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Are unusued bytes of palettes readable & writable?
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 4:09 pm
by Petruza
I've read that unused bytes of the palettes in VRAM, I.E. $3F04, $3F08, $3F0C and their mirrors, are general purpose 6bit registers.
So, they are just 6bit memory positions that can be read and written through $2006 / $2007 ?
Does anyone recall debugging / disassembling a game that used those registers?
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2010 8:20 pm
by thefox
I doubt anybody was THAT short on normal RAM.
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 1:01 am
by Bregalad
Yes. The only way to display those color is to use forced VBlank and point at them with $2006.
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 7:25 am
by Petruza
Bregalad wrote:Yes. The only way to display those color is to use forced VBlank and point at them with $2006.
Please explain further.
Colors? you mean use them as actual palette indexes?
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 7:29 am
by tepples
If you turn off rendering and point the VRAM address at a color, the color will display on the screen, even if it is one of the ordinarily unused alternate background colors (CGRAM $3F04, $3F08, $3F0C). This is the only way to put those three CGRAM entries through the video output.
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 8:38 am
by tokumaru
Petruza wrote:Please explain further.
Colors? you mean use them as actual palette indexes?
If the VRAM address register is pointing to the palette area while rendering is disabled, the color being pointed is shown on the screen, rather than color 0.
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 9:27 am
by blargg