At 9:27 pm +0100 13/5/99, Stuart Brady wrote: >What was the Kaleidoscope's display like?
The Kaleidoscope was a bit pointless really. It incresed the Sam's palette range from 7-bit to 15-bit, but didn't increase the number of CLUT entries. ie. only sixteen colours on the screen at a time (modulo the coding techniques such as palette line, which only help in specific limited cases). > Oh, and did anyone get round >to selling a SAM Accelerator? No. Simon Cooke and Martin Rookyard has a working design, but unfortunately (due to a complete and total lack of support from the market-leading magazine editor, software publisher and hardware manufacturer at the time[1]) the accelerator never reached the market. Damn shame. More recently, the idea resurfaced for a while, in a project codenamed "SamSon", which involved collecting together every upgrade that anyone had designed in the past five years, lumping it together into one new box, and giving Bob Brenchley all the credit for the finished product. Unfortunately he involved himself in the technical discussions as well as the management, so it all went a bit pear-shaped. Apparently what the Sam really needed was a brand-new 32K external ROM, but even that hasn't managed to get itself built yet. Of course, a bad situation got worse when the new EMC regulations came into force... Andrew [1] First it was called impossible - the idea couldn't ever get off the drawing board. Then Simon took a working prototype to a Gloucester show... so the accelerator was branded unnecessary, Sam users would never want or need it - the software runs fast enough as it is. -- | Andrew Collier | email [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Talk sense to a | Part 2 NatSci | http://carou.sel.cam.ac.uk/ | fool and he +----------------+----------------ICQ:38645805-+ calls you foolish | Selwyn College Student Computer Support Team | -- Euripides
