Re: Compare Atari and Apple II

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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In article <%n1mb.3430$%x5.1071@twister.austin.rr.com>,
Bryan Parkoff <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
>    Atari was competing against Apple II by adding 128 colors, but it does
>not have higher than 160x192 resolution.  Do you think that Apple Corp, Inc
>feels sorry that it can only limit up to 16 colors.

The Apple IIGS can display more than 16 colors at a time.  The video
hardware allows for each of the 200 scanlines to use colors from any one of
16 palettes.  Each palette can have 16 colors, so that's 256 colors right
there (with some limitations).

Furthermore, by updating the palette information continuously while the
screen is being drawn, you can effectively provide a different set of 16
colors for each scanline.  This is what's called "3200-color mode." It's
CPU-intensive (the palettes need to be updated on a tight schedule 780 times
per second to pull it off), but it works.

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