Emulating a smart CRT display unit - ideas? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

25 Aug 2010

Hello guys,

thanks for your quick replies!

"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
...
  why not post a note to this guy:
 http://cncfanuc.blogspot.com/2009/04/fanuc-ac-servo-drive-system-
 failure.html
 Who seems to have a lot of information on his hands? 
You're joking, right? I don't even get what this guy is writing about in most of
his half-finished malformed sentences. Even if he was willing to help, it might be quite a
challenge to get anything useful out of him.

...
  But you're going to need a fair level of detail on
what actually goes 
 on over those 12 lines before you can get something going. 
That's provided in that latest manual I got, down to bit-level detail, e.g.:

"Mode selection:"
A A A D D D D D D D D D
B B B B B B B B B B B B
2 1 0 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
-----------------------
0 0 1 1 x x 0 1 1 x x x   Set bit mode*
0 0 1 1 x x 0 1 0 x x x   Clear bit mode*
0 0 1 1 x x 1 1 1 x x x   Enable drawing by +/- H/V inputs*
0 0 1 1 x x 1 0 1 x x x   Clear screen (takes approx. 40 ms)

Operations marked * are latching and clear upon next selection."

Pages and pages of such codes.

...
  If you want a dedicated unit, an FPGA might still be
your best bet, 
 if you have the skills (VHDL or Verilog). 
No, I never learnt either of the above. OTOH, some LabView programming once again would be
a nice change, and there is that FPGA toolkit for it that we were shown then.

...
  Alternatively, many faster 
 microcontrollers can directly generate video using nothing but 
 software. 
Hey, that also sounds seriously interesting. Might be the cheapest and simplest approach
since b&w doesn't need much of a DAC or anything. Alas the raster size doesn't
map nicely to TV standards...

I'm also still all ears for comments on the "uC preprocesses, PC displays"
idea.

Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
...
  I have a vague memory of doing a hack to an IBM PC CGA
card that 
 enabled interlacing for a huge improvement in the readability of 
 character-based output.  It involved running a wire, and *I think* 
 replacing the 6845 with a 46505.  Does anyone else know about this? 
This mode is not used here, the manual states that this display is non-interlacing.

Yours sincerely,
Arno Kletzander
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