A Tentative Suggestion

[tombo@mail.on-line.co.uk (Richard King)]

Jihad Jaffar and I have been working on a circuit containing a Yamaha
9938 VDP, which we think might be of some interest to the Apple IIgs. The
9938 provides resolutions of up to 512 by 512, in 256(?) colours, with up
to 32 sprites,and  a sophisticated command-set including line-drawing
(but no arcs) and fast block-moves, among others. It can provide
Genlocking, overlaying from another video source, and a lot of other
features, including built-in mouse, light-pen and digitiser support.

We are proposing to implement a higher-level software driver for this
card, on the host system (65XXX based, but not a GS), which we intend to
model very closely upon Quickdraw, down to having the same
data-structures and calls - though the actual calling-mechanism may be
different. 

Question: Does anyone think that there might be sufficient interest in
such a card for the Apple IIgs, assuming that the price would be in the
US$200 - $250 range, to make it worth pursuing this idea further? And if
so, are there any programmers interested in, and able to produce a
tool-patch to use it instead of/as well as Quickdraw, and probably
associated Init, CDev, DA or FExt to control this use?

Please be aware that this is *NOT* a product announcement - it is a
Request for Opinions - and hence, neither is it vapourware. If there is
sufficient interest, it *may* happen, but nothing is promised, much less
guaranteed.

Also, this is not intended to be a 'spoiler' for the long-awaited
TurboRez card - that is (reputedly) going to be a much more sophisticated
beast. This proposal is an alternative, and when the TurboRez is
released, we ourselves intend to get those. Our as-yet-unnamed card is a
way of improving somewhat upon the resolution of the GS, using resources
which are currently available, and which can be put in place with no more
effort than is strictly necessary, but is not expected to be the be-all
and end-all of graphics cards.

Please contact tombo@on-line.co.uk if you have any comments to make on
this proposal.
 
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Obey little, question much - Walt Whitman | The only thing my GS hasn't
Specialisation is for ants - Lazarus Long | got is a go-faster stripe.
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