Question Trying to find tooling to design and build a PPU/GPU

nich

.
Joined
Sep 24, 2020
Messages
2
Likes
1
Location
Research Triangle / Jakarta
Hey there!

So I am trying to prototype a game machine of my own, coming from a background in GBA homebrew and hacking. I’m well-versed with technical documents like GBATek, but not so much with the machinations behind those specs, and now is the time for me to learn.

I already have some constraints set with what I have bought, and I am willing to build out whatever I need to make, and learn whatever I need to know to do it, in order to make what I want. I have purchased a HiFive 1 Rev B from SiFive as my mainboard, and I have a Santek ST0430E3WY-RSLW-F, a 4.3” TFT LCD that has 24-bit colour at 480 by 272. I have datasheets for both of these, and the display has a 40-pin ribbon cable for which I have the pinout.

I want to make a board that will at the very least take this 40-pin ribbon cable gracefully and provide some logic to give me much fewer pins that I can have wired out in easy DuPont cables for the HiFive’s GPIO. I would also like to try to make some more logic to handle timing and refreshing the LCD for me, and I would love some buffer of VRAM that I can write to whenever it’s convenient for my application and not worry about driving it otherwise.

My challenge here is in terms of workflow. I’ve heard of websites like OSH Park, I’ve seen people using KiCAD for modeling, and I’ve seen people write Verilog or VHDL for FPGAs, but all things considered I’m just lost on how to put it all together. My main workstation is a ThinkPad X240 with Arch Linux, but I also have a 2019 13” MBP. I want to prototype this board faithfully, and since I have such a specific goal I believe I can do it. I’m just a tad too new to this and I am far out of my comfort zone, so I hope you understand.
 
Top