The PCB I created (and ordered from China) worked mostly. Here are both cards combined showing text output
IMG_2280_text.jpg
and here doing graphics
IMG_2279_graphic.jpg
There are 2 problems still. Column 0 of the text output is not 100% correct, some timings seem to be off. Far worse is an ...

Thanks Brad, actually I copied the Graphic part from your design

Again - it was a very long time since the last post - but the project is still alive. Actually it's better than alive, it's working. This is a test image of pure TEXT output.
vga_text_testimage.JPG
Here's how it looks like on a breadboard:
vga_text_breadboard.JPG
I attached the schematics as ...

yes he did - see https://eater.net/8bit/output

There is a fascination with being a survivalist and being independent of things like markets that don't sit still, which is why we've had discussions on computers one can boot without any ROM or µC at all. The EPROM programmer I've been using plugs into an ISA slot in the PC; but most modern PCs ...

I had a DS1813 working for about 2 months in my SBC and suddenly it died - maybe something similar happened here?

Here is the first iteration. It uses 3 dual pot rams now - one for the character value, one for foreground and one for background. So in the end you should be able to define foreground and background color of each character. It also sprouts basic ROM and 512 MB character RAM (simply because I have ...

what type of ROM are you using at 33MHz?

Does anyone have an idea what to do with the surplus boards? Every order from pcbway has a 5 piece minimum - what do you do with the remaining 4?

Is that a lego baseplate?

Now that 640x480 graphics are displaying nicely I'm working on getting Text display to work. 640x480 maps to 80x30 screen with a 8x16 font. So my first step was a small program to convert the VGA font from the bdf file into a complete pixel map usable in a ROM (see "create_fontrom.py" in the ...

Your cables run far nicer than my work

I bought over 300 items from e-bay so far - and maybe 3 of them or so did not work out. Naturally you have to be aware what and where you buy. Don't expect golden nuggets - and if you really find one it's like a lottery ticket

second problem - without building it first on a breadboard it would never have worked. My first design was a moderate disaster......

yes, but for both AHCT as well as ACT I did not really find a lot of selection if I limit myself to through-hole chips. My SMD soldering skills are completely untested :D
Please be aware - the 6502 and all connections are on 500kHz - everything on the VGA circuit is running at 25MHz! So 74LS is ...