Chapter 1
Introduction and Specifications
Introduction
The
Z-329 Monochrome Video Card interfaces between the computer sys-
tem
and the video monitor. The Z-329 Card provides avideo output com-
patible with the output from
an
IBM
monochrome video card.
The
Z-329 Card provides one page of memory stored
in
static RAM. Two
pages (interlaced) or four pages (non-interlaced) of data can
be
stored
if
the optional 8K x 8 RAMs are installed. The characters are stored
in
ASCII code.
An
8-bit attribute byte, also stored
in
RAM,
is
associated
with
each ASCII character. The characters are converted into pixel drive
data by acharacter ROM located on the card. The
ROM
converts the
ASCII
code into the correct pixel drive data to create the characters
on
the
monitor.
Up
to
80 characters can
be
displayed
in
each of the 25 lines of the display.
The
attributes allow any character to
be
blanked (not displayed), blink,
underlined, intensified, ordisplayed
in
reverse video (black on white).
The
addresses of the control registers and of the memory
on
this card
are
different than those of the other video cards available with the
Z-100@)PC.
This means that the standard video card (red-green-blue dis-
play,
low/high-resolution graphics) and the Z-319 Bit-Mapped Video
Graphics Card (Z-100 compatible, high-resolution graphics) can
be
left
in
the
computer.
@Z-100 is atrademark
of
Zenith Data Systems Corporation.
