>Actually, the Atari 2600 video computer system (came out in '77) tended to
>use a "virtual display system"; the display hardware on that thing is dirt
>simple, but with proper software it can do some amazing things (Solaris, for
>example, is incredible).  Interestingly, until Activision came on the scene,
>the "virtual display" was chunky and pretty feeble-looking; Activision used
>some cool hacks to double the display resolution and most programmers since
>have followed their lead.  As a result, while the early Atari graphics
weren't


I recently hooked up a 2600 and looked at a few of the old Activision
games.  Pretty impressive when you consider how primitive the hardware is.


I've also been thinking about the low-end scientific calculators lately.
There must be quite a bit of floating point (or BCD) code in that little
chip to support all the trig, hyperbolic trig, log, and power functions.
Sure it's slow, but it's also cheap.  Think you could fit all those
functions into a PIC with similiar precision?  (24 bit mantissa FP won't
cut it, maybe BCD?)


later,
newell