potatohead Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Saw a question on Retro Stack Overflow and thought people here might have an opinion: Does anyone know of any graphics chips from the 70's or 80's that naturally produced composite NTSC video, outside of the TMS9918ANL? This is for a vintage computer design. What would you use that isn't an FPGA or microcontroller? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 Are video encoders out of the question? https://console5.com/wiki/CXA2075 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted October 11, 2020 Share Posted October 11, 2020 The Yamaha V9938 has composite output. Then there is the MOS/CSG VIC (VIC-20) and the VIC-II (C64 and C128 models,) with a little extra circuitry* you can get composite from the Motorola 6847, MOS 6545, or MOS 7360 (Plus/4 and C16.) Also the Atari 8-bit video chips. Plus there are Intel chips which can produce video used in consoles, and I recall a couple of video chips in the 80/81 catalog which produce composite output. Now, which would I use? Depends upon what I want to build and how easy I want it to be to program. Each chip has its own strength and weaknesses versus the other. Shared RAM with the CPU or segregated video RAM? Scroll registers? Fixed or palette colors? Number of colors? Sprites? Text-only? CPU compatibility? I have no answer since I have no wish-list for my very own computer. * Granted, this is not natively composite, you will be dealing with Y/C or Y/R-Y/B-Y, but even the 9918A needs a few components off the composite output. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted October 13, 2020 Author Share Posted October 13, 2020 Thanks! It really was TI handsome oddballs. The rest was Moto, discrete logic and customs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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