Microtan technical reference

Display format

How the 32×16 character display maps into memory and selects text or chunky graphics.

The display is made up of 16 rows of 32 characters in a contiguous block beginning at address 0200. Characters are sequential: the first line begins at 0200, the next at 0220, and so on.

Representative display-memory addresses
02000201021E021F
02200221023E023F
03C003C103DE03DF
03E003E103FE03FF

A single character cell may contain either an ASCII character or a chunky-graphics character. Reading from address BFF0 causes subsequent writes to the display to appear as chunky graphics. Writing to BFF3 causes subsequent characters to appear as ASCII characters. It is not possible to determine whether a particular displayed cell contains an ASCII or chunky-graphics character.

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