New Hardware: Atari 400/800 Super Color CPU Card

[Faicuai]

Just now, Stephen said:

This is correct rendering:

 

That is correct.

 

It will NEVER come out like that on his setup. EVER, as long as his LCD's NTSC color-decode renders $01 hue (con Colormap) as parrot-green, because Lucas Films background source their color from exactly this hue-band.

[Krenath]

18 minutes ago, Stephen said:

This is correct rendering:

 

Even if I adjust the LCD or color pot settings to that, the artifact colors on the SCCC remain incorrect for an Atari 800. 

The artifacts remain purple/green on the SCCC and blue/green on the A800 card.  And as a result, software that uses artifacts for color looks odd.  But not as odd as XE artifacts.

And, to be clear here, the only thing I am trying to adjust here, are the artifact colors.  And they cannot be corrected by the color pot or lcd tint/hue settings.  This is a color clock delay issue, not a tint/hue issue.

I could go buy a different LCD or even an old CRT and adjust it all day long until I got just the right shades of brown and yellow-gold and *still* the artifact colors would be XL-style and not 800-style and Ultima III would have the wrong colors.  

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

7 minutes ago, Krenath said:

And, to be clear here, the only thing I am trying to adjust here, are the artifact colors. 

 

Please, ready carefully the information is being posted here for you (and your case). All we are trying to do is help as much as we can.

 

You CANNOT get Lucasfilm backgrounds rights because you are color-phase locked (TINT/HUE) on your LCD (you just said it). You don't use ANY other adjustment for such purpose. And, since TINT/HUE (color-phase) has a direct impact on artifacts rendition (specifically, right-column artifacts in Colormap, on a stock 800), that you can't adjust artifacts renditions as you should, either.

 

You are now 1000% dependent on whatever artifacts-phase (different than color-phase) adjustment you can perform directly at SCCC level or by modifying 800's analog-video path. And if you can't do that at such level, then you are 100% stuck in the bottom of a purple/green artifacts ocean.

 

Not the ending anyone would wish... but that's the end of the story.

[Krenath]

33 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

You are now 1000% dependent on whatever artifacts-phase (different than color-phase) adjustment you can perform directly at SCCC level or by modifying 800's analog-video path. And if you can't do that at such level, then you are 100% stuck in the bottom of a purple/green artifacts ocean.

YES.  ABSOLUTELY.

I have been trying to steer the topic back to this subject since the beginning. 

• Yes.  It's all about the artifacts phase. 
• Yes, that's what I want to modify ON A HARDWARE LEVEL IF I HAVE TO. 
• And I'm QUITE sure I will have to. 
• I have been aware of this from the start.  

This side trip into hue/tint adjustments has only served to muddy the purple waters.

Even if I dug up an old CRT that perfectly rendered LucasArts' splash screen in brown and gold and Star Raiders' shields in gray-blue and Band $01 in Colormap the precise shade of yellow-gold, the SCCC/UAV artifacts would still be XL-style purple/green and not XE-style red/blue nor the desired 800-style blue/green. 

Any machine the SCCC or UAV is installed in will currently be forced to display XL artifact colors, but the delay can be adjusted until it gets close to XE-style artifacts. 
The delay pot (not hue, not tint, not color pot) currently cannot be adjusted far enough in either direction to create 800-style artifacts, and THAT is what I want to change.

This is a hardware issue that will only be solved by a hardware mod to the CPU card.  Which I am trying to get to.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[leech]

56 minutes ago, Krenath said:

YES.  ABSOLUTELY.

I have been trying to steer the topic back to this subject since the beginning. 

• Yes.  It's all about the artifacts phase. 
• Yes, that's what I want to modify ON A HARDWARE LEVEL IF I HAVE TO. 
• And I'm QUITE sure I will have to. 
• I have been aware of this from the start.  

This side trip into hue/tint adjustments has only served to muddy the purple waters.

Even if I dug up an old CRT that perfectly rendered LucasArts' splash screen in brown and gold and Star Raiders' shields in gray-blue and Band $01 in Colormap the precise shade of yellow-gold, the SCCC/UAV artifacts would still be XL-style purple/green and not XE-style red/blue nor the desired 800-style blue/green. 

Any machine the SCCC or UAV is installed in will currently be forced to display XL artifact colors, but the delay can be adjusted until it gets close to XE-style artifacts. 
The delay pot (not hue, not tint, not color pot) currently cannot be adjusted far enough in either direction to create 800-style artifacts, and THAT is what I want to change.

This is a hardware issue that will only be solved by a hardware mod to the CPU card.  Which I am trying to get to.

So wait, which is the delay pot vs the color pot?

 

Also side note, was using the ATR disassembler to see if I could find anything about swapping colors on U3 like U4 has.  Just for fun, found this.

 

[Krenath]

17 minutes ago, leech said:

So wait, which is the delay pot vs the color pot?

On the SCCC card, there are two pots. On the UAV, there is only one and it's the delay pot.  

The blue pot at the top of the SCCC card is labelled DELAY POT and if you turn it, you'll notice that none of the normal colors change at all, but artifact colors do.  You can adjust it through a range from the XL purple/green through the XE cyan/red but it won't go any further in either direction.  If you load up COLORMAP from the Altirra Additions disk, you'll see that the two bands of artifact colors on the LEFT of the screen change but the matrix of colors on the RIGHT do not.   

The black pot at the bottom of the card is labelled COLOR POT.  It doesn't change *every* color on the screen like a true hue/tint control would.  
If you load up COLORMAP, you can see when you make large changes to the Color pot position, the rainbow of colors on the RIGHT side will either grow until the whole rainbow won't fit in the 16 color bands or shrink until it starts to repeat multiple times.  This vaguely changes the bands of artifact colors on the left side but only because those bands were created with columns of colored pixels rather than white ones.  It's not because the color pot is changing the artifacts, but only because the artifact bands weren't created with white pixels.  Those columns of pixels were created using colors the color pot *does* control, which adds some confusion.  The UAV.XEX test program creates bands of artifact colors with shades of white so it's much easier to see how the artifacts don't change when the color pot does.

It's my unproven theory that, if the range of the delay pot were great enough, you would be able to adjust through the entire rainbow to make the artifacts any color you wanted along with its opposite, and somewhere in that range are the colors the original 400/800 displayed.
 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[Krenath]

I have located an LCD TV with color/tint settings that let me display LucasArts splash screens in brown and gold.
I'm currently working on calibrating the colors according to Faicuai's LucasArts/Star Raiders/ColorMap benchmarks.
Once that's done, I should be able to grab a metric ton of photographs of the screen using both the original A800 CPU card and the SCCC/UAV.  (Something I should probably do in a separate thread instead of continually dumping into this one.)

I fully expect to see that, no matter how perfectly I adjust the color/hue/tint settings to match Faicuai's standards between the LCD TV and the Atari itself, none of that will remedy the artifact settings from these adjustments alone. 

To get an Atari 800 with an SCCC card installed in it to render the Atari 800-style artifacts that an Atari 800 owner very likely expects, the SCCC delay pot needs a hardware mod to create a larger effective adjustment range.






 

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[leech]

38 minutes ago, Krenath said:

I have located an LCD TV with color/tint settings that let me display LucasArts splash screens in brown and gold.
I'm currently working on calibrating the colors according to Faicuai's LucasArts/Star Raiders/ColorMap benchmarks.
Once that's done, I should be able to grab a metric ton of photographs of the screen using both the original A800 CPU card and the SCCC/UAV.  (Something I should probably do in a separate thread instead of continually dumping into this one.)

I fully expect to see that, no matter how perfectly I adjust the color/hue/tint settings to match Faicuai's standards between the LCD TV and the Atari itself, none of that will remedy the artifact settings from these adjustments alone. 

To get an Atari 800 with an SCCC card installed in it to render the Atari 800-style artifacts that an Atari 800 owner very likely expects, the SCCC delay pot needs a hardware mod to create a larger effective adjustment range.






 

All of my testing has been through Retrotink -> AV.io HDMI capture device and OBS / VLC.

[Krenath]

22 minutes ago, leech said:

All of my testing has been through Retrotink -> AV.io HDMI capture device and OBS / VLC.

I have a Retrotink on order, as well as a Hercules SVideo cable.  I'm currently using some chinesium svideo cable and svideo-to-hdmi convertor.  My computer monitor is an Asus MG28U from 2016.  My LCD TV is a Panasonic Viera from 2013.  Video "capture" has been through an iPhone that's constantly trying to 'correct' what I see in person.

Testing on the LCD TV:

Original A800 CPU Card:

• Ultima III Exodus:
  •  Blue border, green text.  Blue water, green grass and trees.  As It Should Be.
• LucasFilm splash screen from BallBlazer:
  •  Title is more brownish-gold than the iPhone wants to show here.  
• Star Raiders shields:
  •  blue-gray shields.
• Flight Simulator II cart version:
  •  Artificial horizon is blue over green but a slightly different shade of each than the landscape.
• Colormap.com:
  •  Artifacts bars are deep blue and green.  Band $01 is gold-brown.

Same machine, Super Color CPU Card:

• Ultima III Exodus (without color invert jumper):
  •  Ugh.  Yuck.  
• Ultima III Exodus (with color invert jumper):
  •  The iPhone refuses to show it but the 'blue' here is every bit as magenta as in the title above.
• LucasFilm splash screen from BallBlazer:
  •  Gold on brown.  No green tint in real life.
• Star Raiders shields:
  •  blue-gray shields.  
• Flight Simulator II cart version:
  •  Screen refresh and the iPhone were fighting me here.  The 'brown' is all the magenta-purple color.
• Colormap.com:
  •   Artifacts bars on left are magenta-purple and green. band $01 is gold-brown.  It's not really as weird as it looks here, but I think the iPhone was having a stroke.
     

 

Of course this would be a lot easier with an actual HDMI capture device.  I'll look into an AV.io so I can stop fighting the iPhone's automatic adjustments.
 

[leech]

Ha, what the hell is the iPhone doing to correct the colors on those pictures? 

It does seem all of those games are designed with the 800 colirs in mind and any newer machine displays tgem incorrectly.   Guess I could hook up one of my 1084S monitors and have a play there, but it is rather odd that the SCCC 'upgrades' the 800 to XL palettes.  It is even stranger to me that it isn't a variant GTIA as you are using the same chip.  This means if someone were so bold as to figure out what needed to be changed, we could 'patch' the XL and XE line if we knew what to patch it to. 

Only artifacting game I know of that has been patched in various ways is Lode runner.

[+tf_hh]

16 hours ago, Faicuai said:

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).

 

I´m still working on the SCCC V2. This one will come in two versions: Version A has Sophia-2 integrated, you need only ANTIC chips in PAL & NTSC to switch between TV norms. No soldering needed, no change of system crystal needed etc. (both versions). Version B will be like the current version, but requires also GTIA in PAL and NTSC - but no digital output or Sophia (any version) possible due to space restrictions.

 

[+tf_hh]

9 hours ago, Krenath said:

It's my unproven theory that, if the range of the delay pot were great enough, you would be able to adjust through the entire rainbow to make the artifacts any color you wanted along with its opposite, and somewhere in that range are the colors the original 400/800 displayed.

 

The color pot circuit is an 1:1 adaption of the genuine CPU card:

 

 

This is the part of the color pot circuit found on the genuine Atari 400/800 CPU cards. Source: Atari Field Service Manual 400/800, Revised Edition June 1983

 

This is from my SCCC. The 10 nF capacitor (C304 in the schematics from Atari) is there, but at another (power) place of my schematics. The 100nF capacitor AFTER the center tap showed in my schematics IS PRESENT at all genuine CPU cards, but not shown in most of all schematics. But when you miss that, you NEVER get pure and solid colors using NTSC - This was my fault with the first prototype of the UAV equipped SCCC version... it has worked with PAL systems flawless, but NTSC looks ugly. After studying all schematics I have I looked at two or three real CPU cards and... they have it. Installed it. NTSC looks perfect. Maybe this additional capacitor is only needed for GTIA and not for CTIA. I haven´t had a CTIA in stock, so this is just an idea, why Atari never mind this capacitor, but installed it on all CPU boards I´ve seen so far.

 

[Faicuai]

58 minutes ago, tf_hh said:

Version A has Sophia-2 integrated, you need only ANTIC chips in PAL & NTSC to switch between TV norms

 

EXCELLENT !!!!

 

This would be THE video-upgrade to have for the 800. WATCH for placement and orientation of SOPHIA-2 video-header on-board. This is my personal install experience, and 35-40cm of ribbon length may be required to meet most exit-paths:

 

 

Notice that wrapping the ribbon behind the board is also a valid exit route, which means Sophia's pin header can't be placed too high on the board, if aligned to exit sideways. Placement and orientation of this header needs to be carefully planned!

 

I'll be there for this one.

 

Cheers!

Edited February 22, 2021 by Faicuai

[_The Doctor__]

tf_hh are you saying the production run does not have the gtia cap?  I ask because you were talking about the prototype not having it. and wanted to be sure. You are correct that it should be there.

[Krenath]

2 hours ago, tf_hh said:

 

The color pot circuit is an 1:1 adaption of the genuine CPU card:

 

The Color pot isn't the issue.  Standard colors are fine on the SCCC card.  

The Delay pot is the issue.  Something about it is shifting the artifact colors and only the artifact colors from 800-style to XL-style (and, with some adjustment, somewhat XE-style).  

Edited February 22, 2021 by Krenath

[_The Doctor__]

okay I think I see some issues with the conversation, delay is two separate items, there is the delay for color adjust phase on the gtia (labeled as such on the schematic pin on chip) and there is the half clock delay responsible for artifacts. These are two different 'delays'.... or advances

 

In the Atari they are intertwined to a small degree, voltage is a big factor, and the capacitors used as well, they provide cleanup, shore up voltages and pass signals... That is why there are so many fixes.

 

I am certain that any component left out being placed back in circuit will be an improvement- this is in regard to the original 800 and sccc, there were some mistakes in the original machines, some had a wrong value component that messed with impedance, but that's listed time and time again over the forums.

 

If the cap was left out of sccc I am sure he'll give you the best location to but it back.

 

as to the color clock artifact being off, well that might be a firmware and or component fix. I'd like to hear from Bryan and see what thoughts he might have on it. I was able to affect artifacts on the 800XL messing about. But you are only interested in the 800 for now. though they are all built from the same origins...

Edited February 22, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[leech]

7 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

as to the color clock artifact being off, well that might be a firmware and or component fix. I'd like to hear from Bryan and see what thoughts he might have on it. I was able to affect artifacts on the 800XL messing about. But you are only interested in the 800 for now. though they are all built from the same origins...

Well I have some 800XLs I'd be curious to mess around with the artifact colors on.  I have been meaning to make a catalog of games that used artifacts to make colors, and well I guess I'm going to have to do that, then we can make a list of which one it looks 'correct' on, based on what they look at on their originating platform, perhaps.

[leech]

So, based on what we're finding in this thread, we pretty much have 400-800 / XL / XE variants of color artifacting?  UAV seems to do the XL style, but there's also the potential for inverting these colors (Like Ultima IV has an option built in for such).  I'll create a separate thread for listing games.  And I'm guessing maybe we should make another thread specifically talking about maybe designing a composite pass through device that can switch between the three?  Though maybe we'd need a 'source / destination' style input / output.  So you can say the source is coming from an 800xl and say you want the 800 color scheme?

[+tf_hh]

17 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

tf_hh are you saying the production run does not have the gtia cap?  I ask because you were talking about the prototype not having it. and wanted to be sure. You are correct that it should be there.

 

I think I made it absolute clear written above, but of course the cap is present at ALL ever shipped out SCCCs. The first 20 pieces have this cap soldering between two pins with a degree of 45, the next run have a distance place on the PCB for it.

 

[scitari]

I am installing the Super Color CPU Card in a 400 and noticed the audio cable from the Vintage Computer Center has yellow, red, and black wires. The instructions online show white, brown, and black wires. I assume yellow=white and red=brown but wanted to confirm before I start soldering. Has anyone done this install recently? Thanks!

[+tf_hh]

38 minutes ago, scitari said:

I am installing the Super Color CPU Card in a 400 and noticed the audio cable from the Vintage Computer Center has yellow, red, and black wires. The instructions online show white, brown, and black wires. I assume yellow=white and red=brown but wanted to confirm before I start soldering. Has anyone done this install recently? Thanks!

 

That is correct. Yellow = White and Red = Brown ? Sorry, I didn´t found the time to update the manuals. The old cable is EOL ?

 

 

[scitari]

I installed the SCCC and the video looks great! Unfortunately, the 400 now thinks it is booting something and won't enter Memo Pad. If have turned it one and off a dozen times. Once, after several minutes waiting to boot, it said boot error and then went to memo pad. Ideas?

[Simply_Graham]

I´m still working on the SCCC V2. This one will come in two versions: Version A has Sophia-2 integrated, you need only ANTIC chips in PAL & NTSC to switch between TV norms. No soldering needed, no change of system crystal needed etc. (both versions). Version B will be like the current version, but requires also GTIA in PAL and NTSC - but no digital output or Sophia (any version) possible due to space restrictions.

@tf_hh

 

Wow I'm glad I've seen this post, I was going to contact you, and ask kindly if you would sell me a bare board, that way I could just add the components I wanted and a Sophia2.

P.S whilst you are designing , any chance you could add a few additional jumpers so that the WDC65C02S can be used (Although this may need an additional buffer (or two) due to LS TTL levels.)

 

P.P.S.   And know idea why AA would not let me 'quote' you..

[leech]

Curious if the Sophia 2 also changes the palette of the 800 to that of the XL like the UAV does?

[Krenath]

On 7/3/2021 at 11:33 AM, leech said:

Curious if the Sophia 2 also changes the palette of the 800 to that of the XL like the UAV does?

And if there's a way to avoid doing so...