[Coco] Cococompatible monitors... [Now CoCo3FPGA, FPGA Development, and GIME replacement]

[gene heskett]

On Tuesday, July 05, 2011 03:47:39 PM Joel Ewy did opine:

> On 07/05/2011 10:12 AM, gene heskett wrote:
> > On Tuesday, July 05, 2011 11:07:17 AM Joel Ewy did opine:
> >> On 07/05/2011 09:04 AM, gene heskett wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, July 05, 2011 09:50:20 AM John Kent did opine:
> >>>> On 5/07/2011 3:36 AM, gene heskett wrote:
> >>>>> And this DE1 board I assume has a cost of?  URL please John.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Cheers, gene
> >>>> 
> >>>> Terasic DE1 is here:
> >>>> http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=83
> >>> 
> >>> No doubt capable, but way too big to hide in a cc3 unless the whole
> >>> coco was emulated.
> >>> 
> >>>> It uses an Altera Cyclone II.
> >>>> It's what Gary uses for his CoCo3FPGA.
> >>>> 
> >>>> He has also used the Digilent Spartan 3 starter board in the past
> >>>> too using the Xilinx 1000Kgate Spartan 3
> >>>> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3BOARD
> >>> 
> >>> That maybe could be hidden under the keyboard.  With a vga output no
> >>> less.
> >> 
> >> I can attest to the fact that the Digilent Spartan 3 board will
> >> comfortably fit in a CoCo 3 case:
> >> http://8littlebits.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/an-old-case-for-a-new-coc
> >> o/
> > 
> > Now that is, as they said 100 years ago, cooking with gas.  But I
> > didn't see a disk drive?  Did you figure on drivewire doing all that?
> 
> Gary has put an integrated 'hardware' Drivewire client into Coco3FPGA.
> This uses an unmodified DECB ROM image.  The CoCo doesn't know it's not
> talking to a FDC.  And CoCo3FPGA can talk Drivewire at something like
> 430K.  At the current state of development there are no mass storage
> options other than Drivewire for CoCo3FPGA.  I think it would be nice to
> see some kind of flash memory device so the thing can stand on its own.
> But if/when Gary puts the source back out there, somebody will likely
> add that if he doesn't himself.
> 
> >>> Would I have to run the development system on windows?  If yes, no
> >>> deal.
> >> 
> >> The software runs under Linux.  It's a 970M download.
> > 
> > Great, not a problem as I have 4 terrabytes of drives here.  URL?
> 
> This is the only thing I have bookmarked:
> http://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.htm

It took several passes as their site does several things to FireFox5 that 
it didn't like, so I had to use the keyboard to get to another screen and 
shoot it dead with htop the first 2 times, after I had created an account.

The 4Gb dl is a tar!  Didn't those folks ever hear of gzip/bzip2/lrzip?  
Sheesh, its probably at least 50x the size it could probably be shrunk to 
with lrzip.  But I should have it in about 3 more hours.

That will give some Cabot wood conditioner time to dry on some poplar I am 
trying to control the color of.  If it overstains then, I go back to 
shellac for a sealer.  But this stuff appears to penetrate farther than 2 
lb dewaxed shellac.  The can says not to let it dry else the stain won't, 
and TBT that is about what I want, say 3 coats of Sams stuff that is 25% 
Cabot Gunstock stain should be about right.  The minwax version called 
Golden Pecan takes weeks to dry so that's got to be replaced.  The Cabot 
stuff dries in an hour.  Mixed into Sams, about 12 hours a coat, 3 or 4 
coats = the glass smooth finish folks drool over.

> Now, I only downloaded the 900M one instead of the 4G one where they
> have high resolution JPEGs and a Bio of each logic gate.  When I
> originally set up my CoCo3FPGA system I tried an earlier version of
> Webpack on Win2K.  I finally figured out how to get that to work just to
> upload the bit file.  That machine has suffered a hardware failure, and
> I'm just not using MS-Windows enough these days (other than fixing other
> people's malware-infested boxes) to bother reconstituting it.  Gary's
> got a new version with pretty 4096-color graphics, so I downloaded the
> Linux version (I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 on this machine) for the
> upgrade.  Unfortunately, the Digilent board requires hardware
> modification for the new colors, and that simply hasn't gotten done yet.
> 
> Like John K. says, you've got to register with them and do a deal with
> Rumplestiltskin for your firstborn child, but no money changes hands,
> and they haven't come to collect Henry yet.

Chuckle, depending on how old Henry is now, I'd bet there are times you 
hoped they would,  I say that while ducking and looking for cover though.
;-)
> 
> JCE
> 
Thanks Joel.

Cheers, gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Pascal is a language for children wanting to be naughty.
		-- Dr. Kasi Ananthanarayanan