COPPER WAIT LINE

The COPPER WAIT LINE instruction is an essential command. Unlike COPPER MOVE and COPPER STORE, which are used to modify values in memory, the COPPER WAIT LINE instruction does not directly modify anything. Its primary purpose is to pause execution until the television's video brush reaches a specific position on the screen.

In other words, COPPER WAIT LINE is a synchronization instruction, necessary to avoid flickering and visual artifacts: making hardware changes at the wrong time relative to the video scan can cause corrupted or unstable images.

Waiting for a specific location allows you to change colors, shift registers, or enable/disable hardware features exactly where and when needed, without the human eye perceiving the change as a "jump."

It is therefore possible to define areas of the screen with different color palettes or resolutions simply by waiting for the appropriate line with a WAIT LINE command and then using a MOVE command to set the new parameters.

In short, COPPER WAIT LINE is the heart of synchronization, allowing complex and dynamic changes on the display to be orchestrated in perfect harmony with the video signal flow, enabling otherwise impossible graphical effects.