Does anybody have any thoughts on how one might generate and output NTSC video on a PicoCalc? I’m thinking to keep things simple at the start one might go with monochrome output at whatever resolution can be managed (ideally 640 pixels across and 200 to 240 lines). Later one could look at hacking in colour through adding a colour burst and hacking in artifact colours, if timing constraints permit the higher bandwidth needed for that.
There are two areas where this would be helpful for me:
- To get a decent 80-column display, which sadly the 320-pixel internal display can’t really do unless you want to live with 3-pixel wide characters. (After doing some research I understand why this doesn’t use a higher resolution display, but this is still a bit disappointing for things like NEC PC-8001 emulation.)
- To generate test patterns, which would be handy since I’m likely to be carrying this device around anyway.