Thread: Mk14 vdu
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Old 30th Oct 2020, 8:19 pm   #717
SiriusHardware
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,586
Default Re: Mk14 vdu

Agree that FW352 is the final pre-optimised version, works flawlessly but IMO slows the system down far too much. We'll always have that one to fall back on and to work forwards from.

FW523 is the first optimised version where Karen had spotted and fixed that Port-A read/write issue, so that is what I consider to be the mainstream optimised version with other subsequent versions as 'forks' or experimental versions. This is the first version where the screen started to be rendered properly in both Character and Graphics mode, at least on the non-A variant PIC, and also where the MK14 started to work normally again in terms of running speed / display scanning speed. This is an improvement well worth trying to keep, I think.

Some of the later versions were where various things were tried in order to fix the 'graphics mode shudder' which afflicted only 'A' versions of the IC. We are all now agreed that we just fix that by using the non-A variant of the chip, so I think we should regress back to FW523 which was devoid of those mods.

Other later mods were aimed at fixing the current 'occasionally writes go to the wrong memory page' problem which we still have, but as they unfortunately didn't solve the problem, I would say we should again go back to FW523 which doesn't have those redundant mods in it so we are working from the cleanest 'optimised and almost working' version we have.
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