Breakthrough in TRS-80 Graphics

The venerable TRS-80 Model 3 (and its forebearer the Model 1) could display graphics at a resolution of 128 x 48. Those were sturdy pixels you didn't have to squint to see. Unless you wanted to use most of the screen, drawing something like an airplane was difficult:

I've discovered techniques that increase that resolution by up to 4 times vertically. That means our airplane can look like this:

Put that together with a bunch of hair-pulling programming and you can have a few planes moving across the screen:

Check out the blitz page where you can download and see the finished version. I've written a number of other demos:

• The classic bouncing ball
• Marquee lights
• Apple ][ bload
• Full-screen 128 x 192 graphics
• 24 x 156 x 5 graphics
• All 320 characters at once
• Scrolling star fields
• Double resolution Dancing Demon

And I will be writing more.

Read on to learn how it's done.

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George Phillips, July 8, 2009, george -at- 48k.ca