- MOS Technology TED
The 7360 Text Editing Device (TED) was an
integrated circuit made by MOS Technology, Inc. It was a video chip that also contained sound generation hardware, DRAM refresh circuitry, interval timers, and keyboard input handling. It was designed for the Commodore Plus/4 and 16. Packaging consisted of aJEDEC -standard 48-pin DIP.Video capabilities
The video capabilities provided by the TED were largely a subset of those in the VIC-II. The TED supported five video modes:
* Text mode of 40×25 characters with 8×8 pixels
* Multicolor text (4×8 pixels per character, double pixel width in x direction)
* Extended background color mode (8×8 pixels per character)
* Multicolor Graphics 160×200 pixels
* Hi-Res Graphics 320×200 pixelsThese were largely unchanged from the corresponding VIC-II modes. However, the TED lacked the sprite capabilities of the VIC-II, making it unsuitable for most action games. The TED did include one feature that the VIC-II lacked:
luminance control. Fifteen of its 16 colors (black being the exception) could be assigned one of 8 luminance values, thus making the TED capable of displaying a far wider array of colors than the VIC-II. The full palette of 121 colors is shown below. [Color values are taken from the source code to the [http://yape.plus4.net/ YAPE] Plus/4 emulator.] :ound capabilities
The TED featured a simple tone generator that produced two channels of audio. The first channel produced a
square wave , and the second could produce either a square wave orwhite noise . This tone generator was designed for business applications, and did not provide the extensive sound features found in the SID chip.Other features
The TED includes three
16-bit interval timers, which consist of down counters operating at the master clock frequency. They can generate IRQs on underflow. The chip also contains anI/O port , which is used on the Plus/4 and 16 to scan the keyboard andjoystick . In addition, it handlesbank switching , used by the operating system to maximize the amount of RAM available toCommodore BASIC .An undesirable feature of the chip is its well-known tendency to destroy itself though overheating. To preserve a computer which employs this chip in working order, it is desirable to improve its cooling.
Notes
External links
* [http://www.canberra.edu.au/~scott/C=Hacking/C-Hacking12/gfx.html Talking to TED: The MOS 7360/8360 Text Display ICs]
* [http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/plus4/programming/manual/manual.html TED data sheet]
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