Posted By
MMS
on 2024-01-24
13:24:15
 |  Re: Your thoughts: 3d accelerator card for the plus/4
I remember when the PC CPUs started to be really fast, and they tried software rendering.
It never reached the same level of details, shading, colors and speed as the basic Riva128 with HW acceleration (the very first card I bought after the useless S3Trio3D)
Why I say that? Because speeding up the CPU is a potential alternative on this computer. You use exactly the same commands, but it executes faster. On Plus/4 there is a chance doing this, if you use only SRAM andall the ROM content is in the SRAM too as a shadow ROM. The TED given FRQ can be 2xquadriplied with frq mulitiplier (~13,6MHz) and the 14Mhz capable WDC65C02S could be used instead of 8501, though you loose the irregular commands. Th 6502 is compatible with the fastloaders
On the screen area the computer would be the same speed as now due to TED, while on the border it will be close to 14MHz. RAM and ROM access could be changed to SRAM, reacts way faster (so all the BASIC routines and interpreter could be faster).
The only quastion is the are TED registers and the ICs, like 8511, how much you need to wait to able to switch a register before doing anything with the new mode...
This idea is much better than my original brainstorming on an external eZ80 at 25Mhz (equal to a 6502 runs on 40mHz)), that could work mainly as an external FPU, as not code compatible with 8501, though at that time I was thinking a little CP/M and a little SymbOS.
BTW did you know that the ATARI GEM/TOS and GEMDOS are definitely a version of CP/M?
But still, the approx 5x faster machine cannot make a miracle on 3D vectors, or the attribute gfx be as sharp and fast as a 320x200+121 color chunky display with 3D support 
At least Driller would be way faster than on ZX Spectrum
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