Re: Hacking the Laser 128EX/2

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 15 Jul 1999 05:04:43 GMT, supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:

>The video system appears completely isolated.  Unlike the Apple II, the
>Laser's motherboard runs at 3.6Mhz (thus, all the RAM chips are 120ns).
>However, I noticed that there are 64k of 150ns chips (two chips=64k).  From
>the Laser advertisements, this is the "video RAM."  Apparently, they've
>solved the timing problems of a faster motherboard by having separate
>memory for video.  Neat!  Now this is not as efficient, obviously.  There is
>192k of memory on the main motherboard, but only 128k shows up as
>system RAM.

I discovered while flipping through my Laser 128 manual the other day
that the Laser's also support two video modes that the Apple IIs
don't.  They support 280x384 with the 8 hi-res colours and 560x384
with the 16 double-hi-res colours.  Apparently it is an interlaced
signal so these modes would probably flicker some.  I'd like to try
these out.

I wonder why Apple never caught on to this idea?  Maybe it is because
the 560x384 monochrome mode could be used to by a Mac emulation card.
:)

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