K1 Controller Board for Parallel Video Board 'Backplane'

[ElEctric_EyE]

It's time I started this thread, as now a PVB seems to be close to a reasonable success. There are six presently, but maybe 8 PVB boards populating a DEVboard Backplane.

I plan on making a controller board, but I intend this thread to be open ended. My plan for a K1 Controller Board is to hopefully have a modified 65Org16.b core. A version of Arlet's 8-bit 6502 Core in a Spartan 6. I'm sure there may be others who would support a 1GHz 32-bit ARM. Maybe some others would support 8 or 16-bit databus wide CPU or microcontroller. This is a beautiful thing IMO, and this is why I have provided pinouts of all connectors and have gone into so much detail exposing my design. I will update the K1 Controller Board pin assignment table soon (EDIT - 10/23/12 Final update has been made). The bidirectional databus common for each PVB is 8 bits wide and supports a 6500/6800 type R/W signal with a Phase 2, R/W and Chip Enable signals present.


Also, this mainboard should have an IC that interfaces a camera RGB input and can output the signals to the first PVB through the K9 connector. Still looking for this IC...

EDIT: 8/5/13 Changed Title

[ElEctric_EyE]

This V1.0a thread will discuss a layout very similar to the PVB itself, i.e. a boardsize of 3.8"x2.5", a 144-pin Spartan 6 + SyncRAM w/provisions up to 4MBx16, a microSD adapter, some serialFLASH, and a 100MHz oscillator. Also, 2 FPGA PROMs will be present. In addition, 2 x PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse cores, and an MCP2200 for tx/rx serial transmission from a PC USB port.

Still looking for that elusive camera module with 16-bit RGB output...

[ElEctric_EyE]

Ok, I need to forge ahead with this K1 Controller board. I only post now as a progress placement. This board is still very much in flux, this is just the beginnings of a basic 3.8"x2.5" layout:

[ElEctric_EyE]

I have finally found 2 camera modules, made by Omnivision & distributed by Digikey, that output parallel RGB data, HSYNC, VSYNC, and require a pixelclock. 1 is 640x480 and the other is 1920+x1080. Both are very cheap ~$8 for lower res, ~$22 for higher res.

The unfortunate thing is that there are no datasheets freely available, just an advertisement brochure.

[Dajgoro]

ElEctric_EyE wrote:

The unfortunate thing is that there are no datasheets freely available, just an advertisement brochure.

Why do they do that? Who is going to buy a module that you first have to beg the company to give you the datasheet?

[GARTHWILSON]

A different thing I've seen at various times is that a product is vaporware, ie, that you can get datasheets but it's not available.

[ElEctric_EyE]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

A different thing I've seen at various times is that a product is vaporware, ie, that you can get datasheets but it's not available.

I don't know... Digikey is selling this product. I went to the manufacturers website and could not find any more info that what Digikey linked too. I was looking for a footprint or something more... I'm reminded of a HD camera module sold on sparkfun where many people complained about trying to successfully get an image off of the module.