Cheapest VGA Controller for micro.

[HardBoot]

So I want to play with programming a simple OS on a PIC32, and I'd like to drive my CRT rather than just have a serial terminal.
I'd like to drive VESA 640x480@75 Hz, that's a 32MHz pixel clock... I know the little buggers are pretty quick but can they push that kinda bandwidth? I'd have a PIC32 act as a "dedicated GPU", just a dummy framebuffer, no logic beyond receiving data to spit out.
I think it'll be fast enough, but I don't know if it's fast enough to have time to spare to receive data to the framebuffer, an async design will help, but it's hard to be sure.
Those 128K 512K 80MHz MIPS PICs are pretty neat things, but the cost of two... kinda makes me wonder if there's a single chip solution. I want to make $15 desktop computer that can do as much as... a really old computer.

I could fit 2-bit greyscale into 128KB of RAM, although 3-bit RGB would be great(super tight squeeze)... only problem is the addressing time would be higher.

[kripton2035]

I'm aware of this one :
http://shop.4dsystems.com.au/vga-embedded-vga-graphics-modules/295-9005.html
regards,

[Jovian]

Try a book called "Programming 32-bit Microcontrollers in C - Exploring the PIC32" by Lucio Di Jasio. It has an implementation (including full source code and schematics) for interfacing a PIC32 to a VGA monitor.

Regards,
Jovian.

[mianchen]

http://geoffg.net/maximite.html might be useful to your endeavour.

[Skimask]

Or the MAX7456.
Check Sparkfun for a breakout board.

[HardBoot]

Try a book called "Programming 32-bit Microcontrollers in C - Exploring the PIC32" by Lucio Di Jasio. It has an implementation (including full source code and schematics) for interfacing a PIC32 to a VGA monitor.
Regards,
Jovian.

Thanks, I was looking for a good book.

It's looking like a CPLD+SRAM is cheaper and the PIC32 acting as CPU can provide the clock... although if I did that I'd probably want to go all the way and make a universal VGA/DVI/HDMI device, ascii+graphic.

[kripton2035]

Or the MAX7456.
Check Sparkfun for a breakout board.

this one is nice but to overlay characters on a video signal
not really to act as a display card IMHO.