LF book about history of video card and architecture of CGA EGA and VGA

[AwArD_RzD]

Hey everyone

Recently i started my own "VGA" project with my Cyclone 5 Gx board. For now i have a working design with a resolution of 640 x 480 with 256 color (3,3,2) RGB with a refresh rate of 60 hz and two working function.

The first function draw a filled square/rectangle and the other draw a line using the bresenham's line algorithm. I plan to add circle drawing (midpoint circle algorithm), Ascii text, polygon and i hope a sprite engine.

It's very interesting and fun to learn these algorithm and make them work in a RTL design. The problem is i have 0 background in video hardware stuff and even if the internet is there it seem i can't find anything about how these old design was created and used (well i found some info but it's very basic and there no example).

Since i love to read in bed is there any good book where it explain and show how that video/memory/buffer/algorithm/interface work with old IC and design example, i'm not looking to do 3d stuff (yet) but i want to recreate something nintendo/amiga era (pre 1990) with sprite and a full set of algorithm in my FPGA.

You can see my project in the attachment, i use the Dual port Ram (M10K) ,Pll and FIFO mega function so if you want to use it you will need to modify some file to make it work on your end. The Op code example is in the OP_CODE.txt, i didn't had time to make it pretty so be aware it's a ongoing project and i didn't annotate everything. 

Thanks !!

[Rasz]

non technical, about history past vga:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-8514a-graphics-accelerator/
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-xga-graphics-chip/

[legacy]

interesting, here I have a VDU written in vhdl, no time to complete it
send me a PM if you want to collaborate or merge source into your project

[AwArD_RzD]

non technical, about history past vga:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-8514a-graphics-accelerator/
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-xga-graphics-chip/

This is very interesting thanks !

Finding info on hardware architecture stuff seem to be inexistent... (still need to search in patent stuff)  But i found some documentation on the TIGA-340 from Texas instrument even if these document are more software/user oriented this give can give info and idea of stuff i can implement in hardware, actually i already draw some sketch of a sprite engine, this will be very basic but i don't need much and using sprite to drawn a mouse pointer over a layer will lead me to maybe code some GUI for other project.

The big problem i have for now is the memory inside my FPGA, 4 Mbit seem alot but my frame buffer take already 2, my sprite rom will be 1 Mbit and still need some space to put ascii code and other stuff i don't know for now. Well i have a 32 Mbit Sram and 1 gbit lpddr2 on the dev board i can code some memory controller (or use the megafunction for the lpddr2) these kind of project are a never ending story after all