[Coco] MC6847 VGA (FPGA) Project underway...

[Zippster]

An 80 column mode is something I’d really like to see eventually,
but for right now, I’m afraid it is.  

I don’t want to seem too against adding features, but for this first
iteration at least, I think this should just be stock 6847 behavior,
with VGA output.  In the interests of making a 6847 VGA board
a reality, I think we need to avoid feature creep as much as possible
on this first one.

That said, I am for leaving a small I/O header on the board that could
allow for either software control (or external switches) of artifact color 
switching, possibly alternate color sets, and switching of character sets.
There’s a hardware sound project on my to do list that will also add two 
parallel ports that might be good for software control.

One good thing about the Altera FPGAs is that USB Blaster clones are
very cheap ($5 or so), and Quartus is free (Web version).  This means
people will be able to flash updates to the board without too much expense.

- Ed


> On Oct 10, 2015, at 5:09 AM, S Klammer <sklammer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes, quite an interesting development... and NTSC artifacting will likely
> be valued by our PAL friends!
> 
> As you're looking to merge your ext character sets, would text modes of
> greater than 32 columns be beyond the scope of your project?
> 
> Shain
> 
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco