Francois,
you have an odd habit to try to enforce and continue a discussion, when all relevant things already have been stated. But anyway:
even if the 656x has 14 bits of addresses, it is attached to 1 block of 1k of RAM and another one of 4K. So talking about 16k of addressable, in this case is irrelevant.
First of all, there's also the character ROM, so there are already 9K in an unmodded VIC-20, which the VIC chip can access. It is possible, with a hardware modification, to add another 3K at $0400..$0FFF and also 2K at $9800..$9FFF as VIC addressable memory, as internal expansion. The 3K has been done by various people (me included). The extra 2K VRAM in the I/O area have been proposed - anyone who does those should be wary it wouldn't be compatible with control registers of cartridges.
Even with an unmodified VIC-20, and excluding the character ROM, the VIC chip can already address
5K of RAM! Not 4K.
Still this is irrelevant to the displayable vertical resolution. 192 pixels height can be done on both PAL and NTSC anyway. Exactly this was, what you disputed in your earlier statement. Bringing this into conjunction with the addressable memory is just plain wrong!
My point was, the PAL version can display more pixels vertically and you essentially confirmed it.
I didn't bring any higher resolutions into this discussion until you brought them forth as examples what could be done with a tile-based "sparse" bitmap, when the techniques of emulated DMA, that tokra and I pioneered were not available. Once again, this isn't relevant to the 160x192 resolution, which can just be set up, and handled by the VIC chip. With 0% CPU overhead.
Why would you want me to confirm the higher vertical resolution of the PAL VIC anyhow? It's all in the data sheet. On what grounds would I able able to deny this? Why would I want to? Of course I'd be all wrong if I told people there's no difference between PAL and NTSC VIC chips. But I don't tell people this wrong fact. All I tried to convey to you is, that the 160x192 resolution can be displayed not only on PAL but also on NTSC.
The fact that you use this architecture in a manner where there is a correspondence of 1:1 between screen pixels and bits in memory changes NOTHING to the fact hidden under it is a system of tiles
It is there. I wouldn't deny this. But it is just (once again!) irrelevant, when it comes to "real world" use of the bitmap.
I (and everyone else who sets up this mode) can use the address range $1100..$1FFF as full fledged bitmap. Period. The VIC-I needs a properly initialised text screen, which serves as address generator into the bitmap. Other video chips use other methods to generate those addresses. Doesn't make it any more or less bitmap.
and that you can use this system to cheat on the maximum resolution.
Then you still have a graphic display, yes. But not anymore a bitmap.
And anyway, what's about this notion of "cheating"? There's the video chip, there's the RAM. All that matters, is that what I want to display is at the right place in RAM at the right time so VIC can fetch the data and display it.
This is what truly opened the way to the higher, fully bitmapped resolutions, that tokra and I constructed. Even if the bitmap is now distributed between static RAM contents and operand fields of LDA #imm instructions, I still can point you to a bit in RAM, point you to a pixel on screen, have that 1:1 correspondence, and thus there's a - bitmap! Unlike the "static" approach of the bitmap as done by MINIGRAFIK, this is a dynamic approach. But it's only the result that counts: 224x280 pixels in PAL, 192x416 (interlaced) in NTSC as maximum resolution with (mostly) unchanged colour resolution, slightly less with dynamic changes of the colour registers. Or you get FLI modes with much enhanced colour resolution, near the standard pixel resolution.
It also changes nothing to the fact this system of tiles provides for a higher potential vertical resolution on PAL VIC-20 vs NTSC and nothing to the fact this sort of trick cannot be done on the C64 because the 6567/6569 have the same displayable number of rows/columns.
I wasn't talking about the C64. One other thing you bring into the discussion, that isn't related to the fact that 192 pixels vertical resolution can be done on both PAL and NTSC.
So the only place where I was wrong, [...]
What you are now doing is called: "Extending the Battle Zone". You try to divert the discussion into topics which are irrelevant to your original, wrong assertion. When you are told in no uncertain terms, that what you said is clearly wrong, and unexplainably so - you bring forth other subjects which are at the best only mildly connected. You could just accept you have been oblivious to well known facts, and this would be o.k.
I am not going to discuss anything beyond this point regarding your picture about my mind setup.
@pixel: Sorry - but I felt the need to reply to this. No more extra de-railing of this thread by me. Promised.
P.S. Oh, and this one:
Ha... so saying VFLI uses interlace implies I said the 'I' means interlace...
VFLI doesn't use interlace.