VDG weirdness

[tjewell]

I'm with Bosco, one of my pet niggles about the Dragon is the video quality, especially on my early machine. I'd been looking at some of the projects that have been coming out of the Coco world - Ed's FGPA-emulating-a-6847 project is interesting, as is the 'Altera DE1 in the cartridge slot' idea (which scans the bus and emulates the VDG/SAM etc). But, as much as I am in awe of the ingenuity of these guys, I worry we're moving into 'tail wagging the dog' territory.

Phill, your solution does seem simpler (can you tell us more?) - but I guess the problem facing wider adoption is the fact that most people don't have socketed 6847s. I'm seeing if I can track down a socketed machine at the moment ...

[prime]

I'm with Bosco, one of my pet niggles about the Dragon is the video quality, especially on my early machine. I'd been looking at some of the projects that have been coming out of the Coco world - Ed's FGPA-emulating-a-6847 project is interesting, as is the 'Altera DE1 in the cartridge slot' idea (which scans the bus and emulates the VDG/SAM etc). But, as much as I am in awe of the ingenuity of these guys, I worry we're moving into 'tail wagging the dog' territory.

Yes that was my feeling one of the users on the Acorn forum developed a similar solution for the Atom, one of the problems was cost, the Godil FPGA board they used was somewhere in the £100 range, my Atom Colour cards are probably going to be more in the £40 area.

Phill, your solution does seem simpler (can you tell us more?) - but I guess the problem facing wider adoption is the fact that most people don't have socketed 6847s. I'm seeing if I can track down a socketed machine at the moment ...

Well plugging into the 6847 socket is the easiest way of doing it, and getting the 6847 socketed is doable, there are probably several people on here with the skills / equipment to do that..... It may be useable without doing that, just by linking wires to it, but might mean some track cutting and soldering. You also then have to find some way of fixing the board within the Dragon case. I am going to design a proper Dragon / CoCo version without the extra circuitry that the Atom needs which should reduce the size & cost.

Cheers.

Phill.