Font for 1-pin TV driver - 5x7 font or modify ROM font ???

Cluso99

I am trying to shrink the 1-pin TV driver so that it resides totally in cog for SphinxOS. This will not be easy as it not only has to contain the screen buffer (maybe 40 chars x 12 lines = 480 bytes = 120 longs), possibly the character font (maybe 96 chars 5x7 = 96 x 5 bytes = 480 bytes = 120 longs), and the driver code, plus the video routines (simple VT100 subset).

Has anyone found a way to utilise (shrink/scale)·the 16x32 ROM font as a smaller font without too much clunkiness? (8x8 or 8x16 would be good)

Has anyone done a 5x7 font (displayed as 6x8) ?· (needs to be small if cog resident)

Any other ideas???

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Peter Jakacki

I did a 5x7 font for my 128x64 graphic lcd if you want a copy.

I do remember quite a while back this thread.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=708332

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*Peter*

Mike Green

I had posted a TV driver that had the screen buffer in the cog RAM and used the ROM font. There's no room for the VT100 interpreter in the cog, so it's currently written in Spin. I plan to rewrite it in assembler to reside in a 2nd cog so that the entire VT100 TV text driver would run in two cogs. I'll probably put in some conditional code to be able to combine the 4-pin and 1-pin drivers.

Attached is an archive for a version of FemtoBasic that uses this driver and runs on a Demo Board. There's also a cog-only FDS driver. If no keyboard is connected, the programming port is used for a console instead of the keyboard/video driver.

The included keyboard driver is the comboKeyboard driver used in the other FemtoBasic versions even though the name has been changed. At some point I plan to move the keyboard buffer into the cog.

Cluso99

Peter said...
I did a 5x7 font for my 128x64 graphic lcd if you want a copy.

Peter, that would be great thanks :-)

That thread is interesting. I need to look a little deeper.

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

Peter Jakacki

Cluso99 said...

Peter said...

I did a 5x7 font for my 128x64 graphic lcd if you want a copy.

Peter, that would be great thanks

That thread is interesting. I need to look a little deeper.

Ray, hopefully this makes it a bit easier than building the table from scratch.

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*Peter*

VIRAND

Search for Clemens Font (Clemen's?) which is 2 fonts made by shrinking the internal one to 5x7 and 6x6 I think.

also...
although its tricky with lowercase, 5x7 can be squeezed into 5x5 because rows 2,3 and 5,6 are usually the same.

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I should be typing in Spin now.
Coming soon. My open Propeller Project Pages and favorite links index.

Cluso99

Mike: Thanks. I am just moving the screen buffer into cog for the 1-pin TV now. Currently I can fit 64 cols x 16 rows but that may change. There is some space for primitive screen control code remaining. I will then attempt to use the rom font but not sure about this and it's implications with the 1-pin code.
I have already done a 1-pin Keyboard driver with the buffer in cog (see 1-pin Keyboard) and I will be using this in SphinxOS. Sphinx already has a standard keyboard driver with the buffer in cog.
I have aready posted a serial I/O with the buffer in the cog (based on JDcog + mods by Andy & myself) for use with SPhinxOS.

Attached is the 1-pin TV code (currently NTSC 64*16). Space in cog for the buffer, but not yet used!! - just for those that want to see where I am up to. It is based on EricBall's 1-pin TV code. The code snippet is the line display section.

'only do LSB first font
                        WAITVID FFOO, #0
                        MOVI    CTRB, #%0_00110_000     ' turn on blank
                        MOV     VSCL, ovsclch           ' 1 PLLA per pixel, 8 PLLA per frame

:evitca                 RDBYTE  char, charptr           ' read character from HUB RAM
                        SHL     char, #3                ' 8 bytes per character bitmap               
                        ADD     char, fontptr           ' add base address + line offset
                        RDBYTE  char, char              ' read character bitmap from HUB RAM
''        xor char,#$FF 'inverse (but we must do <64 chars/line)
                        ADD     charptr, #1             ' next character
                        WAITVID FFOO, char              ' output to screen
                        DJNZ    count, #:evitca         ' do entire line

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

Cluso99

Peter. I noticed lowercase L-Z are actually uppercase. Do you have a later version or should I fix and repost?

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

Peter Jakacki

I must have forgotten that I only got up to "k" so there are still a few lower-case characters left to do. It seems that I'm not really using lower-case so I hadn't noticed. I'll try to update this in the next 24 hours.

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*Peter*

lonesock

I did a 5x6 font, posted in this thread:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=821309

The idea was to store one glyph per long in Cog RAM.

Jonathan

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lonesock
Piranha are people too.

Cluso99

Thanks Jonathan. Yes I was wondering about the 5x7=35 bits and seeing if I could kludge the last row of bits. Unfortunately everything I do takes instructions in a timing loop I have no time for :-(

I am still working on it though. Currently I have an 8x8 font loaded in the cog, but no screen buffer! I am debugging at the moment.

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

lonesock

Cluso99 said...
Thanks Jonathan. Yes I was wondering about the 5x7=35 bits and seeing if I could kludge the last row of bits. Unfortunately everything I do takes instructions in a timing loop I have no time for :-(

I am still working on it though. Currently I have an 8x8 font loaded in the cog, but no screen buffer! I am debugging at the moment.

btw, I used my remaining 2 bits (per long) to store the glyph width, so this particular font is variable-width. You could use that info to center each glyph, if desired, or I could quickly build up a fixed-width version, if you'd like.

Jonathan

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lonesock
Piranha are people too.

Cluso99

lonesock: With just a quick look I could not work out how the bitmap was working. I need LSB first, row by row. You mention vertical slices - is this relevant??

I have to be careful that I can easily get to the correct data bits without too many pasm instructions.

The ROM is interlaced with the subsequent character. If I was to use that in 1-bit mode I am not sure how to achieve it. Would I just AND %0101010.... or AND %1010101...
and then SHR ,#1 for the odd char. Guess I would then be using 2 bit mode, but I think the CTRB is doing PWM to generate the monochrome in the 1-bit driver.

Guess I really do not understand the video generation in either 1-pin or 3 pin modes. Maybe it's time I really understood it instead of fudging my way through it :-(

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz