After an eternity of procrastination and wire-wrapping, I finally finished BMOW’s video subsystem. Well, not quite finished really: the character generator is still missing, but the all the hardware is there to support the pure graphics modes. It’s about time!…
Yesterday I found an interesting advertisement. A Berkeley student was moving out of the area, and was selling his entire collection of electronics and robotics parts for $50. Of course I had to pick it up, so I’m now the…
I’m beginning to really hate wire-wrapping. Sure, it’s easy to make modifications to the wiring, and the finished result will be nice and sturdy, but it’s SO SLOW to build! Now that my board is getting pretty full, it’s hard…
I’ve been distracted by some other projects, and haven’t made as much progress on BMOW as I’d like. They were interesting distractions, at least: I worked on a crystal radio project with my daughter, and did some brainstorming about a…
The BMOW video system design is done! Save for that one question about the correct current source setup that I mentioned previously, everything is nailed down to the last detail. I tried to cram in the maximum amount of flexibility…
I’m about ready to call the BMOW video system design officially complete, and hopefully I’ll be posting specs soon. I’ve run into one last snag, however. The UM70C171 palette chip requires a reference current to calibrate the DAC output. The…
I honestly cannot make up my find about whether to use this salvaged UM70C171 VGA palette chip as part of my video system design. I’ve changed my mind four times already in the past couple of days. I think I’m…
While waiting for the parts I need for the video system, I ported the machine language monitor from the Apple II ROMs to BMOW. Somehow I’d never gotten around to writing an interactive program to examine and modify memory, which…
I’ve been thinking some more about the best way to set up the palette for BMOW’s video system. It’s the only part of the design that I’m not really happy with. There are a number of different options I’m considering.…
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