Blog – Page 2 – Catrin Labs

Compy system architecture and video display

April 22, 2019| fcatrin

Before reading this entry I recommend you to read this introductory post to understand how video display works. I’ve seen several attempts to make new video display hardware for older computers or processors, and many of them have taken the approach to focus on the hardware first. Although I think this is the realistic approach, […]

Early Computer Architecture and Video display generation

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019| fcatrin

Sometimes we think that we know a lot of how computers work because we know how to code for them at a very low level – directly to the chips registers – we imagine our code almost driving every pixel on the screen, but digging into how to make the display work prove me that […]

CLC-88 Compy – The 8 bit computer

April 11, 2019April 13, 2019| fcatrin

Now it’s time to start making some decisions for the 8-bit computer. One of the hardest decisions is what CPU to use, because any option would leave out half of the potential coders. Most of the coders with asm abilities are skilled in only one of the two most popular processors, the 6502 or the […]

Video chip initial thoughts

April 11, 2019April 13, 2019| fcatrin

One part that is is not so obvious in this project is the video chip. If we would use a video chip from the 8 bit era it would be directly tied to a specific computer aesthetics, like the infamous attribute clash in the Spectrum, the four colors per line on the Atari, or the […]

Catrin Labs Computers : The Beginning

April 11, 2019August 4, 2020| fcatrin

Some time ago 8-Bit Guy presented a wonderful idea, to design a retro computer using modern technology. This is something that I had flying around my head once I started porting Prince of Persia for the Atari 800 (probably), so when I was watching this video I had a felling of “this is it”. Sadly, […]