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Micro-SD Card Slot Abused As VGA-Port
dvdkhlng writes "The Ben NanoNote open-source hand-held computer has often been criticized for not being very extensible hardware-wise. A community effort now starts to challenge this by shipping the so-called UBB board, which plugs into the micro-SD port, making 6 I/O lines available to hardware hackers. The most impressive use so far is this VGA port implemented by just a few resistors, with signal-generation mostly controlled by software. The guy who did this calls it an 'unexpected capability.' Schematics and source code are available under the GPL."
But I couldn't fit my floppy in the Micro SD slot now its traumatized and won't work anymore.
Can it run Crysis?
It's rare to see real out of the box hacks like this. Not a rehash with a different combination of herbs, nor completely useless.
So slashdot is about, oh, 33 years late :-).
Perhaps they were running the webserver off one of these too.
While the GPL part is nice, and hack can be fun, the question still arises why start with such a limited platform in the first place if you have the need for more?
Just this morning I finished turning my VGA port into a micro-SD card slot. Now I can't submit my story to /.
Mostly random stuff.
For one it's fun. It's OK to have fun. If we only do those things that need to have a (serious) reason, we'd never have any fun. You must have gone straight from diapers to curmudgeon, without the usual goofy and fun states.
For another, this would be great for a low-cost embedded project. I can easily see this being adapted to an embedded playroom I play with.
Lastly, ti's cool.
I don't remember the details, but this device came out a few years ago. Only difference between MircoSD and SD are a few ground pins, right? The margi probably used a ucontroller for the signal generation, now that devices are more powerful, the software implementation is now plausible.
Micro-SD Card Slot Abused As VGA-Port
Finally! A slashdot headline I can agree with.
A community effort now starts to challenge this by shipping the so-called UBB board, which plugs into the micro-SD port, making 6 I/O lines available to hardware hackers. The most impressive use so far is this VGA port implemented by just a few resistors, with signal-generation mostly controlled by software. The guy who did this calls it an 'unexpected capability.' Schematics and source code are available under the GPL."
Open Hardware; not the Open Software, is relevant in this project.
its not useful to you - right now. therefore its a waste of time.
mod that parent down, please. this is useful stuff that us embedded guys can use later on, on other projects. ..not every computer is measured in ghz, jeeves old boy.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Maybe they just did it so that someone like you could ask 'why.' Because I can't think of anything more satisfying than a good hack that confuses your type of person. Yeah, it ain't something you are going to use every day. As long as it befuddles the non-geeks (that's what someone who asks the question the way you phrased it is) it's cool.
Viva for 'wasting time, resources and bandwidth' even if it's someone like you, with your sort of comment, doing the wasting. I guess.
"Cheap Video Cookbook" is exactly what came to mind when heard about the VGA port (I have a Ben Nanonote and subscribe to the mailing list). I enjoyed Don Lancaster's books so much when I was a kid. He taught me not to be afraid of a soldering iron. He showed me how to disassemble software. But mostly, he explained hacker values better than anyone.
In one of his columns, he told the flute story, and it always stayed with me. I became a teacher in College ten years ago, and I always repeat this story to my students. Here it is.
"Many years ago, I was at a rock concert. The opening act was a single flute player standing solo in front of the closed stage curtains. His job was to warm up the audience for the high priced talent that was to follow. He was good. But as he went along, the musical vibes got stranger and stranger, then totally bizarre. He was playing chords on his flute. Combined with utterly unbelievable riffs. Much of the audience got impatient and bored at what seemed like a bunch of god-awful squawks. Then I happened to notice a friend beside me who had both been in and taught concert band. He was literally on the edge of his seat. He turned to me and slowly said 'You Can't Do That With a Flute.'
Of the thousands and thousands of people in the theater audience, at most only five realized they were witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime performance of the absolute mastery of a difficult and demanding instrument.
Always play for those five."
This was more significant in the pre-USB 2.0 era. It's now possible to get USB interfaces to almost anything. It used to be that your choices were a serial port, a parallel port, a data acquisition board, or custom hardware. Now there's usually some inexpensive USB device that will do the job.
It's hard to find low-cost devices which provide 50MHz digital in/out ports. There are lots of USB to digital I/O interface devices, but only a few can reach even 40MHz. If you don't need that much speed, though, a USB device will be simpler to deal with. And you'll be able to do something else on the main CPU while driving the I/O device.
why the f^@k would anyone even care
Some of us nerds care 'cos we like playing with tech. And who knows what other interesting things this might lead to, some of which might turn out to be very useful?
I like this kind of thing.
It reminds people that tech isn't magic, and that even modern high tech devices contain things that can be messed with on a budget.
From a practical standpoint, this can be useful. Maybe somebody finds that this or a similar device is just the sort of thing they need, except that it lacks the right kind of port. This kind of hack can solve the problem.
Why comment on slashdot articles? What's that going to achieve?
This space available.
So basically: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why abused? Re-purposed sounds more accurate.
I've used a lot of 'ports' for functions not originally envisioned in their design (Rule 34 applications included) and its only abuse if you don't get permission first.
Have gnu, will travel.
"I guess that's why they nowadays give their processors fancy names like Pentium, Itanium, Core Duo and i7 instead of 80386/33, 80486/40, 8088?"
You can't trademark numbers. You fail.
Nice for this project. Is there a way to make this generic for other pieces of hardware?
I've always wanted an SD card which had a cable out the one end where you could view the contents of the card as it was written to be the device it was plugged into. For example, a digital camera with an SD card, takes a picture, writes to the card, and has a USB plug on other end that can download the image or video immediately to a PC.
I've seen cards with USB plugs converting the SD card into a USB card, but haven't seen anything that allows simultaneous access to the content.
The closest I've found is an eye-fi card, which uses wifi. There's also a USB stick that acts as a network interface so while it appears local, it's actually accessing a network drive, but alas, that's USB, not SD.
Will this work on any platform with a microSD slot? Or do you need a special "microSD" slot?