VBXE Sync issues and potential solution(s)

[Rybags]

A mixed bag of results. I've got it running through a mass of wires stuck in a test board and it didn't display properly until I connected the grounds.

It's on probably my worst monitor which I re-capped last year - the Atari display seems a bit too dark though I've not boosted the brightness too much through the converter.

 

Setting the BG colour to a bright one seemed to introduce a whole lot of sparklies. Unwanted artifacts at screen extremeties but that's largely due to it running in underscan.

If you could put up with a bit of aspect ratio h-stretching you could probably use almost all of a 16:9 monitor's display.

 

Now the sad part - it just doesn't seem to play well with my 480i mode. The Crysis pic is the only thing I've got ready on my IDE+2, but I imagine it'd probably be the same deal with other stuff.

If only I could find my Amiga monitor cable I'd give it a go too.

 

Edited December 13, 2016 by Rybags

[Rybags]

Soldered up a 9 pin plug for the video input and she's ready to go into a case. Local electronics outfit didn't have anything of the right size at the price I wanted (ie under 10 bucks) so I found an old HDD enclosure that clamshells together and will modify that.

 

Power will be by a USB wallwart, and I made up an adaptor to provide the required barrel connector.

I've got a USB power meter that goes inline (eBay cheapo) and I kept an eye on it, never seems to go above 600 mA provided you're getting near or at 5 Volts. For some weird reason when I was using a skinny USB extension cable of about 2 feet in length it suffered a voltage drop down to about 4.3, the current draw seemed to jump a bit to compensate.

[+mytek]

Rybags sorry that this is slightly off topic, but do you have a link to that USB power meter you mentioned in the previous post?

 

- Michael

[Rybags]

They're at saturation point on eBay. Mine cost under $2 delivered - it's like the one pictured.

 

Issues though... I'm not sure if USB 3 ones are being made. The connection can be dodgy at times. There seems no configuration on the display, it alternates between Volts and Amps every 10 seconds, in most cases you'd barely give a crap about voltage once you've verified it is near 5 so you spend all that time waiting for the current reading to come back.

But at the price, can't complain too much.

 

 

 

Didn't get time to work on Atari stuff... hopefully get my adaptor in a case tomorrow. And if the momentum keeps up, do the same with my IDE +2, just hope I can find it's ribbon cable.