You can change the value in the location registers at any time and use this value to construct loops in the instruction list. Before the next vertical blanking time, however, the cop1lc registers must be repointed to the beginning of the appropriate Copper list. The value in the cop1lc location registers will be restored to the copper's program counter at the start of the vertical blanking period. Bits 14-1 of instruction word 2 in the wait and skip . instructions specify which bits of the horizontal and vertical position are to be used for the beam counter comparison. The position in instruction word 1 and the compare enable bits in instruction word 2 are tested against the actual beam counters before any further action is taken. A position bit in instruction word 1 is used in comparing the positions with the actual beam counters if and only if the corresponding enable bit in instruction word 2 is set to 1. If the corresponding enable bit is 0, the comparison is always true. For instance, if you care only about the value in the last four bits of the vertical position, you set only the last four compare enable bits, bits (11-8) in instruction word 2. Not all of the bits in the beam counter may be masked. If you look at the description of the IR2 (second instruction word) you will notice that bit 15 is the blitter-finished-disable bit . this bit is not part of the beam counter comparison mask, it has its own meaning in the Copper wait instruction. Thus, you can not mask the most significant bit in wait or skip instructions. in most situations this limitation does not come into play, however, the following example shows how to deal with it.