# Pimoroni Pico VGA Demo Base - What is it?

**URL:** <https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988>\
**Category:** Raspberry Pi\
**Created:** [January 25, 2021, 9:31am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988 "2021-01-25T09:31:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gizmo1990](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/gizmo1990/32/4309_2.png) [@gizmo1990](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/gizmo1990)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 9:31am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988/1 "2021-01-25T09:31:56Z")

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I’m a bit puzzled about what this actually is? In my mind it would give a clean VGA out to Pi’s running emulation? So perhaps I could consider this when hooking up a Pi to an 15mhz old arcade monitor I have? But then why should th board itself have a sd card?

Can anyone fill us in on what it actually does? Perhaps give some use cases?

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**Author:** ![Shoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Shoe](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Shoe)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 10:15am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988/2 "2021-01-25T10:15:35Z")

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So there has been a lot of talk about the Programmable IO on the Pico being able to emulate VGA output with very little strain on the processing cores. This would give the Pico vido out, and the potential to do…Something? Involving a display. I don’t think the use cases are super-fleshed out yet, but there has been talk about retro games type applications, which is what Pimoroni’s PicoSystem seems to be going for.

So you could output some basic games with audio, using the SD card to store music and sprites. Alternatively, I’m sure there will be some way to create interactive systems like music players.

EDIT: The store page says “This board will run the various example programs that Raspberry Pi have put together to demonstrate features of the RP2040.”, so presumably the Pi Foundation have something more fleshed-out in mind.

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**Author:** ![alphanumeric](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/alphanumeric/32/2729_2.png) [@alphanumeric](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/alphanumeric)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 10:15am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988/3 "2021-01-25T10:15:46Z")

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It’s not for a Raspberry Pi, if that’s what your thinking, It’s for the new Pico.  
Built especially to showcase Raspberry Pi’s low cost, feature-rich “RP2040 chip”,

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**Author:** ![gizmo1990](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/gizmo1990/32/4309_2.png) [@gizmo1990](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/gizmo1990)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 9:32am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-pico-vga-demo-base-what-is-it/15988/4 "2021-01-26T09:32:39Z")

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Thanks for the replies everyone. That makes much more sense.