Thursday, July 31, 2014

inb4 july is over

So the bwtwo-to-VGA video board is all soldered
up (yes, that bizarre combination of point-to-point
soldering, wire-wrap, and header plugs that
accumulates itself when trying to rush-design a
board.

input BW2 monochrome signal
    1152x900 one-bit (that means black-and-white)
    62.5KHz
    66.667HZ

output VGA color signal
    anaglyph red/blue alternating even/odd

What it does:
    Allows the bwtwo framebuffer to output
    1152x900 interlaced anaglyph (red/blue)
    3D output.

Unachieved hopes and dreams:
    to also interface an interrupt to the
    NCR 5380 SCSI controller, and have
    true interrupt-driven double buffered
    anaglyph 3D on the Sun 3. After killing
    the video output on one board, I didn't
    risk sending signals into the SCSI port.

How it works:
    Uses dual D-type flip-flop as
    toggle mode, using the vertical and
    horizontal sync signals as the clock.

    Uses comparators as and gates based
    on whether the current frame/line
    match parity (which is output of the
    flip flop) to power transistors which
    are switched by the bwtwo's video
    signal (which is approximately 100MHz).

    If the current frame is even, and the
    line number is also even, drive the
    video signal on red. If the current
    frame is even, and the line number is odd,
    do not drive any signal. This blanks
    odd lines on even frames.

    If the current frame is odd, and the
    line number is even, blank as well.
    However, if the frame is odd, and the
    line number is odd, drive the video
    signal on blue.

    So the video stream is interlaced across
    odd and even lines. Since the alternative
    lines are blank, the Sun 3 can be drawing
    into those lines without any visible
    artifacts appearing on screen, but since
    I didn't get the interrupt happening
    there isn't any way to time the updates
    as it stands right now.

Photos to come soon, don't worry, I have a pile
of stuff to upload still. As far as I can tell, there's
no reason this couldn't have been done in 1987,
as the parts are bog-standard. I had them all on
hand. The only thing I had to buy during this
compo was the Torx screwdrivers to open the
keyboard.

No comments:

Post a Comment