Hi All, Here's the Prototype PropGFX, lots of wires n stuff as you can see But what it does is pretty amazing, even if I do say so myself. Will also post some pics of it in action.
Here are two pics of my movie player test, using some Dragon's Lair footage. ( if the owners of the Dragon's Lair media, don't want my images shown, please let me know, I'll remove them ). But the reason I chose to use Dragon's Lair, was because of it's ground breaking technology, for it's time, it took arcades to a graphical new level, A bit like what we're trying to do with PropGFX, for Propellers and other MicroControllers in general, and our Hybrid Console of course.
Here's another two pics, of another ZX Spectrum classic game "Jetpac" that I also ported to Hybrid. Well, I say port, I mean re-wrote, as you need source to port.
Hey potatohead, glad you like it so far Yeah, I'm just in the middle of adding the sound driver to the video player, then it'll rock lol As for Scramble, yeah, couldn't not do that game, I have to do the classics, I can't help but love doing the retro classic games, they're what made me get into programming in the first place. Just wondering really what's the next classic to remake.
Oh, by the way, the Hybrid also comes with SDBoot programmed onto the eeprom. Which reads the inserted SD and scans for any .bin files ( or .binary as they come out as .bin in 8.3 format ) and displays a list on screen, for you to scroll through and select, meaning no more need to be connected to a PC to run different apps, so you can unplug it from your pc, and take it to another room in the house, or another house, and play all of your hybrid games/apps there. I've also done a drag and drop PC app, which talks to my SDBoot app through rs232, and so you can drag files from PC to hybrid without having to remove SD from slot, plug it in your PC, and back again. ( although don't do big >256K files, use the old method for that lol as it's not the fastest method. )
We've not long set the site up, just having to fill it with all the answers to all of your many questions, I'm sure you'll all have.
That's one of the main reasons for doing the prop gfx, after all, what's the best companion for a propeller? another one also shows the awesome power of them and their endless flexibility.
One thing you might want to consider is to make the card access friendly for other micros. So maybe place some solder pads or some other connectors. Maybe hook it up to a pic or something to show it off as well. You could market it as a GPU to other micro developers and probably sell more then aiming for the hydra or hybrid since the Prop is probably the only micro that can do video without tying up the entire chip.
I am laying the board out in a DIP40 format precisely for that reason JT. The Hybrid/Hydra Riser Card will have a DIP40 Socket on there as well as the Composite Jack and SVideo DIN, the PropGFX just plugs into this.
I see other micro's as the main market.
Baggers has coded in several different operating modes and is in the process of writing an API so that other micros can access it.
In case Coley wasn't too clear, the PropGFX will be a DIP40 device, a little like propstick, but no overhang. You can then therefore connect it to any micro-controller you wish, or anything that can control the 10 io bits.
You'll then of course need to set up Composite or S-Video connectors, with the Dip40 version obviously lol
But the Hybrid plug-in will have connectors attached already so you won't need to add or remove anything... as long as you have a hybrid to plug it into of course lol.
Lol, you are way ahead of me then That should be a pretty sweet setup then. Use even a cheap pic, some graphics stored on a rom and you have the hardware close to an 80's arcade machine, console, or home computer. I can already picture something like Pacman with an SX pic, serial eeprom and that GPU.
Exactly, that's the main idea, it's not just for our Hybrid it's an self contained GPU on a dip40, so anyone can have full colourful tv out on even a PIC16F84 if they so chose. with eeprom for graphic storage obviously.
Hi All, Just added another Graphics mode to the PropGFX DXT1 mode. which is a 16bit compressed image, decompressed in real time to be displayed onscreen. DXT1 is one of the many compression formats used by current graphics cards. What do you think?
Cheers potatohead Well, the propeller is such a great little chip, I just wanna push it to the max, and make a cracking little device for people's electronics projects, where they can have tv out, or sprites or scrolling game if they want, even on a pic chip. Connected to our Hybrid and a small composite/svideo LCD, this could even be a simple picture viewer. What's amazing is that all the modes are in the cogs all at once, which is going to be my next addition, a split screen. DXT1 or Bitmap Image at the top, and text screen at the bottom, how cool would that be for a text with graphical adventure The possibilities with the PropGFX are almost endless. well in a 2D world anyway. And well, when Prop2 comes out in about 2 years, just watch this space
I'm working on a split screen text, graphics driver right now. Thinking the same thing. Actually was thinking about the BASIC and how handy that is. Was thinking about 4 lines at bottom, but thinking a display list too. Maybe that's too complex for general use.
Thinking about overlay on that thing? I've had a total swine of it on NTSC. It's doable, but I had to step away and get some other stuff done first.
What are the electrical details? You've got R2R's feeding into the video modulator device. Those are driven by the COG's, so more than one can do that work, anding the images together, same as where I'm headed with the reference circuit, right?
In 2D, this is kind of a distinctive option, IMHO. HUD's, semi-trans color zones, simple bright objects, multiple resolutions at the same time (for maybe high color elements and high detail elements present and accounted for on screen), etc...
Anyway, you are spot on. Very nice and powerful GFX subsystem. Perfect for the Prop.
Yeah, I've been thinking of modding the basic, to allow andrew's music, and propgfx, so it'll have sprites etc too I believe coley wants to reply to the other part
The PorpGFX drives the AD724 through R2R ladders in analogue 15Bit RGB video.
IO Classifications
15 for RGB 1 for Composite Sync 1 for AD724 Clock Generation 1 for AD724 PAL/NTSC Switch 2 for Data Bus control 8 for Data Bus 2 for EEprom 2 for PropPlug
With that solution, overlay is best done in software, bit mashing with the remaining COGs. Very cool. When Prop V2 hits, that engine is gonna scale nicely.
Yeah, I've been thinking of modding the basic, to allow andrew's music, and propgfx, so it'll have sprites etc too I believe coley wants to reply to the other part
When you go about doing that, let me know. I'll help work out the sound support. Thanks!
I've now made a BMP/DDS viewer, which scans SD for files, and then shows them, you can use joypad or keybaord to do next/previous image BMP's can be 8,16,24 or 32bit, and almost any size, as it resizes BMP's to 128/96 15bit as it loads it. DDS's have to be 256x256 ( only shows 256x192 ) as I don't want to resize that, and re-encode to DDS. big files redraw slowly, but SD transfer is only about 300KB/s, it happily loads a 17MByte image, 2832x2128 24bit, albeit slowly, but it will be faster when I or Rokicki adds a file seek function to the SD routines.
I'll also hopefully be adding JPG files access to the viewer too, so it can load/resize those too.
If ya want I'll post some pics, or movie of it in action? let me know which.
Here ya go, here's a pic and youtube of the Hybrid+PropGFX BMP & DDS Viewer, which scans the SD for files, and then loads the first BMP or DDS it comes across, then you press left or right on joypad and/or keyboard to cycle backward and forward through the images, automaticall scaling BMP's to fit on screen
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