enso wrote:
I was hoping they would work just like the internal BRAMs, but it appears that there is an extra cycle required (unless it's operating in burst mode)
You should use them in burst mode, of course
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Learning from experience, I am planning to add a USB connector for power
How about adding a cute little FT230x in QFN16 package, like I have on my USB-Serial converter? Takes very little room, and would give you instant USB access as well.
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-VGA output - with at least 2 bits per color, 5 if possible - if I can find cheap resistor networks
A trick I did with my sandbox board is to use the FPGA pins in 3-state mode, so you can create more levels. A cheap way is to just put 1 resistor on each output pin, and experiment with different levels. Keep in mind that for something like retro 8 bit games, it's more important to have different colors, than an exact even spread.