Posted By
JamesD
on 2016-09-18
17:51:06
|  Re: Is the Plus/4 more advanced then the 64?
It's easy to say something wouldn't be difficult, it's another matter if you are trying to fit a design in a fixed number of gates that can fit on a certain size die... which is how the TED became what it is.
I think with a little more room they could have had 4 channel audio, but the SID was out of the question due to the complexity. Of all suggested changes, I think 4 channels (or at least 3) is probably the most feasible.
I think an 8 bit DAC could have been included on the existing die.
Sprite hardware requires a lot of timing, DMA, counters, etc... which take up quite a bit of space on the die.
That's why I think a blitter would have been a better option. I *think* it would require fewer gates to implement, and it's more flexible than sprites anyway. A trade off that is in some ways an enhancement.
It would probably require a larger die than the existing TED though.
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