FP(V)GA-Text

A simple to use VHDL module to display text on VGA display.

VGA Simulator

Go simulate your own VHDL projects or even the ones you build with this text library. A faster better way to debug projects with VGA.

Go straight to the tool. Or read a bit about it and how to set it up.

Supported Characters

• VHDL'93 supports the full table of ISO-8859-1 characters (0x00 through 0xFF(255))
• The font included includes 0x00 through 0x7F(127)
• Non printing characters are supported using concatenation. ex.
• constant heart_msg : string := "I" & ETX & "You";

Supported Boards

The constraints (.ucf) is configured for the Basys 2 but any FPGA with VGA should be able to run this code (make sure to update contraints)

TODO:

• Expand included font to support the full 0x00 through 0xFF (255) character range

Changelog:

2013-12-15

• Bug fix! Fixed a problem where text does not appear if you only use 1 text_line module.

2013-12-9

• Added a font rom arbiter: This gets rid of the unnecessary font map for every text_line module and frees up board space.
• Moved to block ram for the personal storage of each text_line module. This saves a lot of board space. We used to use an array of long std_logic_vectors

2013-7-13

• Working text modules but took up a lot of board real estate.

Notes:

• The original font ROM pops up in many projects and sites (below). It has been since updated and cleaned up for this project.
• https://ece320web.groups.et.byu.net/labs/VGATextGeneration/VGA_Terminal.html
• https://github.com/thelonious/vga_generator