I had an old composite to USB converter lying around and the software for it - so I got that all installed (along with its VHS Screen Grabber software) and working as a place holder until I found a monitor which accepts composite.

Then I wired the graphics board (The Ocean) up to  the motherboard (The Island).. and powered it all on!!!

Sadly, The Island freaked out; it wouldn't spit out it's normal debug text and the debug LED wasn't blinking at 30hz.  After an hour or so of debugging I realized the problem, but to make it clear I need to back up a step....

The Island (motherboard) communicates with The Ocean (gfx board) through a 30 pin connector.  This has the 8mhz clock, address bus, data bus, VCC, GND, and a VSYNC pin used for The Ocean to tell The Island when it VSYNCs.

I'm not using the address or data bus right now, but I wired up VCC, GND, 8mhz clock, and VSYNC...  it turns out I screwed up my PCB design and VSYNC on the 30 pin connector is actually wired to the 8mhz clock!   Ugh how dumb - I'm not sure how I missed that...but that's why The Island was freaking out.

Fortunately I have an additional VSYNC debug pin on The Island, so I used that and bypassed the broken VSYNC on the 30 pin connector.

Then I powered it up again... BOOM The Island started up as normal and spewed its debug information to the serial port on my PC.  Unfortunately The Ocean composite output just kinda flickered on my Screen Grabber software. 

After debugging for awhile, I pulled up the datasheet for the AD724 (that's my color generator for the composite output).  To my horror I realized that, for some odd reason, I ignored the important parts of the chip.  I didn't add the correct resistors or capacitors, and I was sending voltage levels MUCH TOO HIGH to the R,G,B input pins.  It wants a max voltage level of 357mV - I was sending it a full 5V!!!!   Oh man I hope I didn't blow the chip :(

So.. I didn't have the necessary resistors and capacitors here - which meant I went to Amazon and ordered everything I need.  It should be here tomorrow (Saturday) and I'll hook it all up to test again.  I pray I didn't damage the AD724 because it was about $40 (it's a SMT and I had to have it soldered to a DIP breakout board).

As I wait - I have other exciting news...I took another trip to Goodwill tonight and there was a new monitor (well, new to Goodwill).. a Westinghouse with composite input and a normal 3 prong power plug!!!!   I picked that sucker up for $10 - and now I'm good to go!!!

Here's a pic of the beauty, price tag still on...

Anyway - I'll need some peace and quiet to hook the resistors and capacitors up (I have to do a voltage divider network to get down to .3v) - so I'm not sure I'll have that chance over the weekend - but I'll post back here when I have some results, hopefully Monday or Tuesday night at the latest.