N64 Modeline

Discussion of development of software for any "obsolete" computer or video game system. See the WSdev wiki and ObscureDev wiki for more information on certain platforms.
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lidnariq
Posts: 11429
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

N64 Modeline

Post by lidnariq »

As far as I can tell, the underlying hardware in the N64's Video Interface supports:

* A constant pixel clock, approximately 12.3MHz (exactly NTSC×17÷5 or PAL×14÷5)
* Something like a standard Xfree86 modeline specifying active width/height, total width/height, sync length and relative start times, but separate values for even and odd fields when interlaced
* A bilinear interpolator or nearest-neighbor with a fixed-point scaler to expand (or shrink) the framebuffer to fit the actual output stage.

So ... it looks like it should be able to natively draw anything that's remotely sane with that low of a pixel clock, such as 320x480@60Hz.

Has anyone ever written a program that would natively play around with the parameters? I know that most N64s don't generate an output format that would accept higher hsync rates...
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