Re: Another idea for outputting to VGA/DVI/HDMI

[Steve <srkh28@gmail.com>]

On Mar 25, 5:46 pm, Sheldon Simms <wssi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2013-03-25 06:20:51 +0000, Steve said:
>
> > Its interesting how this topic comes and goes. The last board I did
> > was a HDMI/DVI interface for Carte Blanche with Alex's and Charlies
> > code - maybe a year ago now. I added a bit of HDMI timing logic and
> > off it went.
>
> Well this is good to hear.
>
> One of the things that would be desirable if the Beaglebone idea
> worked would be for someone to design a daugtercard that would
> supply 1080p DVI video.
>
> There is already a DVI daughtercard:
> (http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBone_DVI-D)
>
> But it is fixed at 1024x768.
>
> Granted there is no need for 1080p to display Apple II video, but
> it is now, and will be for some time, the "standard" resolution of
> PC displays so it would make sense to develop to that standard
> instead of the fairly creaky 1024x768.
>
> Anyone who designed such a daughtercard for the BB probably wouldn't
> have any trouble selling 100 or so to BB hobbyists.
>
> I am still thinking about trying out the BB project. I think it will
> work, but I have to convince my budget manager to free up around $200
> for a "maybe useful" item.

The ARM idea has been around for a while. Its just a little top heavy
and maybe "way overkill" for an elegant solution. This board
http://www.srkhdesigns.com/images/ARM7+A2E.JPG takes a Texas
Instruments OMAP3530 processor (in the form of a gumstix) and
interfaces its AHB bus with the Apple II's bus. Voltage translation
and bidirectional buffers are provided for read/write as well as
"wait" to sync with the slow apple bus. It has an LCD interface, a
HDMI interface and a SVGA interface (along with the usual plethora of
integrated interfaces these processors have) that it then pipes the
processed video data out onto. The linux requirements and the code
needed to have it up and running sunk it.

steve