Hi thorsinclair, now that I re-read your comment, what I was experimenting with doesn't look like what you describe because I don't have extra video memory. The palette allows to assign each of the 4 or 16 pixel values to one of 4096 possible colours, though.thorsinclair wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 8:03 amCool stuff. Sounds very tempting. Would this meant to be plugged into the expansion port (normally occupied by Gold Cards etc.) or be an internal version?M68008 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 12:30 amYes, and as an aside (I don't mean to hijack this thread) I started writing something like that (QL graphics card) for fun some time ago. I have some FPGA code running on Mister and using the QL screen format, palettes, 15 sprites, hardware scrolling and more. Very far from finished, especially as I wanted to add even more features and still doing some historical research when I have time.thorsinclair wrote: ↑Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:08 pm Am I right to assume that if you were to add more memory and a FPGA there would even more colors be possible ein Mode 4 and 8 and that this would rather be a 'graphics card' instead of a replacement board?
Two ways one could interface such a thing to a real QL, each with pros and cons: either as an expansion card or as a ZX8301 replacement. In my case, I chose the second one, since more than anything else it is a thought experiment about how the QL might have looked in the 80s if Sinclair wanted to provide it with some multimedia and gaming capabilities from the start. I think the rest of the design for such a machine could still have looked exactly like the QL, except that it would have needed the full 16 bit 68000, faster RAM, and perhaps more responsive 8049 firmware. (Also better sound of course, but that's outside the scope of my experiment.)