pkmab.se (Daniel Deimert) writes:
>mitsolid@acf5.NYU.EDU (Thanasis Mitsolides) writes:
>>>What it has
>>> [...deleted...]
>>
>>How much memory? What kind of a monitor? What resolution?
>>And what is the price? Just curious.
>1 Mb of memory in the 1040 STE, as I said it's is a slightly modified
>1040 ST.
>The same monitors as before. And as far as I can tell there's no change
>in resolution either [...]

The changes in video are as follows:

	The color palette has 4096 colors, not the ST's 512. That's
four bits each for red, green, and blue.  You still get the same number
onscreen at a time (4 or 16) but the shades can be finer, and you
can get 16 true grey levels.

	The video address can be changed on a line-by-line basis.
This makes split-screen stuff really easy.

	The video memory buffer can be larger than the screen.
The screen then becomes a "window" onto this larger canvas.

	The video can start on any word boundary.

	Each line can be delayed by any number of bits.

What this all adds up to is horizontal and vertical scrolling by bits,
and split-screen effects which are effortless and not memory- or
time-consuming.  You can, for instance, load a large "landscape" into
memory, like a whole Gauntlet level, and slide the "window" around by
individual pixels, taking ZERO TIME rather than the huge time required
to move the memory around.  In addition, you can have the static
(non-scrolling) part like the scores at the top or bottom: it won't
have to be moved around, copied, or anything.

============================================
Opinions expressed above do not necessarily	-- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else.	  ...ames!atari!apratt