The original Indy Presenter represents one of the earliest commercial
full color LCD screens available. The small 12" screen is,
unfortunately, limited to 15-bit color, which shows up as very
distinct banding when viewing high color images. A complete setup
consists of the Presenter panel itself, an adapter card that fits in
the Indy (there are seperate cards for XZ and XL graphics) and a cable
to link them together. You can remove the back of the panel, then lay
the whole thing down on a overhead projector. When introduced it sold
for $14,000!

Compared with modern panels, the Indy Presenter is dim, slow, small
and its 15-bit color is a bit limiting--however, there is a certain
charm to it.


July 26, 1994 INDY PRESENTER
The Indy Presenter display is the first color flat panel display
to offer both a direct view display and overhead projection capability.
Designed for the Indy desktop line, the flat panel display enables users
to carry a complete Silicon Graphics workstation in a shoulder bag, and
to make presentations using the powerful 3D graphics, audio and video
capabilities of Indy systems.  Based on a digitally driven active matrix
LCD panel customized for Silicon Graphics by Mitsubishi Electric
Corporation, the Indy Presenter display delivers saturated 15-bit color
on a flicker-free 1,024-by-768 direct view display.  The Indy Presenter
display is available immediately from Silicon Graphics for $14,000.  A
specially designed projector is available separately for $4,000.

Electronic Engineering Times

April 22, 1996

Boldly breaking bandwidth barriers

BYLINE: Chuck Tralka - Product Marketing Manager Quicklogic Corp. Santa
Clara, Calif.

.....

Video display is another leading-edge application area that requires
high performance. Example of such products are the Indy-Presenter and
the next generation of flat-panel monitors from Silicon Graphics
(Mountain View, Calif.). All of the key electronics for the flat-panel
display lie in two different boards: the graphics adapter board in the
host computer, and the LCD video board in the display monitor itself.
The adapter board is a small pc board that takes video data and timing
signals from the graphics controller and sends it to the LCD video
board. The controller outputs five video pixels every clock cycle.
These five pixels are encoded by two FPGAs on the adapter board to
produce two video pixels per clock cycle. External digital phase-locked
loop devices are used to synchronize the clock signals.

By performing this pixel conversion, it is possible to send 24 bits of
red, green and blue color information at a resolution of 1,280 x 1,024
on a 34- twisted-pair cable connected to the flat-panel monitor.
Supporting the necessary bandwidth, however, is dependent on the design
running at 110 MHz. That means the FPGAs need to support a master clock
rate of 110 MHz.

So before actually committing anything to silicon, verification of the
routed design through simulation was required. Simulation not only
confirmed that the design worked and ran at speed, but actually
exceeded the requirement by working at a clock frequency of 125 MHz.
The programmed part worked on the board at the speed indicated by
simulation.

The other board in the system is the LCD video board, which is located
on the receiving side within the flat-panel display. The video board
receives the converted pixels from the adapter board and drives the
high-resolution active-matrix LCD screen. It uses a second FPGA to
interface with the adapter board, and takes the video data and timing
signals and demuxes the signals to drive the LCD screen. This design
required a master clock of 55 MHz to achieve a screen resolution of
1,280 x 1,024.

-Chuck Tralka, prior to joining QuickLogic, was responsible for
managing ICT's programmable electrically erasable logic products. He
has held various technical and marketing positions in the
programmable-logic industry and has a BSEE from UC Davis.

The author would like to thank Andrew Katayama of Eastman Kodak, Oscar
Medina of Silicon Graphics, and Sid Gilbrech of 3Com for their
substantial contributions to this article.