Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!sgi!maverick
From: maverick@cl2devy.SGI.COM (Steve Whitney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Atari Blitter Information
Keywords: blitter
Message-ID: <18771@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: 9 Aug 88 20:48:24 GMT
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Distribution: na
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 20

As far as I know, the information below is incorrect.  It was posted in
comp.arch as article 6110.  Would someone who soed know please post a
response in comp.sys.atari.st and comp.arch, please?

> ...  An example is the (still not released,
                          ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~  I responded to this
> I believe) Atari blitter.  It was just a rectangle-copy chip, no special ops,
                                ~~~ note past tense
> nothing else.  Compare this to the amiga chips, where the blitter was part of
> the original design.  The blitter has 256 operations (3-source,1 dest), can
> also do line-draw and fills, and is only a small part of chip it's on, and
> shares hardware with other special purpose functions of the chips, like
> dma channel addressing and arbitration.

> Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup

As I understand it, the Atari blitter does do line drawing and area fills.
If this is the case, let's correct the record.

		--Steve Whitney