As seen in the Atari Lynx FAQ by Robert Jung
Atari Lynx Specifications |
Physical dimensions:
Size: 9.25" x 4.25" x 2" (10.75" x 4.25" x 1.5" for original Lynx) Screen: 3.5" diagonal (3.25" x 1.88" approx.) Speaker: 2" diameter Buttons: Two sets of fire buttons (A and B) Two option buttons (OPTION 1 and OPTION 2) Pause button (OPTION 1 + Pause = Restarts the game OPTION 2 + Pause = Flips the screen, which allows the Lynx controls to be reversed) Power on light (Not on original Lynx; indicates unit is on) Power on button Power off button Backlight button (Not on original Lynx; turns off the screen, but does not turn off the game. This saves electricity use when a game is paused) Joypad: Eight directional Controls: Volume Brightness Ports: Headphones (mini-DIN 3.5mm stereo; wired for mono on the original Lynx) ComLynx (multiple unit communications) Power (9V DC, 1 A) Game card slot Battery holder (six AA) |
For the technically minded, the Lynx has two basic chips that
form a cooperative set of co-processing subsystems that maximize the Lynx's performance by sharing the work of executing a game program. These chips are called Mikey and Suzy. Mikey (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16MHz) - MOS 65C02 processor running at up to 4MHz (~3.6MHz average) 8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space - Sound engine 4 channel sound 8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels x 8-bits/channel = 32 bits commonly quoted) Atari reports the range is "100Hz to above the range of human hearing"; spectrum analysis shows the range may go as low as 32Hz. Stereo with panning (mono for original Lynx) - Video DMA driver for LCD display 4096 color (12-bit) palette 16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline (more than 16 colors can be displayed by changing palettes after each scanline) - System timers - Interrupt controller - UART (for ComLynx) - 512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM Suzy (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16MHz) - Blitter (bit-map block transfer) unit - Graphics engine Hardware drawing support Unlimited number of high-speed sprites with collision detection Hardware high-speed sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second) 160 x 102 "triad" standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels) (A triad is three LCD elements: red, green, and blue) Capability of 480 x 102 artificially high resolution - Math co-processor Hardware 16-bit multiply and divide (32-bit answer) Parallel processing of single multiply or divide instruction The Lynx contains 64K (half a megabit) of 120ns DRAM. Game cards currently hold 128K (1 megabit) or 256K (2 megabits) of ROM, but there is a maximum capacity of up to 2 megabytes (16 megabits) on one game card. In theory, this limit can be exceeded, either with bank-switching hardware in the card, or by using a ROM power on/off line as an extra address line (up to 4 megabytes). Most Lynx game cards are 256K ROMs. Three games are on 512K ROMs: NINJA GAIDEN 3, PIT FIGHTER, and JIMMY CONNORS TENNIS, along with the never-released EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. The first few hundred bytes of the game card is encrypted to prevent unauthorized developers from writing Lynx software. This scheme was introduced by Epyx as an effort to enforce game quality. With alkaline batteries, the reasonable average battery life is 5 hours. (4 hours with the original Lynx) The Lynx can run off rechargeable Ni-Cad batteries, but average battery life drops drastically to 1.5 hours per recharge (1 hour for the original Lynx). Your mileage may vary. |