New Hardware: Atari 400/800 Super Color CPU Card

[BillC]

3 hours ago, leech said:

Curious, when you designed the SCCC (awesome card!)

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/260646-new-hardware-atari-400800-super-color-cpu-card/?do=findComment&comment=3717999

Edited February 21, 2021 by BillC

[+tf_hh]

8 hours ago, leech said:

Curious, when you designed the SCCC (awesome card!) was there a particular design reason why you didn't put the POT for adjustment in the whole where the 800 has a spot for it already?  It was super convenient for messing with it without taking the whole thing apart again!

 

Simply why I want to prevent the user from drilling holes into his machine anywhere. Before I made the first version, I ask several people about their opinion. Most of them say: "My 800 is a holy grail, I never drill anything!"

 

The first protoype has had the color pot at the same place like the genuine cards:

 

 

But then there´s no space to outbreak the shielded video cable and drilling is needed. Later, when Bryan allowed me to use his UAV circuit, I must arrange the parts a different way to seperate all video traces from the system´s buss the get the best quality possible, so the color pot must went to the left side.

 

[leech]

37 minutes ago, tf_hh said:

 

Simply why I want to prevent the user from drilling holes into his machine anywhere. Before I made the first version, I ask several people about their opinion. Most of them say: "My 800 is a holy grail, I never drill anything!"

 

The first protoype has had the color pot at the same place like the genuine cards:

 

 

But then there´s no space to outbreak the shielded video cable and drilling is needed. Later, when Bryan allowed me to use his UAV circuit, I must arrange the parts a different way to seperate all video traces from the system´s buss the get the best quality possible, so the color pot must went to the left side.

 

Makes sense.  I still can't seem to find the right tool for like say the 800xl to be able to adjust the pot from the bottom of the case, only seems to work after taking it apart and adjusting through the shield.

[retrobits]

This is interesting discussion on artifacting output of the Super Color CPU Card with the UAV circuit.  I've yet to install mine, but am preparing to do so.  I really appreciate the detailed findings from Krenath and Faicuai and others.

 

Pretty much I use an original 800 and Ultima III is one of those games I still play, and I was surprised by the sample output.  I did spend some time today in Altirra with the game and was impressed how thorough Phaeron was in emulating the colors.  Under the view menu, you can choose "Adjust Colors..." and then set the preset to many choices, including NTSC, PAL, XE or XL or 800.  I've attached screenshots of the 3 different presets for XE, XL, and 800.  Based on this, I can see why there is so much confusion about which are the "correct colors".  It really depends on the machine you use. 

 

XE Artifacting: 

 

XL Artifacting:

 

800 Artifacting:

Edited February 21, 2021 by retrobits

[_The Doctor__]

3 minutes ago, retrobits said:

This is interesting discussion on artifacting output of the Super Color CPU Card with the UAV circuit.  I've yet to install mine, but am preparing to do so.  I really appreciate the detailed findings from Krenath and Faicuai and others.

 

Pretty much I use an original 800 and Ultima III is one of those games I still play, and I was surprised by the sample output.  I did spend some time today in Altirra with the game and was impressed how thorough Phaeron was in emulating the colors.  Under the view menu, you can choose "Adjust Colors..." and then set the preset to many choices, including NTSC, PAL, XE or XL or 800.  I've attached screenshots of the 3 different presets for XE, XL, and 800.  Based on this, I can see why there is so much confusion about which are the "correct colors".  It really depends on the machine you use. 

 

XE Artifacting: 

 

XL Artifacting:

 

800 Artifacting:

as stated but in picture form, thanks for the post, maybe that will help the understanding. and there is an inversion out there of the 800 and a third artifact not discussed, a picture is worth many words

[Faicuai]

10 hours ago, tf_hh said:

 

Simply why I want to prevent the user from drilling holes into his machine anywhere. Before I made the first version, I ask several people about their opinion. Most of them say: "My 800 is a holy grail, I never drill anything!"

 

The first protoype has had the color pot at the same place like the genuine cards:

 

 

But then there´s no space to outbreak the shielded video cable and drilling is needed. Later, when Bryan allowed me to use his UAV circuit, I must arrange the parts a different way to seperate all video traces from the system´s buss the get the best quality possible, so the color pot must went to the left side.

 

This one seems like a much more desirable arrangement... 

 

I know it is impossible for you to predict future events (no HW designer can, in fact), but this layout seems to allow a direct, drop-in install of SOPHIA-2 in CTIA/GTIA which is perfectly placed for a quick-and-simple exit route through the expansion bay, for instance.

 

On the latest SCCC, and assuming PIN #1 of chipset goes up-left, I could not see space between GTIA and ANTIC chips for Sophia's integrated header (it is pre-soldered for 800 users).

 

All-in-all SCCC is a solid upgrade for the 800 and, as FPGA re-implementations advance, it is the future of the 800 expansion of GFX and CPU power. And all of it essentially plug-and-play, leveraging the 800's architectural strengths.

[leech]

1 hour ago, retrobits said:

This is interesting discussion on artifacting output of the Super Color CPU Card with the UAV circuit.  I've yet to install mine, but am preparing to do so.  I really appreciate the detailed findings from Krenath and Faicuai and others.

 

Pretty much I use an original 800 and Ultima III is one of those games I still play, and I was surprised by the sample output.  I did spend some time today in Altirra with the game and was impressed how thorough Phaeron was in emulating the colors.  Under the view menu, you can choose "Adjust Colors..." and then set the preset to many choices, including NTSC, PAL, XE or XL or 800.  I've attached screenshots of the 3 different presets for XE, XL, and 800.  Based on this, I can see why there is so much confusion about which are the "correct colors".  It really depends on the machine you use. 

 

XE Artifacting: 

 

XL Artifacting:

 

800 Artifacting:

Yeah so the my XE probably needs adjusting, but it's Blue / Orange vs Cyan / Red. 

my unmodified 800 looks like yours, Blue / Green.  But my 800 with SCCC and Incognito looks more like the XL line.  Kind of seems to me that we just need to find the games such as these and create a patch.  My 800XLs all seem to have the swapped colors (Green borders / Blue title).  Not sure where to do the color inversion on those.  So does the UAV / SCCC actually change the NTSC artifacting palettes somehow?  That's the only reason I can think of the modified 800 is doing that.

 

Fun side note, I bought Ultima III and IV on cartridge from the atarimax store, and neither of them will run on 48k, so I can't actually test those on the unmodified 800, only on the SCCC/Incognito equipped one.

[leech]

1 hour ago, Faicuai said:

This one seems like a much more desirable arrangement... 

 

I know it is impossible for you to predict future events (no HW designer can, in fact), but this layout seems to allow a direct, drop-in install of SOPHIA-2 in CTIA/GTIA which is perfectly placed for a quick-and-simple exit route through the expansion bay, for instance.

 

On the latest SCCC, and assuming PIN #1 of chipset goes up-left, I could not see space between GTIA and ANTIC chips for Sophia's integrated header (it is pre-soldered for 800 users).

 

All-in-all SCCC is a solid upgrade for the 800 and, as FPGA re-implementations advance, it is the future of the 800 expansion of GFX and CPU power. And all of it essentially plug-and-play, leveraging the 800's architectural strengths.

Ha, yeah I skipped doing the cable out the back, and wired up the SCCC to the original monitor port.  Seems much neater that way.

[leech]

12 hours ago, tf_hh said:

 

Simply why I want to prevent the user from drilling holes into his machine anywhere. Before I made the first version, I ask several people about their opinion. Most of them say: "My 800 is a holy grail, I never drill anything!"

 

The first protoype has had the color pot at the same place like the genuine cards:

 

 

But then there´s no space to outbreak the shielded video cable and drilling is needed. Later, when Bryan allowed me to use his UAV circuit, I must arrange the parts a different way to seperate all video traces from the system´s buss the get the best quality possible, so the color pot must went to the left side.

 

So I think it was decided that maybe it's the UAV circuit that is changing the color palette to XL type vs 800?  That's kind of what it looks like to me.  Ultima IV comes with a built in color swap, to change green/blue around.  Which seems to work on the XLs if your POT is adjusted right.  Ultima III as far as we know does not.  Ha, maybe I can have some luck with Disk Wizard.

[Krenath]

23 hours ago, leech said:

Can you please share the images you are using for these?

When I originally played Ultima III on the 8bit, the water was red, never understood why back then.  I can only get all of my machines, including the 800 with SCCC to show like my screenshots at best, or the colors flip if I change the pot the other way.

I'm using both the disk version of Ultima III and the AtariMax cartridge version. 

Both render with blue and green artifact colors for me on original, unmodified hardware.   As a result, water is blue as one would expect and trees and grass is green.  

There is no position of the color pot on my original 800 CPU cards where the artifact colors change to anything else.  Nothing I can do will generate purple/green or red/cyan artifact colors on the original hardware (not that I want to, but it would be informative for testing if I could)

I have tested this normal behavior on two different 800s:

 

Machine A (Unmodified machine with a date code of 512, 51st week of 1982):

• A C014175 REV A main board
• A C014176 REV B power board
• A C014360 CPU card (non-Sally)  
• A P6502B CPU instead of a Sally,
• A C014805-01 GTIA chip
• A C012296D-01 ANTIC chip

Machine B (Modified with Incognito and SCCC card.  Date code of 163, 16th week of 1983)

• A C014175 REV A main board
• A C014176 REV B power board
• A C015500 CPU card, Sally CPU version (when installed)
• A C014806 "Sally" 6502C CPU
• A C014805-22 GTIA chip
• A C012296D-01 ANTIC chip

With original, stock hardware installed, both machines show blue and green for artifact colors.  I can mix and match parts and the artifact colors remain the same.

When I insert and connect the SCCC card, or when I hook up the UAV board, the artifact colors change to green and purple.  Inverting the colors change them to blue and green, which is *almost* acceptable but still looks weird.
I have tested both CPUs, both GTIA chips, and both ANTIC chips in the SCCC card and none of them affect the artifact colors.



My SCCC is definitely showing the XL artifacting. It seems that Faicuai is insistent that XE artifacting is the most correct, and for him it probably is, but I very much would prefer my 800 to continue to display 800-style artifacting like it has for 40 years so far.
 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Krenath

[leech]

So my gathering of info seems correct that the UAV/SCCC changes the artifacts to a different color than the standard 800, so that it is more XL like.  Wonder how many games were messed up due to this, and how difficult it would be to patch them.

[_The Doctor__]

It breaks some and fixes others... all in all it's a wash.... using the inversion pot combo get you in the neighborhoods....

if you fix it to 800 colors then jingle disk is wrong if you fix it for flight sim then ultima is wrong... and around and around you will go... so the only other step possible (which discussion surrounded) would be to provide for all 4 artifact possibilities plus inversion... this was opening up a can of worm as most people couldn't get through the choices provided... someone would scream about having to put a switch on or opening it to change it and this and that.

 

I personally like the idea of switching through them all... so who wants to shoe horn this out of the uav or make the UAV 2/SCCC 2... but don't forget that the whole of it needs to be checked for NTSC as well as PAL.... good luck, I can't wait to see what you make!

[leech]

3 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

It breaks some and fixes others... all in all it's a wash.... using the inversion pot combo get you in the neighborhoods....

if you fix it to 800 colors then jingle disk is wrong if you fix it for flight sim then ultima is wrong... and around and around you will go... so the only other step possible (which discussion surrounded) would be to provide for all 4 artifact possibilities plus inversion... this was opening up a can of worm as most people couldn't get through the choices provided... someone would scream about having to put a switch on or opening it to change it and this and that.

 

I personally like the idea of switching through them all... so who wants to shoe horn this out of the uav or make the UAV 2/SCCC 2... but don't forget that the whole of it needs to be checked for NTSC as well as PAL.... good luck, I can't wait to see what you make!

Ha, yeah maybe have a key you could hold down on power up for it to load a different palette... not sure what would be easier, patch the games for different colors, or create something that can do it in hardware.  Seems to me it depends on when the game was made, to which system displays the correct color.  It is sort of madenning.  Does any other system suffer from this?

[_The Doctor__]

Not really, as most didn't have a prolific multi run like Atari did... with lots of machines over time, and the later engineers didn't consider things like that while churning out 2 or 3 or more stylized machines per run.. 400/800  600XL800XL1200XL (and more) 65XE130XE800XE XE GAME system.... not mention all the machine that made it out as limited/prototypes or not at all and the add to it the 5200 and it's variants... The guys forgot lots of details on each...

 

The Apple had it's own issues with no lower case letters or color at one point, they went with artifact colors only at one point and so on.. APPLE II + etc slowly changed a number of things....

 

cost reduction and other things happen stuff gets left out or added/changed

Edited February 22, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Krenath]

49 minutes ago, leech said:

So my gathering of info seems correct that the UAV/SCCC changes the artifacts to a different color than the standard 800, so that it is more XL like.  Wonder how many games were messed up due to this, and how difficult it would be to patch them.

You can't really patch the games themselves, since the games don't have any control over the resulting artifact colors.  All they do is make lines of odd or even pixels and the artifacts do the rest of the false-color magic.  
You'd need some way of determining in hardware what artifact settings to use and a way to set your preference.

Some day, I'd like to see settings in the Incognito BIOS where you could control the artifact settings on actual hardware, and do it on a profile basis...
 

[Faicuai]

1 hour ago, Krenath said:

Both render with blue and green artifact colors for me on original, unmodified hardware

Ok, something does not add up here.

 

When displaying the above scenario (ONLY that one), what is the TINT / HUE value you have on your LCD?

 

If you can post a picture of the machine hooked up to the LCD, COLORMAP on screen (via composite) and LCD's on-screen dialog showing TINT, that would be pretty helpful.

[Krenath]

10 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Ok, something does not add up here.

 

When displaying the above scenario (ONLY that one), what is the TINT / HUE value you have on your LCD?

 

If you can post a picture of the machine hooked up to the LCD, COLORMAP on screen (via composite) and LCD's on-screen dialog showing TINT, that would be pretty helpful.

I have posted about a hundred such pictures in this thread so far.  

My LCD color temp settings are set to Normal.  Skin tone settings set to Natural. 

While I can change the red/green/blue levels on my LCD, there is NO WAY on my LCD to adjust the hue/tint to change 800-style blue/green artifacting or XL-style green/purple artifacting into XE-style cyan/red artifacting.  And if there were, it would screw up every other color on the screen and I am not willing to do that.   There is no RGB level setting that will turn blue or green into red.

I have an 800.  I am playing 800 games.  I am not trying to make it look like an XE.

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[Krenath]

 

COLORMAP on stock 800 hardware:

 

COLORMAP on SCCC card:

 

It may be difficult to tell based on the angle of the pictures and the phone trying to compensate, but in person the right-side color matrix IS THE SAME on both screenshots.
The artifact colors on the left are what changed and it's entirely because of the artifacting and NOT because of HUE/TINT setting on my LCD.

 

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

2 minutes ago, Krenath said:

There is NO WAY on my LCD to adjust the hue/tint to change 800-style blue/green artifacting or XL-style green/purple artifacting into XE-style cyan/red artifacting.

That is abnormal.

 

When you launch ANY Lucas Film title, what background color do you get on splash-screen?

[Krenath]

28 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

That is abnormal.

My LCD doesn't have a HUE/TINT setting. 
It only has levels for red, green, or blue, along with brightness, saturation, color temp (which is set to normal), and contrast.  
You cannot make blue or green into red with those adjustments alone. 
And if I could, I would not want to because *every* shade of blue or green on the screen would turn red. 

I do NOT want to mess with normal colors as seen in the right side of COLORMAP. 
I ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY want to change the artifact colors.  And this can only be done through color clock delay settings on the hardware, NOT the LCD.

My LCD colors are correct.  My A800's color pot settings are correct on both the A800 CPU card and the SCCC card.  Colors not generated by artifacting appear the way they should on both modified and unmodified hardware

We're talking about the artifact colors here and nothing else.  Those are the false colors generated when you have columns of odd or even white pixels.   In COLORMAP, the bars on the LEFT side of the screen are a combination of normal colors and artifacting colors. The LEFT side of the screen is all I need to adjust and the RIGHT side of the screen needs to remain exactly the way it is.

The SCCC card's artifacting settings are designed for the norm for XL computers and I want to mod them so they are normal for the 800 that I have and the 800-era software I use.

You apparently have an XE computer and are accustomed to looking at the XE artifacts.  But there is NO way to use color pots or LCD hue/tint settings to get that to happen without screwing up every other color on the screen.

 

Ballblazer splash screen on the original A800 CPU card:

 

Ballblazer splash screen on the SCCC CPU card.  I could hook up the UAV and get the same result as well.

This is because Ballblazer does NOT rely on artifacting to generate the colors.   

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath
Screenshots were swapped

[+Stephen]

Nope - that is supposed to be orange coloured, not green.

[Faicuai]

18 minutes ago, Krenath said:

My LCD doesn't have a HUE/TINT setting. 

So how in the world did you manage to get GOLD-YELLOW on $01 hue-band, as you mentioned before? 

 

Because, the ONLY way to render Lucasfilm intro screens correctly (perceptually) is with a RUST / REDDISH background and yellow-golden logo, and that implies a yellow-gold rendition of $01 hue-band (I already posted a detailed, vivid coilormap table to show you how it really looks!)

 

Your green-screens on LucasFilms is the classical modern NTSC decode, which automatically means $01 hue-band comes out as Parrot Green. While this decode is colorimetrically correct in today's NTSC modern terms, it perceptually incorrect for many titles between 1980-1983. Even Scram will fail to show as originally intended.

But most importantly (and relevant to the topic on hand, Artifacts colors), it turns out that ANY color-phase (HUE/TINT) adjustment on LCD/CRT will immediately affect $01 band, while also immediately affects the "odd"-column artifacts rendition in Colormap. And that is precisely how you get to render Blue/Orange artifacts color-set at will, for any game you may need, departing from a stock 800 in which its artifacts-phase has not suffered any significant production change. 

 

Had I known before your LCD is color-phase locked (unless I blatantly missed a statement of yours, of course), I would have told you that you are essentially stuck, from the get-go. Time to get a good upgrade for your video path.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Faicuai
typos, precision...

[Krenath]

5 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

I would have told you that you are essentially stuck, from the get-go.

I am clearly NOT stuck. 

Without touching my LCD settings at all, one set of hardware can generate blue/green artifacts and another set of hardware can generate green/purple artifact colors. On the SAME LCD with the SAME picture settings.

I am NOT going to try to fix this by adjusting the LCD color settings. That is entirely the wrong approach.

I am going to fix this by adjusting the hardware such that it generates 800-style blue/green artifacts.  

Anything else would result in incorrect colors on the entire screen for every title everywhere.
 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[+Stephen]

18 minutes ago, Krenath said:

Ballblazer splash screen on the SCCC CPU card.  I could hook up the UAV and get the same result as well.

This is because Ballblazer does NOT rely on artifacting to generate the colors.   

This is correct rendering:

 

[+Stephen]

1 minute ago, Krenath said:

I am clearly NOT stuck. 

Without touching my LCD settings at all, one set of hardware can generate blue/green artifacts and another set of hardware can generate green/purple artifact colors. On the SAME LCD.

I am NOT going to try to fix this by adjusting the LCD color settings. That is entirely the wrong approach.

I am going to fix this by adjusting the hardware such that it generates 800-style blue/green artifacts.  

Anything else would result in incorrect colors on the entire screen for every title everywhere.
 

Sorry man - but if your Rescue on Fractalus is green, on any hardware, it is 100% wrong.  That screen on no hardware ever is, nor was intended to be in green.  The shot I posted above is what an NTSC machine was designed to show.  Full stop.