• Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      That screenshot is specifically from the Atari 2600. You can tell because sprites that are next to each other are offset by one vertical pixel, which was a common effect used to help with hardware limitations.

      • bss03@infosec.pub
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        1 day ago

        IIRC, the 2600 didn’t have a graphics processor. So, you had to “chase the ray” with CPU instructions, which made for some interesting limitations.

        • Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          It has the TIA, which is as close to a picture processor (and also audio synthesizer) as you can get, but due to the 128 bytes of RAM, there was not enough RAM to form a framebuffer, hence the need to race the beam.

          • bss03@infosec.pub
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            23 hours ago

            Thanks for the clarification. I was too young to program the 2600. I started programming on PC-compatible.