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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Maximite 2012 !!
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Nick Guru  Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Last night, I had a dream that woke me up in the middle of the night. Confused, I sat up, checked the matress...nope, wasn't that kind of dream... and decided to get up and power the computer to recreate what I saw. A colour maximite!! With a new firmware that included a status readout at the bottom of the screen. Fully programmable character set. Flashing cursor and more. I have tried to recreate that vision in my graphics editing program and this is what I have come up with. 
Was it only a dream? |
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donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%28film%29 Well, Michael Caton as Darryl Kerrigan, the patriarch of the family in the movie "The Castle" said: Tell him he's Dreaming We need to get lives. Perhaps bowling or golfing at my age. I gave up smoking, and drinking. The only bad woman I ever met, I married, so there isn't much point in me chasing after bad women. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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VK6MRG Guru Joined: 08/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 347 |
WOW Nick, My only hope is that your dream becomes our reality 
Maximite Colour has always been my dream and maybe with time, a reality! Its easier to ask forgiveness than to seek permission! ............VK6MRG.............VK3MGR............ |
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| pito Newbie  Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: Posts: 25 |
.. there is a lot of vga controllers with pic18, pic24, dspi33, atmegaXY published even in colour (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ghb5m8NZb4&feature=related) , however not with e.g. 8 colours/pixel.. For 480x432 pixels you need 77kByte video-ram for 8 colours/pixel, and you would need to shoot 3bits (in parallel) each ~108ns out to vga. Quite a challenge for the pic32. Why in 2012? - what is doable is an fpga, with sufficient videoram on chip, connected via SPI to pic32 and generating graphic primitives. And - it is done already  :
http://www.embedds.com/gameduino-arduino-shield-for-games/ http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/ Just take it and connect to Maximite (you may need 6 wires)! 
P. |
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stuarts Senior Member  Joined: 15/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 199 |
Nick, I notice your dream didn't have a flashing cursor...... ;) Stuart Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
Quoting from that page: Low-level SPI interface The Gameduino appears to the microprocessor as an SPI peripheral, with two commands: read memory and write memory. The Gameduino’s total memory is 32Kbytes, so addresses are 15-bit. The remaining bit indicates read/write, shown below. So it looks like we need SPI to do this easily. The more you look, the more you find with these Arduino boards. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
He can dream in Colour, but this doesn't include flashing. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Do animated GIF images work on this forum? Then I can show the flashing cursor. :) Regarding the color... I added the colour based on my idea I mentioned in an earlier post. In this, I explained a possible simple way of creating colour where the single monochrome VGA line was fed into a digital switch which could be controlled on the I/O pins of the MM to channel the vga signal to different combinations of the RGB pins on the monitor. This could be done with only a small addition to the video driver firmware by having a table of 432 bytes (the video vertical res) that is read during display creation in the blank period of a scanline. Each byte defining the colour (the colour switch setting) for the current scanline and sent to the switch. Advantages of this simple colour modification... - Simple add-on to the MM only requiring a small firmware upgrade - Only uses an extra 432 bytes of extra memory on the MM - Produces 8 colours (16 possible if an intensity signal is also used (RGBI) - Simple plug in accessory, no other hardware changes to the MM Limitation... Only 1 colour plus black available per video scanline. The image in my "dream" was drawn with this limitation in mind. |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
With the specifications and limitation I listed above, how would the MM cope with a video game? I decided to put this to the test by creating a mock up screenshot of Space Invaders as could be created on the MM with the above specs. The only assumption I am making is that Programmable Characters are added to the firmware. An easy thing to add. (Copy the current charcater set in "rom" to ram and change pointers to this copy. Either use POKE to change the character set or add a command for redefining the characters) 
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| pito Newbie Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: Posts: 25 |
..better to design the Maximite MarkII, done in smd it may fit into the nice box inclusive the Xilinx. I think gameduino is an open source. 2 weeks work for Don&Co. 
P. |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
A new computer? Just abandon my newly purchased and assembled Maximite?  |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
Only trouble with Don&Co. is it reminds me very much of the team of mercenaries made of old soldiers in the movie "The Wild Geese". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078492/plotsummary Specialists from years ago, that are almost over the hill today, and haven't done a trench charge since last century. We will pump up our hearing aid batteries and wheel chair tyres (tires), and see if we can make that one last charge for Max and country. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| pito Newbie Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: Posts: 25 |
..the life cycles become shorter, indeed. Murphy's law: Maximite was made obsolete by its invention P.
PS: @Don - therefore I've estimated 2weeks work..  |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
I am an hour late for my daily hour walk. Now 07:15 local.
The world has started turning today, and I nearly forgot to get on. How am I going to know when to get off? Hey, did the world end the other day, and I missed it? Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
You're doing pretty good for a 101 year old. That's right isn't it? Your forum profile says... Date of Birth: 30 April 1910 |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
Thats obviously wrong... Thats Dons Youngest Son. Mikky Moo Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
Must be, computers don't lie, or make mistakes. 
I'll check with my mother, and make sure. Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Anyone want to build a Maximite pacemaker? Don's gonna one REAL SOON! |
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| Nick Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 512 |
Can any of you hardware folk suggest a "switch chip" that I could use for this colour idea I mentioned? My hardware skills only go so far so this may be a good project for me to learn. SPEC: I want to be able to control a signal (VGA) coming in and via 3 of the output pins of the maximite (3 bit, 8 combinations), direct/channel it to 3 output pins (RGB) in 8 combinations. - The chips should be fast enough to switch at least on each scanline of video. - Low cost and easy to find (Jaycar, Altronics etc.) Can anyone suggest? |
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| VK6MRG Guru Joined: 08/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 347 |
Could the 4066 IC do the job? Quad switch, but may need other input/output level conversion as I think it's a 5V IC. (Be gentle, I'm only a beginner) 
Its easier to ask forgiveness than to seek permission! ............VK6MRG.............VK3MGR............ |
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