Feeling nostalgic we presume, [Glen Kleinschmidt] set out to build a 640x480x64 VGA controller card from discrete logic chips. If we ignore the 512Kx8 Cypress SRAM video memory, he succeeds, too — and on a very readable, single page A3 schematic. The goal is to interface some of his older 8-bit machines, like the TRS-80 Model 1 and the BBC Micro, but for now he’s running a demo using a 20+ year old PIC16F877 micro.
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<p>[Glen] provides all the schematics, Gerbers, and C source code on his website should you be inclined to reproduce one for yourself. He has three versions in the works, with various capabilities (there’s a table on his website). As an alternative, one could always use an FPGA or a custom-built chip such as the SSD1963 to generate video for these micros, but sometimes the urge to go retro is too great to resist. We get the feeling that for [Glen], this is a project unto itself, and being able to interface it to his 8-bit computers is just a convenient excuse.</p>
<p>This isn’t [Glen]’s first retro project, either. Check out his <a rel=)
Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/04/30/vga-graphics-card-in-74xx-logic/
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