Palette - VGA from Scratch - Part 11

In this video I design and build the circuit to add a Palette to my VGA circuit, together with the DAC’s from the last video forming what in modern terminology would be called a RAMDAC.

This video ended up being much longer than I like main channel videos to be. I can’t really cut a video a video like this down the middle as I like to bring chunk of work to a conclusion. I will try to break work chunks down a bit more in future to avoid big ones like this. It was several videos worth of work at all stages.

There is no Schematic inset for this video, I did record it but I couldn’t get it to fit onto the screen without obscuring important work or scaling it to the point of uselessness. I may release a rough cut on the extras channel or add it to the pcb design when I get to it.

0:00 Introduction
0:35 Demo of Current DAC’s
1:39 Design discussion
6:25 Exploring current setup
8:42 Build – Layout and Initial wiring
13:52 Build – Data Lines
18:04 Build – Address Lines
24:48 Build – Control Logic
33:35 Integrate
35:56 Test & Troubleshooting
40:42 Palette Parrot Demo
42:15 Palette cycle Mandlebrot Demo
43:15 Beam raced Palette change Demo
44:35 Normal Map Demo
46:31 Vortex Demo
47:15 Outro

[antiphlex]

The no-nonsense, practical, calm and restrained way with which you deliver your explanations is excellent.

[anthonywalter]

Thank you James for taking the time to build your computer and record and edit these videos. I find all your work both fascinating and inspiring. Keep at it and know you have lots of fans. Don't let life get you down, we all are behind you 100%! Many thanks.

[edgeeffect]

Flashbacks to Fractint palette cycling .... it's like it's 1992 all over again. :)
The vortex is superb! (And this is an upvote for anextras video of how it's done)

[KitsuneAlex]

You are simply amazing my dude. Never ceases to amaze me what you're doing on your custom hardware.

[jasonrubik]

If Ben Eater didn't inspire hobby builders, you definitely will !! Thanks for the exposition !

[peter.stimpel]

nice achievement, I understood only half of it but learned a few things. I am still amazed how clean a breadboard can look like.

[greje]

What an insane achievement. Like, INSANE! It's just hard to imagine how proud you must be of reaching the milestones. A sincere congratulation on this amazing achievement

[Octojen]

Very nice. If you have spare ram, maybe you can give each sprite its own palette - that would surly open up options for graphic effects.
The last demo looks like pallet swapping plus beam racing. With perhaps a bit of horizontal scroll? Nice effect.

[Rouverius]

Seriously, impressive results. I always come away learning something and thinking about what is possible.
As always, thanks for this.

[UnexpectedMaker]

It's all magic !!!! Looks brilliant, and even better than the demos was the beautiful breadboard wiring... You should photograph that and stick it on the wall

[nyghtowlstudios]

Wonderful! Yet again I am stunned! Looking forward to see games running on this jewel!

[TheGunnarRoxen]

Your work is awesome. I'm really enjoying these videos and, I'm learning a lot. Thanks for sharing!

[damouze]

Awesome video! I'm looking forward to the PCB build and test!

[EsaKarjalainen]

Your use of the prototype board is super clean! I've started very slightly tinkering with electronics, and I currently just use a bunch of jumper wires! It's terrible! :D

[AndyGraceMedia]

Just discovered this series and I'm seriously impressed. Love the explanations, lots of great practical stuff from someone who has had immense experience in design and software engineering. Even as a game and hardware dev from way, way back, I learned a few neat tricks there.

[kirknelson]

as always i'm blown away by the performance of your build. 🙂

[colinstu]

It was neat to see the parrots as you messed with the wires and chips. Something that *seems* so digital is analog in spots. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense lol.

[DigicoolThings]

Brilliant work James. Love how you also include some of the hardware issues you need to resolve, like excessive propagation delays etc. It would be good to also walk us through some aspects of your software development as well, although I appreciate your concerns about video length. Maybe, a seperate video taking us through your demo software development? Covering the software development that compliments the hardware development, would be awesome. But brilliant work either way. 👍🏼

[adamp]

Really love how all this is all turning out.

Oh, and there are many more effects that can be done with palette changes, such as an image dissolve with a static image.

[toleranz]

Nice work James! This should be able now to run a version of the bad apple demo without just showing frames out of memory! I‘m thinking of implementing your build in an UpDuino this winter as I finally want to learn and tinker with VHDL/Verilog on those small affordable Ice40 FPGAs. Keep up your work! Thanks for this great series.