CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vhdlfpgavga
San
San

Reputation: 169

VGA Text display using VHDL on DE1

I am doing animation of algorithms using VHDL on Altera DE1. In this project, I have to display text to make it more informative. I am new to FPGA. But, I learned how text display works (all about allocating memory to each character and then display it). I tried to search some programs to test and see how the text display actually works. But most of them are on different boards. I wan't to understand how the actual flow is. As in, understanding just the memory and how it works is not helping me to write a complete code. Can anyone point me to right direction or explain in DEPTH how it actually works?

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 10381

Answers (2)

FarhadA
FarhadA

Reputation: 883

What you said here is true, but the VGA controller is made out of several parts, one that creates the correct timing for the VGA signals, a memory from which the controller takes the data from and shows on the screen, a character map (the font) and a controller to read the mapping of each character and place them on the right position on the screen. Character data generation

And here you have a higher level of block diagram, the previous block will replace the block markes as "Algorithm Test Pattern Generator"

enter image description here

You can take a look at the example on Digilinet's web site:

VGA controller reference design

Download it and modify it so it fits your need. This is just to give you an idea of the blocks necessary for what you want to do. It can be made simpler if you just want to show the same characters, or more complicated if you want to create a character based graphic controller for your design.

Upvotes: 2

Forest Kunecke
Forest Kunecke

Reputation: 2160

If you haven't checked it out already, make sure to browse OpenCores. It looks like there are several VGA cores, some with text only and some with both text and custom graphics. You may need to register to view/download but it's free and simple.

Also many of the projects there are manufacturer-independent, making it very straightforward to integrate into your code.

Upvotes: 3

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