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[Reply #30 on:]

Try this:

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4172/how-can-i-control-a-cga-screen-with-an-arduino

and:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3020


It looks like the vertical is the same (60 Hz) so Timer 1 would be unchanged.
It also looks like the vertical sync pulses are the same (it still uses 525 lines).

So I would be inclined to try and see.

If what I read is correct the colour information is sent over 4 consecutive lines, I'm not too sure about that and don't have a CGA monitor to test it on. So you might get something to appear if you tweak delays a bit (eg. the delay at the start of each line).

[Reply #31 on:]

I have prepared this documentation file about CGA, it tells you about colors

Code:

Type Digital, TTL
Resolution H x V = 640 x 350
H-freq 15.7 or 21.8 kHz
V-freq 60 Hz
Colors 6-bit (64)


Pin assignments Pin Name Function
1 GND Ground
2 SR Secondary Red (Intensity)
3 PR Primary Red
4 PG Primary Green
5 PB Primary Blue
6 SG Secondary Green (Intensity)
7 SB Secondary Blue (Intensity)
8 H Horizontal Sync
9 V Vertical Sync


CGA Cabling Pin Assignments
Pin Name  Notation Description                                                      Direction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1       Ground    GND                                                                                 Bi-directional
2       Ground  GND                                                                                 Bi-directional
3       Red  R             Red Component of a RBG-encoded video signal TTL*
                                (TTL OFF Level for Red gun OFF or TTL ON Level for Red gun ON)        To Monitor
4       Green  G             Green Component of a RBG-encoded video signal TTL*
                                (TTL OFF Level for Green gun OFF or TTL ON Level for Green gun ON)    To Monitor
5       Blue  B             Blue Component of a RBG-encoded video signal TTL*
                                (TTL OFF Level for Blue gun OFF or TTL ON Level for Blue gun ON)      To Monitor
6       Intensity I             Intensity signal, giving each color an off,
                                medium and high brightness level.
                                The Intensity control affects all guns that are currently on.
                                (TTL OFF Level for all guns OFF or MEDIUM,
                                TTL ON Level for all guns OFF OR BRIGHT)                              To Monitor
7       +12 VDC        +Most monitors do not utilize this supplied power
                                and some computer makers do not provide it.
                                Systems that can generate EGA video modes via the same connector
                                do not provide this voltage.
                                Monitors capable of accepting CGA and EGA can be damaged
                                if this voltage is present.                                           To Monitor
8       Hsync      H            15.7Khz Horizontal Sync clock TTL* Positive Polarity                  To Monitor
9       Vsync      V              60Khz Vertical Sync clock TTL* Positive Polarity                    To Monitor


*TTL signals operate in the range 0.0VDC to 5.0VDC.
Levels from 0.0VDC to 0.8VDC are considered to be an "OFF" or "0" state.
Levels from 2.0VDC and 5.0VDC are considered to be an "ON" or "1" state.
Levels between 0.8VDC and 2.0VDC are not defined and their use is not predictable.
Some vendors state that the TTL "ON" state begins at 2.4VDC



             RGBI Monitor Color Table
------------------------------------------------
Color(s)*                (I) (R) (G) (B)
------------------------------------------------
Black                           OFF OFF OFF OFF
Blue                            OFF OFF OFF  ON
Green                           OFF OFF  ON OFF
Cyan                          OFF OFF  ON  ON
Red                             OFF  ON OFF OFF
Magenta/Purple                  OFF  ON OFF  ON
Brown/Orange/Yellow             OFF  ON  ON OFF
White/Gray                      OFF  ON  ON  ON
Black/Gray                       ON OFF OFF OFF
Bright Blue                      ON OFF OFF  ON
Bright Green                     ON OFF  ON OFF
Bright Cyan                      ON OFF  ON  ON
Bright Red                       ON  ON OFF OFF
Bright Magenta/Pink/Purple       ON  ON OFF  ON
Bright Brown/Yellow              ON  ON  ON OFF
Bright White                     ON  ON  ON  ON

[Reply #32 on:]

Is it really a CRT (i.e. is it quite deep behind the screen?) or is it a plasma display?

[Reply #33 on:]

the toy pulled out from the heavy transportable ? it's a CRT made of glass with a cathode tube inside

it's exactly like this:

[Reply #34 on:]

Wow, a genuine "luggable".

_______
Rob

[Reply #35 on:]

I warn you that you won't get that resolution. All you can expect is what I showed on the first page of this thread, scaled into the screen. The processor just can't output discrete pulses fast enough.

[Reply #36 on:]

well, after evaluating the feature's borders i have converted this project into a cpld project: the cpld in use will be a XC95108 in PLCC84-package which will be added on the final circuit with a swift chunk of ram sram chip (ones pulled out from 486's caches that you can find on vintage pc motherboards), and finally the whole should be enough to have the proper resolution.

The Verilog language will be my best friend in order to describe the whole to the Xilinx ISE synthesizer, and at the end of story a swift "bitstream" will be put into the cpld flash.

This way the project is much similar to he ucVGA board which has a cpld on board.

The gameduino has a more powerful fpga where it has been implemented a J1 stack machine cpu which is justified by the need to have something to process graphical data for video array board in his second stage with no less of 20Mips of power, and this constraints makes the project much more complex cause it require a softcore in where you have to run somethig able to decone the Forth programming.

Fortunately I do not need any Forth (i am not good at Forth programming, it's too complicate for me) and fortunately i do not need any J1 soft core at all because I do not need any graphical stuff (Besides, why would i need something graphical if i have a CGA crt capable of just 1bit of color ?), also i do not need the power of 20Mips from my tiny graphical-adapter-toy, i only need text properly displayed with a good resolution.

=)

[Reply #37 on:]

Hi Nick,

I have played with your color version, it works fine! But what about color text and communication part? Are you try to add all parts together?

[Reply #38 on:]

what about using two arduino? one for rgb and other one for v sync and h sync? lol

[Reply #39 on:]

Maybe I'm completely wrong but: It is not possible to use a screen with buffer???
Something like the latch on 75HC595 Shift register IC. So you put in the buffer what you want to write, then activate the latch pin, and there is no need for refresh unless you need to change what is shown on the screen.

A screen like this will be perfect, because you can use relative big screens/resolutions with the Atmega IC's without overloading.

[Reply #40 on:]

This was mentioned in a post above, but I want to ask the same question again, regarding combining Nick's work on generating sync (which seems to consume _most_ of the cycles of an UNO and Sebastian Tomczak's work ( http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2008/02/hacking-vga-lines-with-arduino.html ) which results in a very rudimentary but very cool "video synth".

Sebastian was grabbing his sync from an external source (in his demo he is using the signal from a computer).

So if one used a second UNO (or similar) could one use that to generate the RGB signals (which are actually being generated from an audio input source in Sebastian's project) and combine that with the sync being generated with Nick's project (on the first UNO) and merely "splice" the signals together at the actual cable socket?

Or better yet, could it all happen on one Arduino? I doubt that given the timing tightness being described, but even if I had to run it on two boards... I have a few laying around, and it would make a cool little AV synth.

Any thoughts?

[Reply #41 on:]

Hi nick...i'm trying to figure out how to overlay some text on a vga signal....if i understood well just need to detect the vertical sync, count horizontal sync pulses and out some text (video sygnal) over the actual signal on the right time...is this correct?...how can I do this? could you give me some ligth on it?...I don't understand the screenfont.h format...how can i distiguished a single letter from this code?...(sorry for my english)

[Reply #42 on:]

Nice work,
Quite Helpful too 

[Reply #43 on:]

Thank you Nick,
your site is awesome, explanatory kind of "makers" experience.
I have just made some experiments with your code, I'd will dig through to
modify it for my project's purposes.

Thank you so much for sharing it!

EDIT:
I spent some time with your code (and description) and I could not get gotoXY work properly.
I'm sending data from other arduino and I wanted following:
CLRSCR
GOTOXY 5,5
print some text

So I used several variation of

Code:

char xy[] = {5,5};

 sendString (clearScreen);
 sendString (gotoXY);sendString(xy);
// sendString (strcat(gotoXY,xy));
// sendString (gotoXY+xy);
//   etc...
 sendString ("Hi!\n");

Could you please point me to some good and working solution to that? Thx.


McHa