Just wanted to say, interesting project! I like the idea. May be useful for "lonely" cards that lost their breakout box.
Do you know sources for blank NuBus brackets? I have some ideas and that might come in handy.
It's nice to hear from people on "the other side", if you will -- those who were making that hardware we're looking at today. I'd be curious as to why Lapis designed their FPGA gateware the way it is, and what kind of monitors they tested it with -- maybe the older monitors were more tolerant of...
Thanks! This fix was challenging, too, because I had to figure out a way to get it working with minimal editing. Basically, working with the available routing resources, making sure not to short any other nets, dealing with limitations like how switch matrices don't support all possible pin...
I have put up a first version of my Xilinx XC3-family bitstream viewer online.
It is over here: XC3000 display
The source code can be found on Github over here.
What is this?
It is the tool I have been developing in my other thread, the one about the Lapis ProColorServer. It is built from...
From what I read, there are key combinations that are alternatives to programmer switches -- handy for something like the IIsi, which lacks these switches.
Command+Ctrl+Power to reset the Mac, that one works fine.
Command+Power to send an interrupt, that one doesn't work. I'm not sure why...
The final status update about this project!
This is the part of the horizontal counter logic. The counter starts at EB.
Logic blocks ED and EE check for the sync and blanking conditions, respectively. They both take 5 inputs: bit 0-1, 2, 3, and inputs from other logic blocks which check bits...
The voltages seem good: 5.02V on 5V, 12 and -12 are also good.
However it seems that the +12V on the Lapis is 0...
Edit- doh, stupid problem. The +12V pin in the NuBus adapter's PDS connector was bent. The Lapis PCS needs +12V to generate its pixel clock, but I guess the HRVC doesn't use it...
I'm running into a weird issue with my IIsi NuBus adapter. Basically, if I put a Lapis ProColorServer II in it, the Mac doesn't boot -- it gets stuck on the gray pattern screen, doesn't do anything else, doesn't display any cursor or boot icon, doesn't try to access SCSI.
But, that's the thing...
I made a quick FPGA emulator thing, so I could confirm my observations before making any attempts. Good thing I did, I'd read some of the check values wrong, and in practice the check values for the horizontal counter are offset to account for propagation delays.
The HBlank values are actually...
I couldn't resist, looked at the equations for the various counter checks in the first Lapis PCS bitstream (which outputs 640x480 60Hz).
The values I got out of it are as follows:
VBlank start: 480
VSync start: 483
VSync end: 486
VBlank end: 524
Visible area: 480 / Front porch: 3 / Sync pulse...