I was pointed to this device from someone who visited my website. It seems like a great candidate for our projects. It takes a TTL-level RS-232 signal from the host system and can draw various objects, including icons and custom font characters, and text; all in full color to a VGA screen. I saw 320x240 (qVGA), 640x480 (VGA), and 800x480 (Wide-VGA) listed. Other sizes might be possible.

http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=131

I suggest clicking on the download tab and reading the user manual and command manual for a better understanding.

There is also sound generation and a uSD interface included.

The company is in Australia and each boards cost $49. Shipping is $31 for Fedex international. However, shipping for 5 units is still $31 so it might be more economical for one of us based in the US to make a single purchase and then re-ship the other units to others.

I am willing to do that if anyone else is interested. just PM me or drop me an email if you are interested. We will all share the shipping cost equally. A USPS priority mail small flat rate box is about $6.

For those outside the US, I will entertain requests, but there might not be any real cost savings involved.

I have not used this and cannot make any kind of statement as to the quality or usefulness of this board.
I am taking on the same risk you will be if you choose to buy one.

As a side note, they also have LCD drivers and even some smaller LCD screens for sale.

Daryl

Looks like an interesting gadget. I would have preferred that they supported 800x600 instead of WVGA.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

They seem to have a memory limitation that 800x600 won't squeeze into.

I'm happy with 640x480 so I can at least have an 80 column text display. I'm not sure I will use the WVGA either, as most of my monitors are standard ratio, not wide screen.

Daryl

Yeah, 640x480 will work with anything. Most of the monitors around here are 16x9, so I could go the WVGA route, but standardizing on plain vanilla VGA allows anything to be connected, including my ancient 19 inch Viewsonic CRT monitor. I suspect running the gadget in WVGA would make for slower screen painting.

I'm intrigued to the point of trying to conjure a way to integrate this thing into POC V2 as part of the console. However, the serial interface seems to be geared to USB rather than EIA-232, since it is looking for TTL logic levels. I'd also have to concoct a keyboard interface. Not sure about this.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Yes, but almost all USART's have TTL level serial lines that need to go the a level converter (1488/1489 or MAX232 derivative). Even the 6551's RS-232 pins are TTL, so that should not be a big issue. On my SBC-4, I used a dual USART connected directly to the 65816 data/address bus. One port was the user terminal and the other was a TTL serial link to the onboard AVR.

This device would be perfect for future designs, providing one standard serial port and one for the video interface. The dual USART also has some descrete IO Pins that could be used to bit-bang a PS/2 keyoard as well. Alternatively, I have an AVR solution that does all of the decoding and just presents the 8-bit ASCII or scan-key codes to the host. PS/2 keyboards can also be implimented through bit banging a 6522.

Just my thoughts.

Daryl

Here's an update:

These boards can be purchased from sparkfun and robotshop.com here in the US.

I just ordered one from robotshop.com for $49 and shipping was $9.98 for UPS ground.

Daryl

Guys, I ordered one from Microcontroller Pros.
The shipping was only $3.64 (1st Class Mail Parcel, in the U.S.). I will let you know when I get it and if there was any trouble or not.

Cheers!

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Marek Karcz
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"Don't worry. We've got our best people working on it."

Darn, I should have shopped around more! Great find and thanks for sharing it!

Daryl

Got my board already from MicroController Pros, so I'd say delivery was pretty quick. The board came in the form of, well, partial kit. Don't be alarmed though. The only things that need to be soldered to the board are the headers that go alongside the longer sides of the board and my guess is, not everybody would actually need them. I am yet to wire some DC power to it and test if it outputs the promised splash screen to VGA. The board is surprisingly small. Seemed bigger on the picture .

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Marek Karcz
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"Don't worry. We've got our best people working on it."