The vertical beam position can be resolved to one line, with a maximum value of 255. There are actually 262 NTSC (312 PAL) possible vertical positions. Some minor complications can occur if you want something to happen within these last six or seven scan lines. Because there are only eight bits of resolution for vertical beam position (allowing 256 different positions), one of the simplest ways to handle this is shown below. Copper Instruction Explanation -------------------- ----------- WAIT for position (0,255) At this point, the vertical counter appears to wrap to 0 because the comparison works on the least significant bits of the vertical count WAIT for any horizontal Thus the total of 256 + 6 = 262 position with vertical lines of video beam travel during position 0 through 5, which Copper instructions can be covering the last 6 lines executed of the scan before vertical blanking occurs. Note that the vertical is like the horizontal. ---------------------------------------------- There are alternating long and short lines, there are also long and short fields (interlace only). In NTSC, the fields are 262, then 263 lines and in PAL, 312, then 313 lines. This alternation of lines and fields produces the standard NTSC 4 field repeating pattern: short field ending on short line long field ending on long line short field ending on long line long field ending on short line and back to the beginning... One horizontal count takes one cycle of the system clock (processor is twice this). NTSC- 3,579,545 Hz PAL - 3,546,895 Hz genlocked- basic clock frequency plus or minus about 2%