ZPH Streaming & Hardware Updates

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Flickering and Bad Colour on Atari 800XL (SOLVED!):

 

The colour output on my Atari 800XL for the past little while has been, let's say, anemic. I thought it might be something to do with the video cabling or a setting in the RetroTINK that was off but it kind of came to a head today on the show where the colour would be flickering between perfect to having a very off colour.

 

EXAMPLE OF TERRIBLE COLOUR:

 

 

 

I thought it might be a loose wire inside the video output somehow. During the chat people were asking what I was running on the system and it does have a lot going on that could be sapping a ton of power as I'm running VBXE, U1MB, SUBAVGCart and the FujiCart. Some of the people in the chat thought it might be the power supply since I have so many things plugged into the system. For the last little bit I've been using a USB power adapter, specifically this one.

 

 

So after the show the first thing I did was to switch out the power supply for an original one and LO AND BEHOLD it's back to working perfectly with no colour issues! Okay, well that narrows it down to the power being supplied to the system. So I rechecked the website for how much power the USB cable is able to deliver and it says:

 

"This is USB Type A (Male) connector to a DIN7 (Atari XL/XE) that has been wired for powering an Atari XL/XE using a standard 2.0A or higher USB charger. USB 1.0 (500mA) is probably too low to even turn it on.  You MUST provide a charger with enough amperage.  Most newer chargers do.  This is MUCH more reliable than the stock 30+ year old power supplies."

 

Oh.... okay, that should be MORE than sufficient because the original Atari 8-Bit power supply delivers only 1.5A! Okay, is the cable bad? NO, the cable is fine because I just checked what the USB power cable is plugged into and it's a basic power bar which is probably only delivering 500mA or 1.0A, who knows? Well, this is easy to test! I dig to find a USB wall adapter with 2.0A delivery, plug in the USB power cable and plug it into my 800XL and BOOM, PROBLEM solved. Absolutely steady and correct colour!

 

Simple fix but not obvious what the problem was. Thank you to all the people watching today that pointed me in the right direction!

 

- James

 

CORRECT COLOUR!

 

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Flickering and Bad Colour on Atari 800XL (UNSOLVED!):

 

After leaving it run for a while on both the USB power and the original power brick it seems that the flickering and colour issue ISN'T SOLVED it's just a LOT better. Now it's mostly okay with a little bit of flickering here and there. So... back to the drawing board. 😞

 

The fact that giving the system sufficient power helped the issue still may point to something in power area of the system that is going bad or intermittent.

 

- James

 

UPDATE: I've plugged in the svideo connection to the system, as suggested by @-^CrossBow^- during the stream, and the colour is absolutely rock steady. This seems to now point more to the VBXE or something related to it? Maybe something to do with the power delivery to the VBXE?

[RevEng]

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess it's a ground loop issue. If you have a sacrificial cable, you can remove ground connectivity from the end that plugs into the retrotink. I guess you could even avoid sacrificing a cable by using some thin paper or plastic shimmed between the rca male and female to isolate ground. If symptoms improve it will tell you that ground loop is the problem.

 

The usb charger is probably putting out switching noise in the mhz range, as they all do to some degree, but I wouldn't expect that to only affect chroma, so it's a less likely candidate.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

On 9/23/2023 at 9:10 PM, RevEng said:

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess it's a ground loop issue. If you have a sacrificial cable, you can remove ground connectivity from the end that plugs into the retrotink. I guess you could even avoid sacrificing a cable by using some thin paper or plastic shimmed between the rca male and female to isolate ground. If symptoms improve it will tell you that ground loop is the problem.

 

The usb charger is probably putting out switching noise in the mhz range, as they all do to some degree, but I wouldn't expect that to only affect chroma, so it's a less likely candidate.

 

Excellent suggestion, thanks Mike! I've had to remove ground loops in the past by plugging some of my equipment via extension cable to another power circuit outside of the office for the show. I have SO MUCH stuff plugged into the same circuit in the studio it's surprising I don't have more issues than I do.

Luckily most of the issues were cleared up by upgrading the amperage of the USB power adapter to the Atari 800XL, it was probably lacking enough power for the 800XL + VBXE + U1MB + SUBAVGCart + FujiNet.

 

- James

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

BAD FAN ON DAS RAID ARRAY (FIXED):

 

The fan on my direct access storage raid array was making a terrible noise for many months and then stopped spinning last week. It needed replacing and I foolishly assumed that all fan plugs would be the same and blindly bought a new one with the same dimensions. When it arrived it has four wires instead of the three wires on the existing one, plus a completely different plug! Soldering the new wires to the old plug is not a problem but which ones??

 

EXISTING PLUG ON BROKEN FAN (3 WIRES - BLACK / RED / YELLOW):

 

PLUG ON NEW FAN (4 WIRES - BLACK / YELLOW / GREEN / BLUE):

 

 

 

What I've found on information on fans with three wires is:

GROUND: Ground <- PROBABLY BLACK WIRE

POWER: Variable voltage for speed of fan   <- PROBABLY RED WIRE

THIRD WIRE: Feedback to interface with information on how fast the fan is spinning  <- PROBABLY YELLOW WIRE

 

This seems to be the standard for colour on four wire fans:

BLACK: GND (0V)
YELLOW: +12V
GREEN: Sense/Tach
BLUE: Control/PWM

 

I don't know if it's possible to rewire the four wires to three but I finally decided that it was not a great idea to be messing around with all of that and bought another fan with three wires instead of four. I still couldn't find a fan with the same connector as the existing one but luckily the colours on the new fan wires were the same. So what I did was splice the new fan on the old plug, soldered and shrinkwrapped the wire. I plugged it in and BOOM, it worked with RPM readings too! HOORAY!!

 

Once the drives do a check and sync back up I'll be back in business and then MAYBE, FINALLY be able to edit those last PRGE 2022 videos that are on the RAID before I leave for PRGE 2023 so it won't be entirely embarrassing! 🫥

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Flickering and Bad Colour on Atari 800XL (SOLVED!):

 

After trying numerous power supplies flickering and sickly colour issue with my Atari 800XL finally revealed itself to be the DIN13 to SCART cable that comes out of the VBXE! I was playing around the other day with the cabling while the 800XL was running and the picture was flickering while I was moving wires. I traced it down to the SCART end of the cable attached to the computer, so the issue is either on the pins or the wiring internally. I'm able to temporarily position it so it shows proper colour, but just in case, I ordered a new one from the link above. Hooray!

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Stereo Achieved on Atari 8-Bit!

 

I'm finally wired up for stereo on my Atari 800XL and I now I'm able to play ANY Atari 8-bit game to the fullest! I now have an Atari 800XL PAL with VBXE, 1UMB, RGB out in stereo with a SUBAVG Cart and FujiNet!

 

The new Sub Average Cart has a build in stereo output, amongst other great upgrades, but I didn't know how to incorporate that into the audio that is already coming out of the VBXE to SCART adapter I use. The audio the SUBAVG cart outputs is via line-out as you can see in the picture of the adapter below.

 

 

So what I did was buy a SCART->SCART adapter that had in line stereo RCA inputs.

 

 

The problem now was that the stereo from the new dongle AND mono from the VBXE were merged together, which is not ideal. What I did next was remove the left and right input connector on the female end of the SCART adapter, which happens to be pin 1 & 3, so the SCART audio input is gone! This was irreversible but I bought the adapter specific for this purpose, so it was okay. I then plugged in a 1/8" jack -> stereo RCA adapter between the DAC audio cable for SUBCART to the L/R RCA inputs on the SCART adapter and BOOM, there's now stereo for those Atari 8-Bit games that support it! Hooray!

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

On 11/4/2023 at 6:50 PM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

Flickering and Bad Colour on Atari 800XL (SOLVED!):

 

Flickering and Bad Colour on Atari 800XL (UNSOLVED - AGAIN!):

 

It hasn't been solved! 😞 It just happened to work for a while accidentally. I previously replaced the VBXE to SCART adapter as seen in an above post and now I've just replaced the power supply and it's still flickering back and forth to a sickly yellow tint.

 

I thought upgrading the power would solve the issue as the system was drawing 1.4-1.9A and I had a 2.1A power supply, which is near the edge of what of what it needed. I upgraded just now to a 5V/4A power supply and it's still not solved. Thank you @pseudografx for the part number of the power supply (warning, it needs a barrel to Atari power adapter).

 

I've now noticed that if I move the case around a little bit it'll go back and forth between good and bad colour but not when I wiggle the video output cables. I believe this points to a possible internal wiring issue, something might be loose. Hopefully this weekend I will have some time to look into this and brave opening this case for the first time. I hope a bunch of wiring doesn't spill out, eep!

 

- James

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Atari 7800 + QuadTari + Mega7800 + Sega Light Phaser = No Go

 

The other day we played a bunch of four player games on the show including the great four player light gun game Ducks Away by @SmittyB. In order to hook up four light guns to the Atari 7800 you need to use the QuadTari to have enough inputs and you also need a whole bunch of light guns. So in prep for the show I bought 3 Sega Phasers at PRGE 2023, which are significantly less expensive than the XE Light Gun. I also bought two Mega7800 adapters that allow the Sega Light Phaser to work on Atari 2600/7800/8-Bit systems. Before the show I "tested" all the light guns with the Mega7800. The adapters autoswitched to the light gun setting with no issues and I also made sure the screen flashed on all the ports when I pulled the trigger. We were ready to go... or were we?

 

Unfortunately there's an issue with the QuadTari and the Mega7800 and lightguns. The trigger will register in the game but you're not able to hit anything on the screen. Pretty much any other configuration except this one works with the game, here's a summary of the combinations:

 

Works:
Sega Phaser + Mega7800

Sega Phaser + Homemade Adapter

Sega Phaser + Homemade Adapter + QuadTari

 

Doesn't Work:

Sega Phaser + Mega7800 + QuadTari (Trigger Works but no Hit Detection)

 

So in order to get things going with four light guns I bought all the components I needed to create three Sega -> Atari Light Phaser adapters since I have one Atari Light Gun to plug into the fourth port. I picked the parts up the other day and put three of them together last night.

 

 

 

 

I hooked up all four guns up and started a four player light gun game and they all worked at hitting the targets! I'm actually even able to hold two guns in each hand and fire the triggers four at a time! We're now ready for this and any future four player light gun games, hooray!

 

- James

 

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Bad Colour on Atari 800XL Fix Continued:

 

A small step forward in repairing my colour issues on my PAL Atari 800XL w/ VBXE & U1MB! I plugged in an SVideo/Composite cable and checked the colour output and it's rock steady with a nice clean white colour. When I switch back to the RGB SCART VXBE output it's a sickly yellow.

 

I had to switch back and forth a number of times to be sure because the SVid/Composite cable has to be removed before the SCART VBXE output to work so I had to power cycle a number of times not knowing if it 'fixed' itself between cycling.

 

So this point directly at the VBXE connector and will narrow down the troubleshooting that I need to do when I open up the case. I'm doing an 8-Bit stream tomorrow so I don't want to risk anything at the moment.

 

Hopefully this weekend I'll have enough time to poke around at the wiring internally. I think it's going to be a simple fix as I can push on the case right above the VBXE output and it'll change colour sometimes.

 

- James

 

SVIDEO OUTPUT:

 

 

VBXE OUTPUT:

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Bad Colour on Atari 800XL FIXED:

 

I had some time today to work on troubleshooting the erratic and anemic VBXE output on my 800XL. I opened it up, plugged it in and started poking around and tried to get the menu text on the screen go from white to yellow.

 

 

I first started poking around the RBG video connector on the back of the case but there's not really much there. I then starting pushing around all the wires but nothing seemed to make any difference to the colour. I then poked around the VBXE board, pushing it down and up, wiggling it around and it started to make the screen go from white to yellow!

 

I then turned off the machine and then slightly lifted both the ANTIC chip and the VBXE board from motherboard and then reseated both. I didn't take them fully out, just lift them up a bit.

 

I turned on the machine and BOOM! PERFECT!

 

 

I tried pushing down and pulling up on the VBXE board and nothing would alter the colour!! It was rock solid and looking great! I put the system back together and tried pushed down on the top case to see if I could alter the colours like it was doing before and it was still rock solid. It's now been on for 30 minutes with the colours still perfectly white so I think we're good! Hooray!!

 

FINALLY FIXED!

 

- James

 

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ADDENDUM:

 

While I had the 800XL apart I noticed a wire screwed to the underside of the cartridge port on the top of the case. I assume it's some sort of grounding wire? It looks like it would be scraping the U1MB and possibly touching something random when the case is assembled.

 

Is it safe to keep it attached?

 

- James

 

[+Nathan Strum]

24 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

FINALLY FIXED!

You do realize you've doomed yourself by using the word "FINALLY", right?

 

Never call anything "FINAL". I've "FINALLY" fixed my 2600 more times than I can count. Now I've just come to accept that it's my lot in life to have to continually repair it. Now you are forever locked in a battle with your 800XL.

 

Dizzy Gillespie was quoted something along these lines, "Somedays you win. Somedays the horn wins. Then you die... and the horn wins."  

 

- Nathan

[+D Train]

3 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

 "Somedays you win. Somedays the horn wins. Then you die... and the horn wins."

Right up there with, "Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  And sometimes, it rains."

 

you'll need to find a way to work that into champsports baseball...

[+Nathan Strum]

10 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

ADDENDUM:

 

While I had the 800XL apart I noticed a wire screwed to the underside of the cartridge port on the top of the case. I assume it's some sort of grounding wire? It looks like it would be scraping the U1MB and possibly touching something random when the case is assembled.

 

Is it safe to keep it attached?

 

- James

 

Clearly, it's the WiFi antenna.

 

Or a lightning arrestor.

 

</notveryhelpful>

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

9 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

You do realize you've doomed yourself by using the word "FINALLY", right?

 

A rookie mistake! I've definitely long stopped using that word for filenames as it's never the 'final' version of anything.

 

It also translates to playing games. When you say out loud "I'm doing really well!" prepare to lose a life in about 5 seconds. There must be a name for it... So-and-so's Law or just plain irony.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

On 1/22/2024 at 2:53 PM, Nathan Strum said:

You do realize you've doomed yourself by using the word "FINALLY", right?

 

I briefly thought I did doom myself as the other day the screen went a DIFFERENT colour of yellow but I quickly determined that it was the keyboard pushing down on the VBXE board and possibly creating a short. When I had the top case off there were no issues.

 

So what I did is put a strip of Kapton Tape along the pokey pins under the keyboard and it's now back to its beautiful clean white colour in the SUBAVG Cart menu. 🙂

 

I also briefly mentioned on the show that the audio was creating a TERRIBLE noise but only during VBXE games. I was able to narrow it down to the COVOX setting on the SUBAVG cart. I turned it off and the noise went away. Funny enough the noise was only present on the stereo output directly from the cart and only with VBXE games. So weird. I'll be reporting the issue to tmp, the cart dev.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

21 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

I also briefly mentioned on the show that the audio was creating a TERRIBLE noise but only during VBXE games. I was able to narrow it down to the COVOX setting on the SUBAVG cart. I turned it off and the noise went away. Funny enough the noise was only present on the stereo output directly from the cart and only with VBXE games. So weird. I'll be reporting the issue to tmp, the cart dev.

 

Answer from the dev, tmp:

Quote

that's somehow expected, they use the same address space

"The Covox interface is typically assigned an address range such as $D600-D6FF, $D700-D7FF, or $D280-D2FF." "VBXE is controlled via a register bank of 32 bytes, normally decoded at either $D640-D65F or $D740-D75F."

vbxe can be switched to use $d7xx but i don't know whether games can usually detect it there

 

Mystery solved! I'll keep the COVOX emulation off on the SUBAVGCart unless I know a program uses it.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

THE ONGOING ADVENTURES OF THE YELLOW SCREEN OF BLECH:

 

I finally had a few moments today to troubleshoot my sickly PAL 800XL w/ VBXE.

 

On 1/22/2024 at 2:53 PM, Nathan Strum said:

You do realize you've doomed yourself by using the word "FINALLY", right?

 

I think I've definitely doomed myself forever with this one. 😞  Here's the screen last time I played the system on stream (Jan 30):

 

 

There's NO MORE SUBTLETY with the yellow, it's full on yellow now! As least I know when there's an issue.

 

Symptoms:

- Yellow video but only through the VBXE video out, the standard video via svideo is fine

- Comes and goes when I press down on the VBXE board / ANTIC chip

- When the case is closed and the keyboard is pressing against the VBXE board it also comes and goes, especially when using the keyboard. It presses against board and possibly shorts it?

 

So today I finally was able to take a look and took the advice of the chat during that stream and sprayed contact cleaner on both the motherboard and VBXE sockets and reseated both the ANTIC and VBXE board a number of times. So far so good but I'm going to let it "burn in" for a while to make sure. Here's what it looks like right now with the case open:

 

 

Another update will come after the burn in...

 

- James

 

EDIT: After 5 hours of burn in, the colour held strong, I think we're good! Tomorrow I'll work on getting the case closed without disrupting the chip! Wish me luck!

EDIT 2: Still good this morning! Confidence is high this might go okay.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE YELLOW'S GONE, ON MY 800XL:

 

I've now had the cover closed and screwed on for a couple of hours now and so far it's holding well. I've also pressed down on the keys and everything is still a clean white colour!

 

What I did:

- Cleaned off the VBXE & ANTIC chip with IPA

- Taped up the VBXE Board and ANTIC chip with Kapton tape for any stray shorts caused by the keyboard straying too close to the board/chip

 

I won't say it's fixed and cause it to fail again, I'll say it's 'working for now' and hope that it holds through tomorrow's Atari 8-Bit stream.

 

Thank you to everyone for their suggestions during the last A8 stream to help point me in the right direction for fixing it!

 

- James

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

THE ONGOING ADVENTURES OF THE YELLOW SCREEN OF BLECH PART ∞:

 

I've found it. Really! I really found it this time!! It's the rainbow coloured set of wires connected to the right hand side of the VBXE board.

 

There's an internal break in one of the wires that is altering the colour of the picture. The five wires are connected to J4 on the board and are GND, RGB ctrl, G out, R out and B out. I've isolated these wires and jiggled them at the point where they bend before being connected to the board and they consistently alter the colour of the picture. This completely explains why when the case is put back on or pressed down on a little bit, it'll alter the picture.

 

Luckily this is a MUCH easier fix than resoldering the socket that the VBXE board sits in on the motherboard. I'll probably just strip back the wires and attach a different four pin connector with more length so it doesn't have such an extreme 180 degree turn being pressed down on by the keyboard top cover.

 

- James

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Volume Issues with Guest & Game (FIXED):

 

There were some issues hearing John Champeau today on the stream over the sound of the game. I only realized after the broadcast what I could do to fix it.

 

Right now there's ducking enabled on the videogame volume for anything we say over the microphone. OBS lowers the volume on the game a bit so you can hear us when we talk and hear the game when we're not talking.

 

What I did is stack ANOTHER ducking effect on the video game audio tied to the guest audio so now if either of us talk, the guest or the studio, it will turn down the video game sounds.

 

Also, my earbud batteries cut out at about 90 minutes so I'll be picking up another pair with a VERY long battery so I don't have to deal with that any more on interviews or the Atari Homebrew Awards next year.

 

- James

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

THE ONGOING ADVENTURES OF THE YELLOW SCREEN OF BLECH PART ∞+1:

 

Soldering gets your whites whiter!

 

What I did was cut the wiring (that you saw in the previous post) just before the 180 degree turn that I suspected had a break in the wiring. I then soldered a new five pin header onto the five wires that lead to VBXE video connector on the back of the 800XL.

 

The soldering went very well and very quick and when I turned it on, BOOM, white display!!

 

 

I jiggled the wires, moved them all around, turn the system on and off multiple times, screwed the case back on and nothing phases the white display! Hooray, we're back in business!

 

Below is a photo of the new extended wiring that's no longer being crushed in a tight 180 degree turn.

 

- James