Re: Changing the ASCII characters

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <6hefdk$18s$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
Paul Francis Gilbert <pfg@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>>   For an Apple II, burn a new character generator ROM chip. As Apple
>>was about the only company which made those chips, there's no real dox
>>available, and this would only work on computers you modified. If you
>>don't mind a massive speed hit and don't mind losing compatability
>>with most programs, you could use the hires or double hires screens as
>>a graphical environment with your own custom fonts.

>This isn't actually as bad speedwise as you might think. Going back years
>ago, I seem to recall that one issue of the Apple Nibble magazine had a
>program to create a command shell in full graphics mode, or something like
>that. Anyone else remember it, and the it's details?

   June or July 86 Nibble I believe (collection is at home and would
have to check). Yes, I typed it in. Speed was so-so-- you could draw
some stuff, but any time you tried to scroll the screen, massive speed
hit. With unrolled loops, you can draw things relatively quickly, but
the graphical full screen (8 or 16K for single or double hires) redraw
penalty is far more significant than moving around the 1 or 2K of ram
for 40/80 column text-- just in terms of ram to copy around, that's
1/8 the speed when you go graphical.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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