Fellow CPCers,
Soon to be developed is a Graphics Card for the CPC range of computers.This card will support the standard modes of the CPC include additional features. You can read more in the documentation (still in development).
Summary of what the External Graphics Card (AKA EVA) provides:
- Support for the standard modes.
- 65536 colours
- 256 Inks
- Individual scan lines have ability use own modes/colours.
- Additional colours for the modes (8 bits mode 0, 4 bits mode 1 and 2 bits for mode 2)
- Resolutions of 160 x 200 up to 1280 x 400
- FPGA (Cyclone-III running at 250 MHz)
- Screen connected via standard VGA and maps the output to Standard WXGA specification (1280 x 400 at 83.46 MHz).
The attached photo is of the first attempt (bare board) and I am still at the stage of development where I need to work what value capacitors are required for the FPGA.
Stand by for more soon.
rpalmer
Very interesting project!
Let me ask a few questions?
- Is it compatible to the VDP9990 card (thread in this forum)
- How do it use it? Does it work via I/O ports, Memory-Mapped, write the usual memory?
- Could you give a rough estimation of the price?
- Which kind of monitor do I need?
Thanks, and stay productive! :) :) :)
Quote from: GUNHED on 14:32, 22 January 21Very interesting project!
Let me ask a few questions?
- Is it compatible to the VDP9990 card (thread in this forum)
- How do it use it? Does it work via I/O ports, Memory-Mapped, write the usual memory?
- Could you give a rough estimation of the price?
- Which kind of monitor do I need?
It is not compitable with the VDP9990
It just needs an MX4 bus to connect into
It captures the video writes the CPC normally uses or can disable writes to the CPC memory so that the Video only gets it.
The cost is yet to be determined
The VGA connector should give an idea of the monitor required.
rpalmer
Quote from: rpalmer on 21:11, 22 January 21
It captures the video writes the CPC normally uses or can disable writes to the CPC memory so that the Video only gets it.
That is awesome, so I can work with only one monitor too. And it's still compatible to existing software! Awesome! :) :) :)
Will it be possible to get HDMI video out with this card? It would be a killer feature.
Quote from: rpalmer on 12:18, 22 January 21
Fellow CPCers,
Soon to be developed is a Graphics Card for the CPC range of computers.This card will support the standard modes of the CPC include additional features. You can read more in the documentation (still in development).
Summary of what the External Graphics Card (AKA EVA) provides:
- Support for the standard modes.
- 65536 colours
- 256 Inks
- Individual scan lines have ability use own modes/colours.
- Additional colours for the modes (8 bits mode 0, 4 bits mode 1 and 2 bits for mode 2)
- Resolutions of 160 x 200 up to 1280 x 400
- FPGA (Cyclone-III running at 250 MHz)
- Screen connected via standard VGA and maps the output to Standard WXGA specification (1280 x 400 at 83.46 MHz).
The attached photo is of the first attempt (bare board) and I am still at the stage of development where I need to work what value capacitors are required for the FPGA.
Stand by for more soon.
rpalmer
so we talk about mb of vram...
IMHO is there anykind of hardware acceleration to use this lot in our cpcs?
Quote from: fgbrain on 21:20, 24 January 21so we talk about mb of vram...
IMHO is there anykind of hardware acceleration to use this lot in our cpcs?
The EVA board only has 32K x 16bit data, so no MB ram is required.
I am also in the progress of developing a DMA/CPU accelerator. I have the design underway and have already bought 20 MHZ Z80 to go with it.
This looks like something really exciting, and hopefully something that will be more accessible to people than the V9990 cards - and a bit more CPC-esque.
How far along is this in development? It looks like the spec is finalised, I guess you're still working on the FPGA design?
Quote from: capilam on 18:17, 23 January 21
Will it be possible to get HDMI video out with this card? It would be a killer feature.
Not natively from the sound of it:
"With EVA connected via the standard VGA connector,the screen output can also be captured by modern capture cards for crisp clean integration into other forms of display using interfaces like up-scalers to HDMI."
I would like, if it is possible to see some video with the card working in a real CPC if possible, thanks :o
This sounds fun - I like that it is an extension of the CPC hardware, not something different.
So this replaces the CRTC and Gate Array right?, and when installed those originals are 'disabled' somehow, so they don't take the bus, so the new hardware can? Or is everything duplicated in the extension RAM so both run at the same time.
Is there much free space in the FPGA? Could you add a simple blitter or some sprites or copper or similar - given time of course? Dual-playfields, heh :/
With the CPU + DMA card, you're a lot of the way to a faster standalone CPC replacement. Thoughts about FPGA Z80 instead of physical?
Any news ? Some people beta testing it ?
I have had the PCBs made, but I had a windows crash on my PC recently so is now back in the process of reloading all of my development software.
The FPGA program from initial development (Verilog) looking to be complete from the concept stage, so now i'm into getting from the concept stage to fully developed using Quartus II S/W.
The biggest hurdle is soldering the 144 pin TQFP as I have not done any of them before.
Getting parts is time consuming as the pandemic has meant that some are not available yet. I do have 4 FPGAs (Cyclone IIIs), so I dont want to solder them and find i messed up by missing a connection in the schematic or have made the programming port back to front.