Commander X16

On 10/25/2022 at 4:35 AM, TomXP411 said:

Maybe take the LSB of each color (one red, green, and blue line)

On 10/25/2022 at 4:35 AM, TomXP411 said:

drive an I2C or SPI connection to the E-ink panel... 

On 5/27/2021 at 9:25 PM, TomXP411 said:

The only downside is that the native resolution is 1024x768, so you'll see scaling artifacts...

On 10/24/2022 at 11:08 PM, Cyber said:

Modern wide LCD with resolution ANYx1440 with 4:3 mode.

On 10/24/2022 at 9:39 PM, neutrino said:

Probably the MSB?

On 10/25/2022 at 1:08 AM, Cyber said:

2. Old or modern 1280x960 LCD. It scales perfectly to 640x480 using 2x2 monitor pixels for one VERA pixel. These also rare, but I saw new chinese models with such resolution.



3. Modern wide LCD with resolution ANYx1440 with 4:3 mode. In 4:3 mode VERA's output will occupy 1920x1440 pixels area, which scales perfectly to 640x480 using 3x3 monitor pixels for one VERA pixel.

On 10/25/2022 at 12:42 PM, Johan Kårlin said:

I will try this! I don’t know if it will work well but at least it has VGA and 640x480 as native resolution.

On 10/24/2022 at 7:16 PM, neutrino said:

Here's one color 13.3" E-ink at 800 US$ without taxes. But comes with "Purchase of E Ink Gallery related products requires signing a Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) & Software License (SLA) before shipment." ?



https://shopkits.eink.com/product/atelier-with-13-3˝-acep-display-ac133ut1/



At 11m:20s in this video, a USB connected to a PC e-ink tablet is demonstrated:



https://invidio.xamh.de/watch?v=KdrMjnYAap4&listen=false



 



I found this page the most interesting:



https://essentialscrap.com/eink/



Especially this datasheet at page 94:



https://essentialscrap.com/eink/S1D13521B01_Spec.pdf



So in essence you have to grab the digital screen data from the X16 and then transfer this to the memory of the display controller.



The X16 lacks any digital interface currently, but there are ways around it:



 * Modify the RTL code loaded onto the VERA board and get digital output, at least the pixel clock.



 * Piggy back on the VERA board oscillator (25 MHz) and feed the analog lines to an A/D. The A/D part is present in any LCD with an VGA input. The old screens usually drives the panel with digital LVDS..



 * Make an expansion card that eavesdrop on the bus communication with the VERA passively, and then feed it to a VERA clone replicate the digital video data.



 * Use a VGA-to-DVI adapter and then a FPGA to get from DVI to the actual digital RGB data.



You may want to make sure that a whole screen is grabbed in one sweep to avoid the shutter effect. Which means the memory (DRAM) to store this is needed.



The process is something like:



video source (X16) --> A/D --> memory --> e-ink controller with memory --> giant shift registers at the X and Y sides of the e-ink panel.



If you get the driver PCB from an old VGA-LCD then you can attach an FPGA+memory developer board to the LVDS output and most likely drive the E-ink gate/source (X/Y) shift registers directly.



Another approach is to use a PC with a video grabber and feed the output to an USB ready e-ink display. But this might possibly produce latency that is too high.



 



It all depends on your knowledge, equipment, time, budget etc.



 

On 10/25/2022 at 7:08 PM, TomXP411 said:

I wrote correctly. I suggest you think about why removing the most significant bit in the DAC would be a bad idea before arguing the point.

On 10/25/2022 at 10:42 PM, Johan Kårlin said:

I will try this! I don’t know if it will work well but at least it has VGA and 640x480 as native resolution.