ZVG card skyrockets to $661 on Ebay

I'd like to see VectorMAME on a Rpi and hooked up to a ZVG (USB to parallel?) and have it displaying vectors better than a DOS computer.
 
I'd like to see someone create a new type of ZVG to run on new FPGA hardware with usb support.


And write a new Vectormame mame version to talk to the zvg.
 
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I'd like to see someone reverse engineer the ZVG to run on new FGPA hardware with usb support.


And write a new Vectormame mame version to talk to the zvg.



Careful. Thats the same concept as "stolen" artwork. Making money off someone elses "hard" tracing work.
 
Curious if it could be run through a Virtual Machine... I believe they have sound support...

Brian

Maybe someone should try running that stuff under DOSBOX. It's free, runs under any Windows on any machine and provides bridges to mouse, keyboard, sound, com ports, parallel ports, and printers that are transparent to the DOS programs.

https://dosbox.en.softonic.com/download
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

As for the card slot that the ZVG card needs, are there not adapters available?

Just a suggestion,

Bill B.
 
At some point the consensus was that the parallel port was the bottleneck for drawing vectors at speed. I believe that running under an additional layer of emulation (DOSBOX) or another serial/deserial conversion (USB) will be so slow as to be unusable. Additionally, the parallel port has to be ECP and support DMA which is unlikely to be supported under emulation or in an adapter. That's where my research led me.

Of course, anyone is welcome to try.
 
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I've helped bring up a half dozen of these. The hardest part of this project is finding a PC that can drive a Soundblaster in DOS. They were plentiful 10 years ago. They will be extinct soon.
That statement brought me back. Had a soundblaster card with a modem in it!!! 28.8kbps!!!! Couldn't ever get AOL 3.0 to work with it though.... haha
 
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I meant develop a new type of "ZVG" vector generator card. I'm sure they could fetch 500 or more a piece.
How about a raspberry pi with vector outputs?






Careful. Thats the same concept as "stolen" artwork. Making money off someone elses "hard" tracing work.
 
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I meant develop a new type of "ZVG" vector generator card. I'm sure they could fetch 500 or more a piece.
How about a raspberry pi with vector outputs?

At that point, the big question would be if the RasPi's GPIO port can a) generate the necessary signals and b) run as fast as or faster than a parallel port.

If not, you're looking at hardware add-ons, and the constraints of that particular platform may make that unfeasible. But someone who has done a lot more hardware hacking on the RasPi than I have would need to answer both of these questions.
 
At that point, the big question would be if the RasPi's GPIO port can a) generate the necessary signals and b) run as fast as or faster than a parallel port.

If not, you're looking at hardware add-ons, and the constraints of that particular platform may make that unfeasible. But someone who has done a lot more hardware hacking on the RasPi than I have would need to answer both of these questions.

I hope someone can chime in on the above questions.
 
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