HiColor image display on CoCo 3

HiColor running on the Tandy Color Computer 3.
This program let you load and display bmp images on the CoCo 3. Normally the CoCo is only able to display 16 colors, but with a number of tricks it can be coaxed into displaying thousands of colors on-screen.

For more information and a download, check out:
http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/hicolor/hicolor.html

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• CoCo
• Color
• Computer
• Demo
• Sock
• Master
• tandy
• trs-80

[McKottfars]

Is it some kind of flicker routine? (flicker two images to get a lot of colors)

[sockypoo]

Yes, but it also applies a combination of other tricks to improve the perceived image.

Both of the flicker frames contain the same image - same colors and brightness - only the dither phase changes. This makes flicker for all practical purposes, non-flickering.

Other tricks are setting palette registers each scan line so that 64 true colors are displayed instead of 16 and the palettes are selected and dithered to allow maximum visible colors with minimal visual flicker or jitter.

[CrazyJesseful]

Amazing!

[WarpedTrekker]

This is amazing program, yet it's sad that none of these cool programs and games came out during the CoCo's prime life in the 80's. These programs would have really boosted the community even more. It's also ashame that lots of difficult tricks are needed to do these things.

If they would've never disabled/hide the 256-color mode, and would've put a separate audio processor to offload cpu cycles, things would've been much better.

[richardbirch2007]

Looks similar to tasty Amiga HAM ;P

[ShamW0W]

My buddy back in the day actually had this camera rig that he used with his CoCo that had 3 filter R,G,B he used it with some kinda dump program and would make images like the ones you are describing. The so called "True Color" images

[manonpiano]

I had a Coco3 when i was a kid and it´s sad to see the poor development that the computer had by radio shack when having so much capabilities to give better performance with a couple of tweaks :(

[GreenDayRlz]

I think you have to TRASH the program that comes w/ the computer in the 6809. (just burn roms 2 back-up)and make it ONLY do that. I`ts quite easy.also-coco3 can display 64 colors, which isn`t even on the screen that i can see so much.WELL DONE THOUGH!