yorgle Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 (edited) Ultimately, the practical success of a new hardware 80 column option depends on how much software support it gets. Personally, I'd buy it if the only thing it worked with was The Last Word, but others may not want to pay for such limited scope of application. Edited December 6, 2016 by yorgle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilmoo Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 This is probably crazy talk, but you could redo the XEP-80 with a Raspberry Pi Zero and some wiring and emulation programming joy. At least this would have HDMI output. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryanr256 Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Bob Wooley had a mod to add TTL output to the XEP-80. I have an XEP with the mod, but have never connected it. -Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Umberto Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 (edited) Bob Wooley had a mod to add TTL output to the XEP-80. I have an XEP with the mod, but have never connected it. -Bob What where huh??? take pictures please!! Edited December 8, 2016 by Umberto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 There is a different mod-on in the Video Issue of Atari Classics, but it is not the XEP-80. I did the XEP-80 one and it worked fine for my monitor. YMMV depending on the monitor. I'll look for the XEP-80 article. Atari Classics: Volume 2 No. 6 https://archive.org/details/Atari_Classics_v2n6_December_1993 -Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 From: http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/05/11/0139.php ______________________________________ Xx IBM Monitor With Your XEP80 ______________________________________ by Bob Woolley If you read my earlier article in DL7 about the XEP80, you might remember that the XEP80 uses all of the display field of the monitor and the two cheap composite monitors that I had tried did not give a very satisfactory display. I have been using a high quality video unit from a NorthStar Horizon that works very well, but a monitor like that would be very difficult for the average user to find (not to mention, expensive). I spent some time at the West Coast Computer Faire looking for some reasonable candidates, but none of the vendors had composite monochrome monitors on display! There were lots of monochrome displays with seven zillion lines of resolution, a built in swivel base, non-glare screens - the works. Good prices, too! But every one was TTL, IBM. Wellll......... Never being one to shy away from a little soldering, I decided to investigate the possibility of adapting the XEP80 to an IBM monochrome monitor. The IBM TTL monitors have a separate input for the sync and video signals, whereas the XEP80 generates a composite signal containing all three components. I figured that a little circuit to strip the Horizontal and Vertical sync from the Video couldn't be that hard, but it turns out that the XEP80 has all the signals you need inside the box! The whole project didn't amount to anything more than soldering one end of a 10" piece of four conductor ribbon cable onto the XEP80 board and connecting a 9 pin joystick socket to the other end. I tried the XEP80 on a standard IBM monochrome monitor and it worked fine! I also tried it on some OEM TTL monitors made for an IBM PC (an AMDEK 310A and a SAMSUNG MD1254G) and that also worked well. After a little pot tweaking (a LOT of tweaking on the SAMSUNG). The XEP80 uses a lower Horizontal frequency than the IBM PC, so some OEM monitors may require adjustment, but not so much that you need to re-adjust it between a PC and your Atari. The display field on the TTL units does not overscan the face of the tube so there is no adjustment required for that problem. Also, the linearity is very good on these guys, so all the characters look great! The major disadvantage to a TTL monitor is the absence of audio on them, although I prefer a separate audio amplifier anyway. [Enough babbling, I waannnt one! How do I do the mod, dummy??] The wiring required is: (from the bottom of the XEP80 board) Pin 1 and 2 of 9 pin socket to pin 7 of U6. Pin 7 of 9 pin socket to the pad 1/4 inch to the left of pin 8 of U6. (This pad is the same distance to the LEFT of pin 8 as pin 7 is to the RIGHT of pin 8.) Pin 8 of 9 pin socket to pin 9 of U6. Pin 9 of 9 pin socket to pin 10 of U6. I ran the flat cable out where the power switch is mounted. The bottom cover will clamp the cable between the board and the bottom cover at this point and provide some strain relief. I would imagine that you could use a much longer cable, but at some point you will begin to lose character resolution. Now, you can take advantage of any good deals you might see on a quality IBM monitor. I saw many different TTL units for less than $100 at the WCCF. Most of them looked like much better devices than any composite monitor I have seen and they are everywhere. If you are reasonably adept at soldering, or know someone who is, think about using one of these TTL monitors on your XEP80. The normal composite output is not affected by the modification at all. Now, if I can hack an IBM keyboard onto this thing..... Bob Woolley [75126,3446] 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 You beat me! I just found it in my files. -Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 You beat me! I just found it in my files. -Larry Yeah, but you've found a GOOD article with diagrams and pics 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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