Cyclone 3 Development Board

[tcdev]

I've got loan of a Cyclone 3 Development Board for a short time, so I took the opportunity to get Space Invaders up-and-running on it.

It differs from all other targets in that it doesn't have VGA output. Rather, the board I have came with two (2) DVI transceiver boards. So, leaving the PACE architecture intact, I added a VGA-to-DVI block in target_top. The result is that it takes quite a long time to build, as the converter is based around the Altera Video Processing IP and includes a scaler and frame buffer implemented in on-board DDR2 memory.

If time permits, I'll look at reducing the video ip required - should be able to get away with just a single clocked video output block - and trying to think of something cool to stretch the 3C120 on the damn thing!!! :cool:

[MiniMorph]

That sounds good.

DVI and HDMI are related so I guess this could be used to drive a HDMI input on a modern telly?

Does it have a special chip on that board to drive HDMI or is it straight from the FPGA.

I noticed MikeJ's last board has something similar.

I am hopeful to get a bit of time over Christmas to try some of your cores.

[tcdev]

DVI and HDMI are related so I guess this could be used to drive a HDMI input on a modern telly?

AFAIK HDMI is a superset of DVI, so yes.

Does it have a special chip on that board to drive HDMI or is it straight from the FPGA.

Yes, the board has a couple of DVI transceivers on it. The DVI is clocked out of the FPGA 24 bits parallel at 110MHz, and then serialised for a much higher rate down DVI. Without dedicated SERDES blocks on the FPGA (eg. Arria or Virtex) you won't be able to drive DVI without external hardware.

[MiniMorph]

Well that is true until Cyclone 4 I guess ;)

It is only a matter of time before that sort of functionality trickles down to the cheaper chips and the free tool chain.

Everything comes to he who waits.

Cheers.