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Motorola MC6847

1978

Motorola's 1978 Video Display Generator, providing colour text and graphics for the TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32/64.

Machines

Acorn Atom

NEC PC-6001

TRS-80 CoCo 1

TRS-80 CoCo 2

TRS-80 CoCo 3

Emulators

EmulatorTypeLicenseSite
Acorn AtomonlineGPL-3.0Website ↗
Dragon 32onlineOpen sourceWebsite ↗
JS MochaonlineFreewareWebsite ↗
NEC PC-6001onlineMITWebsite ↗
TRS-80 CoCo 3onlineOpen sourceWebsite ↗
VCC (Virtual Color Computer)downloadableGPL-3.0Website ↗
XRoarbothGPL-2.0Website ↗

Reference & documentation

External technical references for programming Motorola MC6847 and for writing emulators.

ResourceTypeNotes
MC6847 MOS Video Display Generator Datasheet (Motorola) ↗DatasheetCanonical Motorola VDG datasheet: modes, timing, electricals
MC6847 Datasheet - Pin Assignments ↗Pinout40-pin package with DA/DD buses and mode pins
MC6847 - The Dragon Archive ↗ProgrammingEvery mode, semigraphics tricks, color sets explained
Color Computer 1/2/3 Hardware Programming (Lomont) ↗ProgrammingVDG programming in context of CoCo hardware
Motorola 6847 - Wikipedia ↗ReferenceOverview: modes, color signal encoding, variants, pinout
Video Display Generator - CoCopedia ↗ReferenceProgrammer-level mode tables, memory sizes, T1 variant
MC6847 Video Controller Interfacing (MIT 6.111) ↗ReferenceInterfacing notes and signal-level VDG detail
chips/mc6847.h (floooh) ↗SourceClean single-header C emulation, tick-accurate pin API
MAME mc6847.cpp ↗SourceReference-quality cycle-accurate MAME VDG implementation