532 Part 2 ½
Regions of Computer Space Section 7 ½
Language-Based Computers
CRT. The purpose of having two line buffers is to provide the Display Logic with one full line of characters to display while the Control Logic is loading the next line of 80 characters into the other buffer. This means that the Control Logic is actually one line ahead of the display. When the Control Logic has entered 80 characters into a line buffer, it waits for the Display Logic to indicate that it is ready for a new line. The Control Logic provides the Display Logic with the newly filled Line Buffer and starts to refill the used Line Buffer with new data. This occurs for each character line on the display. As the Control Logic completes each line it signals the Display Logic that there is a full Line Buffer. The Display Logic cannot wait for a new line once one has been requested, or the data will not be displayed in the correct position on the screen. So if a new hill Line Buffer is not available when the Display Logic indicates that it is ready for a new line, the Display Logic will blank the video for the remainder of the page. This is done because the Control Logic and Display Logic will not be synchronized until the beginning of the new page. The Line Buffer must be filled in 637 m
s. This figure comes from the time it takes to display the 15 scans that make up the dot matrix of a line of characters. For each scan all 80 words in the buffer are read 15 times before the buffer is refilled.
The Display's Effect on the Mainframe
On account of the nature of the display's mode of data retrieval, there is a definite effect on the performance of the mainframe. Since it is necessary for the display to access memory on a regular basis, it uses memory cycles which might have been used by the PPU for other operations. This will inevitably slow down the PPU. The PPU can execute about 1 million memory cycles per second. The display must read at least one word for every two lines of characters (two blank lines) but doesn't need to read more than 82 words per line of characters (a feature byte and a character byte in every word with a new word address). If a character line is 40 words in length (80 characters or partial lines with features), the display will require 40 memory cycles/line ´ 25 lines/page ´ 60 pages/s, or 60,000 memory cycles per second. This would reduce the PPU to the use of 940,000 memory cycles per second, or a 6.0 percent increase in execution time. These memory cycles may also indirectly slow the LPU by temporarily holding the Dual Port Memory Controller in an inconvenient position, but that result is probably negligible.
Over a short term (less than 637 m s) the display will be accessing memory to fill a single line of characters. This rate is 158,000 memory cycles per second, which increases PPU execution time by 23 percent (PPU will be allowed 763,000 memory cycles per second). However, as soon as the line is complete, memory access drops to zero until the next line needs to be refreshed.
A conflict occurs when some peripheral device, such as a disk, attempts a burst-mode DMA and where the efficiency of the device depends upon a data transfer rate close to the maximum. The problem arises when the display requires a sufficient number of memory cycles to complete a character line in less than 637 m s while at the same time a disk requires data at a rate determined by the rotating speed of the disk. If the display is allowed memory cycles in such a DMA burst, a disk location might be past the head when the data finally arrive. Similarly, if the display is deprived of memory cycles during the burst, the analog scanning of the display might have started displaying a line before the digital circuitry has completely acquired and processed the next line from memory. To avoid this and allow for efficient use of disk systems the following convention has been adopted. If the display is deprived of enough memory cycles that it cannot fill a character line by the time that line starts to be scanned on the display, then the remainder of the video output for that page will be blanked. Video will be resumed at the beginning of the next instance of displaying that page. Therefore, it is possible for the display to be blank for about 0.3 s if a DMA occurs which reads 64 Kbyte of memory at once. A longer blanked period can occur if smaller DMAs occur regularly after the start of each refresh cycle.
Graphics Overview
Graphics-mode operations allows the generation of entirely arbitrary patterns on the CRT screen through the use of a separate graphics raster. The screen appears as a field 560 dots wide by 455 dots high. The CRT is equipped with an additional interface (select code 13) and a 16-kiloword cache memory. A correspondence between the bits in the cache memory and the dots on the screen is established. The user's software, with help from extra BASIC language constructs supplied by a GRAPHICS option ROM, can generate an image on the CRT by manipulating the contents of the cache memory.
The graphics mode of operation has its own cursors, including one for digitizing information presented on the screen. Also, the CRT need not be in the graphics mode for manipulation of the graphics memory to occur. The CRT display can be switched between the graphics image and the regular alphanumeric format at will.
An additional feature is the CRT-Thermal Printer dump. This was made possible by providing the ability to use the contents of the 16K cache memory as a source of data to drive the internal thermal printer. That printer has a thermal printhead with 560 uniformly spaced print resistors. The Graphics Dump produces a dot-for-dot image of the CRT's graphics-mode display on the printer.
References
Shaw [1974]