NTSC core for VBXE?

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

6 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

I was (clearly) referring to the pictured resources, which were originally present in the manual. The additional flexing is superfluous.

 

As far as I know, the manufacturer (who claims to have the rights to the project) asked for all materials to be removed from the PIGWA server, and this has been done. So, all in all, there's no point in delving into it, but it is what it is.

[+DrVenkman]

5 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

Given the scale of production at Lotharek's (I'll become his spokesperson in a moment), answering all questions (and the level of user questions, for example from the Atari 8-bit Computers group on FB, is such that they ask whether the J1 connector with a marked square on pin #1 is definitely pin #1, and where pin #2 is located?) would result in a doubling of products' prices, because an entire support department would have to be financed.

Hey, I saw that discussion. To be fair, the questioner had a good point. J1 did not have a specifically marked “Pin 1” besides the square, while the documentation has a red arrow pointing to a different connector’s “Pin 1” which was NOT the pin with the square! He’d never installed VBXE in a machine before and was rightfully worried about blowing something up. It’s also an open question how pins are numbered when the silkscreen is confusing to begin with. 

[flashjazzcat]

I think the general pin numbering convention for dual-row headers, IDC connectors, etc, is:

1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8

Using that methodology, everything makes perfect sense.

 

[woj]

To add a bit more heat to the actual discussion about palettes  I just finished implementing a small routine in my program to revert the first 16 colors / shades of gray back to "stock" on VBXE after my application redefined them. (The ideal scenario is that you don't touch any colors in palette 0, yet, I had to, and it had to be the first 16 due to the use of high-res mode, never mind that).

 

So, the natural question is what should I revert them back to??? There is no "read palette" register in VBXE, there is no "reset palette" register either, the VBXE manual in its wisdom says (quoting from memory) "the programmer is responsible for restoring the palette after it has been redefined". Restore to f.... what??? So, browsed the forum, found some palettes, one that Altirra supposedly uses for VBXE emulation, and one that someone (excuse my laziness to dig out who that was and where it was said) claimed to be the 1-1 reflection of the built-in palette (reconstructed using some method that I could not really understand). Guess what?! Neither of these reverted the shades of gray to what they are in the factory stock core!. (We are talking about actual hardware.) Not even close, I compared by displaying the unchanged 0-F colors, and the supposed ones restored to positions $10-$1F. It took me an hour of experimentation and comparing, looking at the screen from all possible angles to make sure there is no step and the colors are a match. And because I am relatively blind, I still can't be 100% sure I got right. Lucky me it was only the first, relatively easy, 16 colors...

 

I don't think even Avery knows what these colors are, I think (just an educated guess), is that Altirra simply uses its own palette for as long as there are no calls to redefine colors and assume they would look like the stock GTIA ones (and uses appropriate palette for that depending on the video mode and user preferences), once there is a color redefinition then that is used instead of the built-in palette.

[candle]

laoo_b.mif laoo_g.mif laoo_r.mif

[woj]

4 minutes ago, candle said:

 

Cheers for that! Was this announced somewhere earlier on and I missed it in my search? (If so, excuse my rant, though some points still stand ;)). 

[candle]

again,

 

i belive the purpose of this thread was to agree on certain vbxe palette suitable for all NTSC users and then, pass this information with agreed palette to the Electron or me (to pass it to Electron) via lets say - PM

that did not happend IIRC, thus nothing else did not happend either

 

i think there are some tools for palette manipulation written for sdx, but these are all third party stuff

setting up palette is pretty straight forward, and can be done using basic if someone has inclination for it, or in any other language

this code is to be executed once per power up (simplyfying) and no residend code is needed

 

why there was no NTSC VBXE palette? Noone requested this when this project was managed, and when Lotharek bought intelectual rights for it, all development of the core was stopped - first - there was virtually no space left on the device to be utilised, second, core was pretty mature and all of issues there were reported back were fixed

 

anyways, if you have that one palette that was agreed on, and can be used to please you all - please send it, it would be super nice if it could be sent in the format as files above

 

getting compiler to work on modern setup after intel took over altera is another issue, but lets say there is a will to do that

 

Edited August 30, 2023 by candle
typos

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

Good news!  

 

I spoke with Electron over the phone in the early afternoon today. @tebe has also recently been in touch with him (possibly after my conversation with Piesiu, whose Atari I am currently upgrading after his win at Lost Party). An NTSC palette is to be agreed upon in the coming days, and a complete set of cores with the NTSC palette is planned for release in September. There is both agreement and willingness to proceed. It's just a matter of finalizing the palette. I also talked about this with @flashjazzcat today.

 

Thanks also @candle for re-engaging on this topic.  Perhaps we can finish this topic together with combined efforts.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Piotr D. Kaczorowski

[+DjayBee]

It seems Poland can not only create dramas but also great endings to them.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

2 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

It seems Poland can not only create dramas but also great endings to them.

Emotionality and romanticism are our national traits 😜

[+Stephen]

Thanks to everyone working on this!

[bfollowell]

This is awesome news! So, is this easily flashed to existing boards? I realize the term easily is likely open for debate.

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

7 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

This is awesome news! So, is this easily flashed to existing boards? I realize the term easily is likely open for debate.

 

Yes. Standard procedure for uploading the core. Maybe for now try uploading cores with the Rocky palette for practice.

[+Stephen]

14 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

This is awesome news! So, is this easily flashed to existing boards? I realize the term easily is likely open for debate.

 

Yeah - it will run as a binary file on the Atari, you flash it, and reboot.

[+DrVenkman]

4 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

Good news!  

Thank you to everyone involved in getting this moving and making it happen. We Never The Same Color (twice) people appreciate it very much!

[bfollowell]

Hadn't we already decided on a palette? That's what FJC used for his U1MB plugin, right? I mean, it may not have been sent to candle & company but, unless we find a better one, we've pretty much already decided on the palette.

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

7 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Hadn't we already decided on a palette? That's what FJC used for his U1MB plugin, right? I mean, it may not have been sent to candle & company but, unless we find a better one, we've pretty much already decided on the palette.

 

It's probably the best choice indeed. I just need to find out if that's the palette that was sent. In the case of PAL, as you can see, the choice wasn't so obvious since two palettes were created (standard + Rocky).

 

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

BOOM!

 

WE DID iT! 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, everyone. Especially @tebe, @candle,  @flashjazzcat, and of course Electron , who found the time and built the core version 1.26 for VBXE with native NTSC palette.

 

 

VBXE_FX_v126_cores_ntsc_palette.7z

[electron]

On 8/28/2023 at 8:08 PM, Stephen said:

I still don't understand how a maximum of 768 bytes has caused this many issues for over a decade.

Because nobody ever bothered to ask me directly? It seems, you all prefer years long discussions, I was not aware of.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

11 minutes ago, electron said:

Because nobody ever bothered to ask me directly? It seems, you all prefer years long discussions, I was not aware of.

 

:))))))))))))))))))))

 

I need to send flowers to the lady from your company's secretariat. She may have violated "RODO" a bit, and I was shocked myself. The important thing is that the issue concerned a larger matter.

 

In the NTSC region, the focus is currently on improving video output and the 80-column mode used for BBS and CP/M support, which were popular in the United States in the early '80s (Poland has a completely different history).

 

I've spoken here with colleagues from various demo scene groups, and they are announcing more applications and games for VBXE.

 

Thanks again for your help and for creating VBXE in the first place

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

For those who are asking about NTSC Artifacting, I'll just mention that new devices are planned to be released later this year and early next year that will add NTSC Artifacting in post-production technology. These will work across all cores, including the VBXE FX core. Specifically, these are the SAVO/HAVO boards and the new Medusa 2024. These are somewhat unofficial announcements.

[+DrVenkman]

5 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

BOOM!

 

WE DID iT! 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, everyone. Especially @tebe, @candle,  @flashjazzcat, and of course Electron , who found the time and built the core version 1.26 for VBXE with native NTSC palette.

 

 

VBXE_FX_v126_cores_ntsc_palette.7z 136.95 kB · 5 downloads

Thank everyone involved very, very much!

 

I am on my tablet now and won’t be able to dig into this until later this afternoon or tomorrow (one of the few holiday weekends in the US) … what is the process of getting this core onto my VBXE? I see it’s a 7Zip-compressed file. No problem with that, but what’s inside the zip and what do I do with it, please? 

 

(And thank you again!)

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

6 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Thank everyone involved very, very much!

 

I am on my tablet now and won’t be able to dig into this until later this afternoon or tomorrow (one of the few holiday weekends in the US) … what is the process of getting this core onto my VBXE? I see it’s a 7Zip-compressed file. No problem with that, but what’s inside the zip and what do I do with it, please? 

 

(And thank you again!)

 

Inside the package, you will find four files. Two of the files are for VBXE 1.2 and the other two are for VBXE 2.x. Each set contains a standard core file and a core file with 320KB of Rambo extended memory.

 

On Lotharek's page at https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=53, you will find a section labeled "Last CORES 1.26." Within this section, there is an NC.COM file that is required for flashing cores to VBXE.

 

You should copy the NC.COM file and the appropriate core file to an ATR disk image. Then, you can flash it using, for example, SpartaDOS/X. That's how I did it.

 

 

 

 

[electron]

My atari skills are a bit rusty at least, but maybe I will ask someone to prepare a convinient atr image with autobooting FC.COM and all current PAL / NTSC cores.