Help connecting my Spartan 3E to VGA monitor

[mbabaee]

Hi

I want to display simple text using my Spartan 3E board (Papilio One) on a VGA monitor. I write in VHDL. I have found some codes on the net implementing complicated features like games and moving images, but couldn't understand anything from the codes.

I need a very simple code for showing some text through VGA. I could not also understand what horizontal and vertical sync signals are.

Thanks in advance for your helps.

 

[RetroTechie]

I could not also understand what horizontal and vertical sync signals are.

Oh dear, coding VHDL on a FPGA board, wanting to produce text on a VGA screen, but not a clue about video basics... Where to start? :?:

How about here: Wikipedia - raster scan.

VGA should be a relatively simple video interface to wire a FPGA onto - analog video with separate R/G/B, horizontal and vertical sync inputs. I'd start with some simple pattern generation, see **broken link removed** for an example. Also you'll need to change pin assignments to match your board.

After that you can decide whether you want full bitmap capability (read: external RAM to hold bitmap data), or text-only (in which case you might be able to use FPGA internal RAM blocks for text contents and/or bitmap font data). Don't forget to check OpenCores - they have some VGA controller projects there.

 

[mbabaee]

Oh dear, coding VHDL on a FPGA board, wanting to produce text on a VGA screen, but not a clue about video basics... Where to start? :?:

How about here: Wikipedia - raster scan.

VGA should be a relatively simple video interface to wire a FPGA onto - analog video with separate R/G/B, horizontal and vertical sync inputs. I'd start with some simple pattern generation, see **broken link removed** for an example. Also you'll need to change pin assignments to match your board.

After that you can decide whether you want full bitmap capability (read: external RAM to hold bitmap data), or text-only (in which case you might be able to use FPGA internal RAM blocks for text contents and/or bitmap font data). Don't forget to check OpenCores - they have some VGA controller projects there.

Thanks so much for your help. The VGA controllers at OpenCores are somehow complicated for a beginner and some of them are written in Verilog.
The Project in FPGA Arcade website is useful, but it uses 4-bit data for R, G and B signals. I just want to work with single bit resolution which is capable of showing 8 colors.

I first want to be able to show a color bar on the screen, when succeeded, I intend to show some characters. The final goal may be the bitmap, so I think the internal RAM would be enough.

I have a question now. For drawing a color bar on the screen, do I have to build the HS and VS clocks by dividing the main clock? And how and when do I have to send the R, G and B signals?

Thanks very much for your help.