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Originally Posted by ppppenguin
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No, so far I've still not found any useful purpose for anything on that site
Quote:
Originally Posted by ppppenguin
Please tell us more about what you are using and how you are using it.
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Ok, the various bits of software used in this project so far, and an outline of what for, are as follows -
RT Russell Test card Generator v3.2d -
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~rrussell.../download.html
As mentioned in the previous thread, RT Russell's TCGen was one of the primary inspirations behind this project. The software has been invaluable for defining the format of the PROMs and performing Burst and subcarrier encoding for the colour pattern. Also, for Clock Run-In, Framing Code and MRAG coding of the Teletext page(s). However, some general hacking, chopping and interfering with it's created output has been required - this I'm not prepared to elaborate on here.
XVI32 Hex Editor by Christian Maas -
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delph...vi32/xvi32.htm
This has been used to perform the aforementioned hacking and chopping to create ROM images how I want them. It has also been used to code the Teletext page manually (with the help of WinTTX, below, to view the resulting page) using the information in the 1976 document "Broadcast Teletext Specification" published jointly by The BBC, IBA and BREMA.
WinTTX v1.51 by Richard Murray -
http://www.heyrick.co.uk/software/winttx/
I've used this as a handy page viewer which can display the page in an easier on the eye grid, along with control codes and the ability to view a hex dump.
Videotex by RT Russell -
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~rrussell.../videotex.html
I've played with this a bit. It looks like a useful Videotex/Teletext page editor, but seems to have issues when not running on a 16bit OS, so is only included here for possible future use (if I find a 16bit machine to use it on!)
As well as the above, extensive use has been made of Adobe Photoshop and good old Windows Notepad (to hold and view chunks of code at times). Also, my PROM programmer is capable of chopping up and editing PROMs itself, without a host PC application.
I think that's about it. I'm not really going to go into the exact process I've used as I feel it would be unfair to the authors of the software to detail how to hack bits of it in various ways. As I've only done this for my own personal use up to this point (I want Teletext after 2012!), I don't believe I'm infinging any related licences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ppppenguin
One interesting way to make a TC gen would be to use RAM rather than PROMs. I don't know how hard it would be to do an interface in the CPLD to an XD or similar flash card. This could hold lots of images which could be loaded into the RAM. Programming the card would be done on a PC.
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I did mention this at the bottom of
This post in the preceding thread. I've spent many happy(?) hours reading the Compact Flash Specification with regard to this. A CPLD can be made to make a reasonable card interface (Xilinx have a published example), but I'm sure you'd then also need a micro to control the whole lot. The problem is that PC's want to write to cards as hard disks with a format they understand, therefore the TCGEN reader end would also need to know about the same formats. You can use flash cards as addressable memory, but then you'd need a suitable application, other than the OS, to program them on the PC. That's my understanding anyway.
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Originally Posted by Tazman1966
Facinating stuff. Shame I can't get my head around some of the theory  |
I'm sure you can. It's just that you HAVE a life and I have far too much time on my hands
Parabola