The display is built around a 512 by 512 byte raster memory, each byte specifying the intensity of a spot on the screen. The sample rate is three times the color subcarrier frequency, so it is possible to synthesize the color subcarrier, and thus produce an NTSC standard color image. This memory should be mappable into the address space of the processor. If desired it can be made to generate an interrupt when it finishes the requested number of samples. It will also exceed the abilities of TV games, which have always had limited graphics and sound ability, and are now evolving programmability and keyboards.
Most terminals are capable of generating a bell or a beep to alert the user to important messages.
With the more general sound generating ability suggested here, a variety of sounds, for different events can be generated, as is feebly demonstrated by some TV games. Speech generation is possible with a reasonably small algorithm and a stored set of phonemes. Limited music can also be produced. About four times as many readable characters can be put on a grey scale raster than on a bit raster with the same number of samples. This is because the intensity can be used to simulate higher resolution.