Scandoubler schematics

[JimS]

XESS has a Spartan 2 FPGA board with a 32MBx16 ram chip for 88 bucks. It even has a VGA port, although it's only 3 bits/color. One more fpga pin & a resistor per color could fix that.
Been thinking about it, but I don't have a peecee with the oomph to run the design software...

[JimS]

alexh wrote:

XESS has a Spartan 2 FPGA board with a 32MBx16 ram chip for 88 bucks.

If you were going to do this with an FPGA you wouldnt a) use that FPGA and b) use that board! You'd have to make your own board to make the price sensible.

Actually, I might very well use that FPGA and that board. The Spartan II is 5v tolerant. Just what you need for interfacing to old hardware like the Amiga without some extra chips to do the voltage translation. As for the board, I'm not interested in making a product for sale, so I don't care about the price. The XESS board would be cheaper than having a PCB made and trying to solder it in a toaster oven.

[JimS]

Zac67 wrote:

JimS wrote:
It even has a VGA port, although it's only 3 bits/color. One more fpga pin & a resistor per color could fix that.

Then again, that'd make only 12 bit output which is also possible w/ the low budget chips. 24 bit is a bit harder.

That's true, of course... I've never owned an AGA machine, so I'm stuck in OCS/ECS thinking. ;-/
OK, how about an FPGA for logic and a byte-wide fast static RAM for each color... or if they make it in a 32-bit package, even better. It would make the board simpler, at the cost of wasting 8 bits/word.

Hmmm.... that LCD tv idea looks better all the time. ;-)