Palette in Amstrads LC version.

[ZbyniuR]

Some people say LC version of CPC with PreASIC (CRTC4) have the same palette like PLUS, 4096 colors, but without hardware sprites of course. Other say it is not true. Who have right?

I don't care what you hear or read about it, I need answer from people which have LC, and can unblock new colors in PLUS. Is the same way working on LC or not?

[MacDeath]

I never heard about Pre-ASIC having the 4k colours (4096) palette capability...
Would be neat to have such unlockable thing, but I don't think it is the case.

I guess that by LC you meant Lowcost (or Cost Down).


"Pre-ASIC" is said to only include CRTC and gate array from old CPC range but I couldn't find a lot of pages on this chip.
If it had known hidden features, it would already be well known I guess.
It is often refered as "Type4 CRTC"

ASIC - CPCWiki
Gate Array - CPCWiki
CRTC - CPCWiki

documentations:devices:crtc [Grimware]
documentations:devices:gatearray [Grimware]

As it emulates the original components, the colours may be slightly different, but the logic is not supposed to be really different.

[andycadley]

The unlock sequence for the ASIC registers is only recognised by the Plus machines and there is no way the old hardware colour selection could ever support anywhere near 4096 colours.

[gerald]

Some people say LC version of CPC with PreASIC (CRTC4) have the same palette like PLUS, 4096 colors, but without hardware sprites of course. Other say it is not true. Who have right?

I don't care what you hear or read about it, I need answer from people which have LC, and can unblock new colors in PLUS. Is the same way working on LC or not?

The PreAsic just cannot generate more colour than a regular GA simply because they both use the same 1 1/2 bit output "DAC" : a tristate digital pad.

[Ast]

Some people say LC version of CPC with PreASIC (CRTC4) have the same palette like PLUS, 4096 colors, but without hardware sprites of course. Other say it is not true. Who have right?

I don't care what you hear or read about it, I need answer from people which have LC, and can unblock new colors in PLUS. Is the same way working on LC or not?

No way. You can't have more than 27 colours in your Cpc Crtc 4. PreAsic just emulate gate array and crtc, that's all. You could't find any features hidden in this chip, so your Cpc stays a Cpc.

[TFM]

I never heard about Pre-ASIC having the 4k colours (4096) palette capability...

Me neither, that's stuff for April fools day.    Why should they do a cost down version and then integrate an hugely expensive ASIC into that? Cost down means they integrated different ICs into one, but NOT to add new features.

[TFM]

The unlock sequence for the ASIC registers is only recognised by the Plus machines and there is no way the old hardware colour selection could ever support anywhere near 4096 colours.

That's right the old hardware is limited to about 700 when using interlace mode.

[MacDeath]

On the other hand, could have been great if they added a pair of greys and some extra browns in the CPC palette with those cheap-cost-down things...

[TFM]

On the other hand, could have been great if they added a pair of greys and some extra browns in the CPC palette with those cheap-cost-down things...

Right, but then it would have been a cost up.