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Ohh, and then we could write the digits in octal.

Interestingly, the N64 internally had 9 bit bytes, just accesses from the CPU ignored one of the bits. This wasn't a parity bit, but instead a true extra data bit that was used by the GPU.



The N64's Reality Display Processor actually used that 9th bit as a coverage mask for antialiasing, allowing per-pixel alpha blending without additional memory lookups.


As well as extra bits in the Z buffer to give it a 15.3 fixed point format.




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