Hello, I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. Could anyone help me with this. I need to read characters from the character ROM and display them on the VGA monitor. Please help
Character generator ROM and VGA controller for Spartan 3E
Started by ●March 1, 2009
Reply by ●March 1, 20092009-03-01
Vesh wrote:> I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my > final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a > character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. Could anyone > help me with this. I need to read characters from the character ROM > and display them on the VGA monitor. Please helpYou mean you need the ROM image, or the whole character generator logic. ROM images are available, but then with some graph paper you can make your own. http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-r-199.pdf has a design for a display terminal including a character generator. It generates NTSC timing, but it shouldn't be hard to modify for VGA timing. -- glen
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
On Mar 2, 4:56=A0am, Glen Herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:> Vesh wrote: > > I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my > > final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a > > character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. Could anyone > > help me with this. I need to read characters from the character ROM > > and display them on the VGA monitor. Please help > > You mean you need the ROM image, or the whole character > generator logic. =A0ROM images are available, but then with some > graph paper you can make your own. > > http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-r-199.pdf > > has a design for a display terminal including a character > generator. =A0It generates NTSC timing, but it shouldn't be > hard to modify for VGA timing. > > -- glenGlen 5 ***** award to you for the best reply to "please do my homework begger" question. a scanned document from 1976 :) great reading... Antti
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
Antti.Lukats@googlemail.com wrote: (snip)> 5 ***** award to you for the best reply to "please do my homework > begger" question.> a scanned document from 1976 :)I am not so sure what he was asking, but it is a pretty nice machine. Implementing one in an FPGA might be a good project for many courses. I believe it uses a commercial ROM for the character generator, but the data sheet is probably available. I am not sure if the software is, though. It makes a pretty nice terminal, even compared to ones produced much later. In text mode there is a scroll wheel on the side. Rotating it moves the text image up and down in scan line (or maybe line pair) increments. It has enough inertia that one can start it, then stop it at the desired position. In addition to the ROM character generator there is a loadable RAM character generator, and the ROM is addressable by the processor. I used to have a program that would read the ROM, mirror each row, then write to RAM. Activating the RAM mirrors all the characters on the screen. Also, it has a graphics mode that uses the whole display memory for bitmap graphics with Tektronix 4013 emulation, though that isn't so unusual now. -- glen
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
>I am not so sure what he was asking, but it is a pretty >nice machine. Implementing one in an FPGA might be a good >project for many courses. I believe it uses a commercial >ROM for the character generator, but the data sheet is probably >available. I am not sure if the software is, though.I remember in the early 70s when my roommate came home smiling and showed me a data sheet for a new part that was a character generator ROM. In 1965 or '66, working on a PDP-7 that implemented that ROM with cores. They were big enough so that you could get a lot (64?) of wires through them even when the wires were big enough to thread by hand. I think they filled up a drawer. We rewired a few of them to get some special characters. If I wanted the contents for a ROM like that, I'd make it from the fonts on my PC. Pick one I like. I don't know if it would be easier to decode whatever font format file the system uses or take a picture of my screen and decode the camera format. Graph paper would be fun too, at least for the first few characters. I was actually thinking that it would be fun to make an old fashoned character display with a twist. Use variable width fonts. :) -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
Hal Murray wrote: (snip)> If I wanted the contents for a ROM like that, I'd make it > from the fonts on my PC. Pick one I like. I don't know > if it would be easier to decode whatever font format file > the system uses or take a picture of my screen and decode > the camera format. Graph paper would be fun too, at least > for the first few characters.I have somewhere the data sheet for the CG in the SOL computer, which is an interesting ROM. The characters are in a 7 by 9 matrix, but can be shifted down for some characters. So the storage array is 64 bits per character, and 128 characters. The character cell is 12 rows. It fits nicely into a 2716, as 16 rows of 8 bits by 128 characters. It might be the same one used in the VGT.> I was actually thinking that it would be fun to make an > old fashoned character display with a twist. Use variable > width fonts. :)I suppose it isn't so hard. You need a ROM of width for each character, and increment a counter appropriately. Not so good for editing program text, though. -- glen
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
"Vesh" <veshrajsharma@gmail.com> wrote in message news:e2bb9d65-f5f5-4367-9947-772f317c7e7c@a5g2000pre.googlegroups.com...> Hello, > I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my > final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a > character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. Could anyone > help me with this. I need to read characters from the character ROM > and display them on the VGA monitor. Please help##### ####### ####### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # # ## ## # # ####### # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # #### # # # # # # # # ## ## # ####### # ####### ##### # # ## # #### # # # # # ### # # # # # ### # # # # # ### # # # # # # # ### # # # # # # ##### # # # #### ### #
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
Vesh wrote:> I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my > final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a > character generator ROM along with VGA controller core.A final year project that consists of a couple of counters and a ROM??? Maybe next year for your Masters thesis you could add a serial port? The really sad thing is that there's dozens if not a hundred freely available examples on the net that do exactly that, and yet you can't even be bothered to search for them yourself... -- Mark McDougall, Engineer Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au> 21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216 Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
Reply by ●March 2, 20092009-03-02
Antti.Lukats@googlemail.com wrote:> On Mar 2, 4:56 am, Glen Herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: >> Vesh wrote: >>> I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my >>> final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a >>> character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. Could anyone >>> help me with this. I need to read characters from the character ROM >>> and display them on the VGA monitor. Please help >> You mean you need the ROM image, or the whole character >> generator logic. ROM images are available, but then with some >> graph paper you can make your own. >> >> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-r-199.pdf >> >> has a design for a display terminal including a character >> generator. It generates NTSC timing, but it shouldn't be >> hard to modify for VGA timing. >> >> -- glen > > Glen > > 5 ***** award to you for the best reply to "please do my homework > begger" question. > > a scanned document from 1976 :) > > great reading... > > Antti >It seems especially appropriate that the file name begins "slac-r"...
Reply by ●March 3, 20092009-03-03
On Mar 3, 5:18=A0am, Mark McDougall <ma...@vl.com.au> wrote:> Vesh wrote: > > I am a final year student in electronics engineering and am doing my > > final year project in FPGA spartan 3E starter kit. I need to have a > > character generator ROM along with VGA controller core. > > A final year project that consists of a couple of counters and a ROM??? > Maybe next year for your Masters thesis you could add a serial port? > > The really sad thing is that there's dozens if not a hundred freely > available examples on the net that do exactly that, and yet you can't eve=n> be bothered to search for them yourself... > > -- > Mark McDougall, Engineer > Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au> > 21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216 > Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266Thanks for ur link. No Mark..its just a part of our project named "Wireless Device Manager Using FPGA". Its not that i wasnt bothered to search them myself. I have, but most of them are incomplete especially without the .vhd file for character rom. I have already used VGA graphics controller..n i m just starting this text display. I was looking for faster approach.
