cwilkson Posted June 25, 2009 Author Share Posted June 25, 2009 It seems that you are using programmable logic in this circuit. Looks like a Xilinx device surrounded by other chip that I supose to be an D/A converter. If this is true, it's a great approach. Bugs can be corrected and features added by reprogramming the CPLD. Nice work! Wow. You have very good eyes! I took the photo in high quality mode, expecting people to actually *see* the board. But once again, I was defeated by the worthless autofocus. You are correct. It's a Xilinx FPGA and an Analog Devices DAC. There's some stuff on the bottom of the board too, but mainly just power and audio stuff and bypass caps for the digital stuff. Having the FPGA will allow me to support custom colormaps for those who prefer a non-standard palette. Bugs are certainly being corrected. But I'm pretty sure the feature set is locked now. Just a nice simple VGA board with a basic audio input and output for mixing external sources like the AtariVox. Maybe it's good that the pic is blurry. Everything on the board is hand soldered. Hand solder SMD is an art so you are an artist I wish I could use headphones on 2600 so I could play while my girlfriend is already in bed sleeping. Could include a TDA7050 or a LM4808? By the way, did you finish reverse engineering the TIA as planned in your 2001 proposal? I just plugged this into my headphones and it sounds pretty good. No amp needed! These are Philips SBC HP-820 passives. I bought them for the comfort level but they have pretty good sound too. My only complaint would be no volume control. After about a minute of listening to Pitfall II my right ear was a little tender from that harsh percussion track. I never tried any of these with headphones. The stereo seperation is amazing with a good set of cans. I never finished the TIA project. I did get the schematics completed or nearly so, but by that time the "official" schematics had been released by Curt Vendel. IIRC there is a minor error in that version. Or maybe my chips had errors? I don't think I made a mistake when I was tracing the circuits. Anyway, I abandoned the project as I no longer saw a great need for it. I may get back to it one of these days..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted June 25, 2009 Author Share Posted June 25, 2009 BTW, apologies if my replies come slowly. I'm watching this thread closely, but I've been having trouble connecting to AtariAge all week. It just times out. The rest of the net is fine. Are they having server issues? Is anyone else having problems? It took almost 4 hours to get a connection this time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cd-w Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 BTW, apologies if my replies come slowly. I'm watching this thread closely, but I've been having trouble connecting to AtariAge all week. It just times out. The rest of the net is fine. Are they having server issues? Is anyone else having problems? It took almost 4 hours to get a connection this time. Yes, the AtariAge server appears to be having hardware problems. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted June 26, 2009 Author Share Posted June 26, 2009 BTW, apologies if my replies come slowly. I'm watching this thread closely, but I've been having trouble connecting to AtariAge all week. It just times out. The rest of the net is fine. Are they having server issues? Is anyone else having problems? It took almost 4 hours to get a connection this time. Yes, the AtariAge server appears to be having hardware problems. Chris Good to know. I'm always paranoid that my ISP is doing something dodgy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CGQuarterly Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 I live about an hour outside of San Francisco, over in Davis. I might be interested in testing this deal. Let me know if you still need someone. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gambler172 Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 Hi Unfortunately i live in germany,but i would buy one,if you ever plan to release it. greetings Walter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted June 28, 2009 Author Share Posted June 28, 2009 Thanks to those who have shown interest in testing. I'll need a couple more days of tweaking. And a couple a days to build boards. They're hand assembled so it takes me a while. I have video chess working. And Robot Tank still works. I now have a maximum vertical space of 525 lines for VGA (262.5 for the Atari). If the Atari tries to draw more lines the display will remain in sync but you'll probably get garbage on the screen. If the Atari draws fewer lines it should be ok, within reason. And I have interlacing working. It works with a Dell 1702FP LCD, but looks kinda lousy. Actually, I think this one is dying. I need to dig another out. But it looks awesome on a CRT. I tested with a C= 1942 monitor. Man, the white window test pattern is really bright! The interlace demo provided by Glenn shows a blank screen now on the LCD. On a CRT it looks like the Stella display. Here's a couple of screenshots of the C= 1942. River Raid (non-interlaced), and River Raid (with scanline doubling), and CyberTech Colorbars SMPTE pattern (interlaced). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted June 28, 2009 Share Posted June 28, 2009 Wow! Those look great! I should try the CyberTech bars on a waveform monitor. I'm really curious to see how they fare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spazmonkey Posted June 29, 2009 Share Posted June 29, 2009 Hey, let me know if you still need volunteers, this looks awesome, and I'm in Pasadena, the L.A. area, so not too far.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted July 2, 2009 Author Share Posted July 2, 2009 Wow! Those look great! I should try the CyberTech bars on a waveform monitor. I'm really curious to see how they fare. Thanks. I think I sent you a copy of CyberTech Colorbars a while back. I don't have it handy in soft format, so check your PMs. It's fully interlaced (I'm really interested in feedback on that aspect) and should be better than the Video Soft program. But I didn't do all the test screens that they did. You can adjust the color delay to your taste, but if I were writing instuctions for the masses, I'd say to use the SMPTE screen (power on default) and adjust it so that the -I vector angle is correct. Just so everyone is seeing the same thing. Or, failing access to a vectorscope, use the "3 greens" screen and adjust it so the middle band looks halfway between the top and bottom bands. That will get you sort of close. Cycle screens using RESET and SELECT. And play with the difficulty switches for each screen. That's the short instructions. And beware the black burst....I think it was there that I put audio tones. I made the mistake of landing there with headphones on!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRedEye Posted July 3, 2009 Share Posted July 3, 2009 I'm in Oakland, and don't have an Atari to test this with, but I do have a Sony PVM 25" RGB monitor you're free to come over and test on if that would help for whatever reason (I doubt that would benefit you at all, but thought I'd offer just in case). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsoper Posted July 3, 2009 Share Posted July 3, 2009 I'm also in Santa Clara with a Sony HS-20 projector if you want to try. It only takes hdmi and dvi though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted July 4, 2009 Author Share Posted July 4, 2009 (edited) I'm also in Santa Clara with a Sony HS-20 projector if you want to try. It only takes hdmi and dvi though.I'm assuming that you mean you don't have an Atari that you can use for testing. That's ok. I could bring my console over to try it out. This outputs a HD-15 style VGA analog signal. Does that easily convert to DVI? I know you can go the other way around with an adapter. [EDIT] Hmm. Google tells me that the HS-20 has DVI-D input. So I don't think that will work. But it also tells me there is a component input. If that's the case, I might try to work up a component version if you're willing to test that using my console. It might be a trivial thing (I hope so). Or it might be difficult. I'll look into the component definitions. What's the hsync rate capability on your Sony? Edited July 4, 2009 by cwilkson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted July 4, 2009 Author Share Posted July 4, 2009 I'm in Oakland, and don't have an Atari to test this with, but I do have a Sony PVM 25" RGB monitor you're free to come over and test on if that would help for whatever reason (I doubt that would benefit you at all, but thought I'd offer just in case).Ooh. That's a nice monitor! I appreciate the offer. It wouldn't directly help the development effort. But it would give me a chance to show it off to someone. And maybe if you like what you see, you could help in the evangelizing effort. Wait. Does the PVM sync to 31.4kHz? That's double what NTSC outputs. All of my (smaller) PVMs only sync to the normal 15.7kHz I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carpenter Posted July 4, 2009 Share Posted July 4, 2009 (edited) Hey Chris, extend your Atari tour to Brazil Edited July 4, 2009 by Carpenter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted July 4, 2009 Author Share Posted July 4, 2009 Hey Chris, extend your Atari tour to Brazil Sure. You can send the plane tickets to Santa Clara! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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