Product specifications

Address to
decimal
0000 - start of pattern generator table
6143 - end of pattern generator table
6144 - free space (see below)
8191 - end free space. ^ (Illus 2 – VMM)
8192 - start of pattern colour table
14335 - end of pattern colour table
14336 - start of sprite generator table
15359 - end of sprite generator table
15360 - start of pattern name table
16127 - end of pattern name table
16128 - start of sprite attribute table
16255 - end of sprite attribute table
It can be seen that the sprite generator table as set up by BASIC is only 1K bytes long
whereas it is normally 2K bytes long. It means that you can only use half of the
number of possible sprite patterns that would normally be available because this table
overlaps with the display screen.
As it has to be located on a 2K byte boundary and as there is apparently 2K bytes free
at address 6144 Decimal, most readers will be wondering why the sprite generator
was not located there instead.
The reason for this is that this area is actually reserved for text mode which occupies
the ‘free space’ as shown below.
Address in
decimal
6144 - text pattern library
7167 - end text pattern library
7168 - start text name table (text display screen)
7191 - end text name table