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sharkos
Newbie

Joined: 04/05/2013
Location: United States
Posts: 3

Posted: 04:16am 06 May 2013

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Has anyone tried to interface one of these Display Adapters with a Maximite?

http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=149

It has several ways of interfacing, but I thought the Serial mode might have potential applications to expand the VGA capabilties and gain additional colors and resolutions.

Geoffg

Guru

Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3194

Posted: 11:39am 06 May 2013

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A while ago I tried using the previous version of this board as the basis for a colour Maximite (before the current Colour Maximite design).

It worked OK but it was slow - I cannot remember the exact number but it took several milliseconds to process each character. That meant that something like redrawing the screen took a few seconds and, because scrolling required redrawing the screen for each line, it was unusable.

For a static display that is not continuously updated it would be good, but it is no good as a programming interface.

It was not the serial interface that was slow, it was the Picasso chip (which is just an ordinary microcontroller with the markings rubbed off).

GeoffEdited by Geoffg 2013-05-08

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

boss

Senior Member

Joined: 19/08/2011
Location: Canada
Posts: 268

Posted: 04:25am 08 May 2013

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Greetings from Vancouver,

I have one 4D serial VGA and have to say it is terrible slow (800x600 resolution) and time to time it simply get stuck. TFT 4.3" LCD display fed via SPI worked much better.

sharkos
Newbie

Joined: 04/05/2013
Location: United States
Posts: 3

Posted: 07:27pm 09 May 2013

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Geoff,

Thanks for the insight. I was following the thread about going from 8 -> 16 colors on the Maximite (which BTW, I would greatly welcome). I decided to research options, which led me to this VGA board.

I also stumbled upon a page where a board designer had used two different chips connected via SPI. One chip for the display and display memory, and the other for the main program executions. Lots of neat projects out there.

On another note, is there a Roadmap for Maximite and MMBasic?

Chris

Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3194

Posted: 04:13am 11 May 2013

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sharkos said On another note, is there a Roadmap for Maximite and MMBasic?
Chris

No, I don't have anything as organised as a roadmap.

I believe that the language has gone as far as it can for an easy to use BASIC interpreter. There will be bug fixes and small improvements but I cannot think of anything major that needs to be added.

For the Maximite, it is currently limited by the PIC32. There are rumours of a new PIC32 with double or more memory and if that rumour comes true then it would be worth a new design.

I am trying to squeeze MMBasic into the PIC32MX2 which comes in a 28 pin dual inline package but it is proving difficult. At this stage I am not sure where it will lead. If it works out it would be neat, a Maximite in a chip.

Geoff

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

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