Timing

ANTIC, GTIA and timing info

First the links to the chip info: ANTIC, GTIA.

Note: Most of this info was gathered/tested on PAL equipment. There may be significant differences on NTSC systems. I'll try to note where are the main diffs.

How is the video generated

ANTIC does all the screen processing for programmer (unlike 2600, where programmer had to push all the graphics info on the fly to the TIA). It takes the playfield data, player missile data (PMG), display list data from the main bus on the speed of the cpu using DMA. For each byte ANTIC reads from the bus causes main CPU to stop - this is called cycle stealing. ANTIC also does the DRAM refresh, this is also performed as a DMA task and steals the cycles too.

The playfield data is then sent to GTIA on three bit ANx bus on the double speed. GTIA colors the bits, adds PM graphics, evaluates the collisions and outputs some analog data (sync and color info) and some digital data (luminance info).

Important terms

CPU cycle - the speed of the bus in PAL computers is 1 773 447 Hz, on NTSC computers it's 1 789 773 Hz.
Pixel - smallest addressable picture element. In Atari the pixels are one color clock wide, in hires modes, they're one half of color clock wide
Color clock - the speed of the video. There are 2 color clocks per one CPU cycle
Scanline - scanline consists of 228 color clocks (114 CPU clocks). There are 312 scanlines in PAL mode, 262 in NTSC mode.

Vertical events description

Scanlines, from the top of the screen:

PAL	NTSC	Description
274	TODO	set VSYNC
278	TODO	reset VSYNC
0	TODO	reset VCOUNT
8	TODO	start of display
248	TODO	start of VBLANK

Horizontal events description

Color clocks, from the left of the screen, same for PAL/NTSC:

Cclock	Description
0	Start HSYNC
14	End HSYNC
32	End HBLANK & Start wide
34	Start display
44	Start displayed wide
48	Start normal & start HSCROL
64	Start narrow
128	Center
192	End narrow
208	End WSYNC & end normal
220	End displayed wide
222	Start HBLANK & inc VCOUNT & end display
224	End wide

Cycle counting - DLIST

Each byte of display list takes one cycle. First byte is taken on cclock 0, two optional ones on cclocks 10 & 12.

Cycle counting - PMG

Missile takes one byte on scanline (cclock 226). Players take 4 cycles on scanline (cclocks 2-8). It doesn't matter if one or two lines resolution is on, DMA is done on every line anyway. If player DMA is on, missile DMA is turned on automatically. There's 240 cycles per frame taken. GTIA 'knows' (probably from ANx bus communication) when the scanline begins, so it counts the cycles and then grabs the content of the data bus for PMG data. If GRACTL is 'on' but PMG DMA is off, the flickering happens, that is nothing else but the content of the data bus (which looks random).

Cycle counting - refresh

On most lines, 9 cycles of refresh are taken. Only in hires text modes the refresh cycles are preempted by the playfield dma, so only 1 refresh cycle occurs, with the exception of narrow mode, where 2 refresh cycles occur.

Cycle counting - playfield

For graphics modes, all bytes are fetched on first line once and then repeated on succeding lines.

For text modes, on first scanline the character codes and graphics data are fetched, on succeding lines only the graphics data are fetched.

Cycle counting - VSCROL

TODO

Cycle counting - HSCROL

TODO

Cycle counting - example

Graphics 0 screen:

Type Cycles

DLIST 32

Characters 40 * 24 960

PF 40 * 24 * 8 7680

REF 312 * 9 - 8 * 24 2616

Total DMA 11288

Total free 24280

Total cycles 312 * 114 35568

See the attached picture for better info: gr.0 (15 KB PNG)

ANTIC modes

TODO

ANx bus

AN2	AN1	AN0	Description
0	0	0	background
0	0	1	VSYNC
0	1	0	HBLANK & reset hi-res
0	1	1	HBLANK & set hi-res
1	0	0	PF0
1	0	1	PF1
1	1	0	PF2
1	1	1	PF3

In hi-res graphics modes are 1xx states understood as 2 pixels.
In GTIA modes, 1xx states are halves of pixes, first left, then right one. Back (c) 1998-2004 Jindroush Last modified: Wed Apr 28 22:02:44 2004