The VERA video chip supports resolutions up to 640x480 with up to 256 colors from a palette of 4096, two layers of either a bitmap or tiles, 128 sprites of up to 64x64 pixels in size. It can output VGA as well as a 525 line interlaced signal, either as NTSC or as RGB (Amiga-style).
See the VERA Programmer's Reference for the complete reference.
The X16 KERNAL uses the following video memory layout:
Addresses | Description |
---|---|
$00000-$12BFF | 320x240@256c Bitmap |
$12C00-$12FFF | unused |
$13000-$1AFFF | Sprites ($1000 per sprite) |
$1B000-$1EBFF | Text Mode |
$1EC00-$1EFFF | unused |
$1F000-$1F7FF | Charset |
$1F800-$1F9BF | unused |
$1F9C0-$1FFFF | VERA internal (PSG, Palette, Sprite Registers) |
Application software is free to use any part of video RAM if it does
not use the corresponding KERNAL functionality. To restore text mode,
call CINT
($FF81).