Atari 800: BIT3 FullView vs XEP80 showdown....

[phaeron]

5 hours ago, MrFish said:

 

Yeah, I knew they were separate ROMs (just like with the Bit3); but I guess I'd forgotten about Altirra hard-coding the font ROM. I can't even find where to attach the firmware ROM for XEP80 in Altirra, now (can't seem to see it listed in the firmware manager; maybe my eyesight's going). It works though, because I just tested it with AtariWriter 80. So, it's not like I need to do anything with it; but it's kinda weird I can't locate its entry.

Heh, derp, no, it doesn't support the firmware ROM either, that's what I get for replying over lunch break. The XEP80 emulation is high-level, it doesn't run NS405 code. Though I have thought of the possibility, since I do have an 8048 emulator. The font's actually the easier of the two to support.

 

5 hours ago, MrFish said:

Does Altirra support the Bit3 card? I don't see it in the list on version 3.90 (maybe it was added recently)?

Nope, though it might not be hard to write, if it's anything like the 1090 80CVC (which is one of the sample custom devices).

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Heh, derp, no, it doesn't support the firmware ROM either, that's what I get for replying over lunch break. The XEP80 emulation is high-level, it doesn't run NS405 code. Though I have thought of the possibility, since I do have an 8048 emulator. The font's actually the easier of the two to support.

 

Ha, good, I can postpone getting glasses. 

 

  

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Nope, though it might not be hard to write, if it's anything like the 1090 80CVC (which is one of the sample custom devices).

 

Maybe I was thinking of Atari800. I think I saw somewhere that it supports Bit3 now.

 

[ACML]

Can you hook up an XEP80 to a modern Samsung LED TV using the composite (yellow) RCA input.  Would it look acceptable?

 

[_The Doctor__]

Yes you can, it works very well on most of the modern television that still accept rf. a slight few crop the bottom edges and such..

[phaeron]

Can be hit or miss, the image rolls on my older Samsung TV. It's why I ship XEPVHOLD.COM on the Altirra Additions disk to adjust the vertical timing to something closer to normal.

 

[Faicuai]

11 hours ago, ACML said:

Can you hook up an XEP80 to a modern Samsung LED TV using the composite (yellow) RCA input.  Would it look acceptable?

 

To begin with, I am not sure there is enough bandwidth with composite input on any device...

 

But, for a change, I will try on my end with one of the video-processor's composite inputs. Let's see what happens.

[BillC]

3 hours ago, Faicuai said:

To begin with, I am not sure there is enough bandwidth with composite input on any device...

BITD(1988? to 1996) I used a switch to choose between composite/XEP80 signals on a 14" Sanyo TV, I don't recall any issues with the 80 column display.

The switch module was 3 RCA jacks on the back of a small metal project box connected to a SPDT toggle switch on the front.

[BillC]

19 hours ago, ACML said:

Can you hook up an XEP80 to a modern Samsung LED TV using the composite (yellow) RCA input.  Would it look acceptable?

I tried on 2 different LG LCD TVs, while the text was clear they both have issues.

 

On the composite input of the LG 2382DL there was a text line cut off at the top of the display and only the top pixel of the bottom line of text is visible, I didn't find any way of adjusting the vertical size.

 

On the composite/component input of the LG 55UJ6200 the text has the same vertical size issue plus being offset towards the right. While this TV has adjustable zoom and positioning I was unable to zoom out or adjust position enough to view the cutoff text.

 

I did use the XEP80 with a 14" Sanyo CRT TV BITD, IIRC I did adjust the vertical size. I made a box to switch between composite/XEP80 signals, just 3 RCA jacks on the back of a small metal box wired to a SPDT toggle switch on the front.

[BillC]

1 hour ago, BillC said:

On the composite input of the LG 2382DL there was a text line cut off at the top of the display and only the top pixel of the bottom line of text is visible, I didn't find any way of adjusting the vertical size.

Here is a photo I took of the XEP80 display on the LG 2382DL.

[_The Doctor__]

5 hours ago, BillC said:

Here is a photo I took of the XEP80 display on the LG 2382DL.

Razor sharp and completely readable... maybe using phaeron's latest xep drivers may help, try both the 50 and 60 hz versions as there are modern tv-s that seem to handle both just fine but display slightly different as they should.

[BillC]

11 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Razor sharp and completely readable... maybe using phaeron's latest xep drivers may help, try both the 50 and 60 hz versions as there are modern tv-s that seem to handle both just fine but display slightly different as they should.

The dots and bar at the bottom of the display are the tops pixels of a "D1: " prompt, with the bar being the cursor. It would be nice if a different driver fixed this issue. 

 

The sharpness is about the same on the 55UJ6200, but everything is shifted to the right with the right side cut off as well.

 

[BillC]

21 minutes ago, BillC said:

The dots and bar at the bottom of the display are the tops pixels of a "D1: " prompt, with the bar being the cursor. It would be nice if a different driver fixed this issue. 

I did my testing with the XEP80.SYS driver in SDX 4.49 on a SIDE cartridge, maybe the BASIC code in the post linked below will fix the issue with vertical size. I will test other drivers as well since they may also fix the issue with the horizontal positioning on the 55UJ6200.

 

 

[Mazzspeed]

Can I ask about the bobbin you made for the video output, does it make a notable difference?

[Faicuai]

13 hours ago, BillC said:

Here is a photo I took of the XEP80 display on the LG 2382DL.

A few inputs here:

 

1. The problem is that most CRTs will fail at displaying the XEP80's full HOR and VER scan range, unless manual adjustment are provided externally or intenrally on the CRT.

 

2. As for LCDs, it MUST show at least 478-479 scan-lines, and the entire horizontal scan-range of each of those lines.

 

3. I tested COMPOSITE (not Component) inout on my DVDO iScan HD+ and, as expected, it shows less resolution and sharpness.

 

4. Component input + PAL 50 output from XEP80 will give 24 lines, with PIXEL-sharp output, with NO under or overshoot of high-contrast edges (Black or white halos around characters. which is a sure sign of post-process sharpening being applied:

 

5. Check latest Altirra Additions disk, for latest ULTRA XEP80 drivers, including his re-tuned output for compressing vertical display on NTSC output from XEP80. It will miss character-lines from DEMO80 (XEP original disk), but it will work on most displays, showing most of what needs to be read, with CAPITAL letters. 

 

6. BIT3 drivers are begging for similar tuning to enable better vertical scan as it clearly wastes precious scan-lines at the top of the screen.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2021 by Faicuai

[Faicuai]

5 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

Can I ask about the bobbin you made for the video output, does it make a notable difference?

 

You mean to the BIT3 video-ribbon? That actually comes standard, I did not make it... It is a ferrite-bead / choke that aims at suppressing high-frequency noise., 

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Have you tried Bob Woolley's TTL RGB mod for the XEP80?  Does that make a difference?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[+slx]

14 hours ago, Mathy said:

Have you tried Bob Woolley's TTL RGB mod for the XEP80?  Does that make a difference?

Any vectors to that?

[Mathy]

Hello slx

 

17 minutes ago, slx said:

Any vectors to that?

 

I did a quick search and found it via a link on this platform they call AtariAge.  Never heard of it before.

 

Bob's XEP80 TTL mod.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

 

[BillC]

On 2/6/2021 at 11:51 PM, _The Doctor__ said:

Razor sharp and completely readable... maybe using phaeron's latest xep drivers may help, try both the 50 and 60 hz versions as there are modern tv-s that seem to handle both just fine but display slightly different as they should.

 

On 2/7/2021 at 7:26 AM, Faicuai said:

As for LCDs, it MUST show at least 478-479 scan-lines, and the entire horizontal scan-range of each of those lines.

I have tested all the drivers I could find for Altirra, the 50Hz versions don't work well with this NTSC LG.

The XEP80 drivers from the Altirra 3.90 Additions ATR had the same issue as the SDX 4.49 version, the bottom line is off the screen.

I tested the BASIC code posted by @phaeron, with the Altirra/SDX drivers but it didn't have any affect.

I decided to try this code with the Atari driver/DOS 2.5, the code did relocate the bottom line up about 2 rows in BASIC but it was unable to survive a return to DOS.

I then tested with SDX 4.49 and the Atari driver, the BASIC code still relocated the bottom line in BASIC and also after returning to the SDX prompt. This does make for a more useful image, unfortunately I also discovered it is only 77 characters wide, the last 3 are cut off.

This is a picture I took of this final test on the LG 2382DL.

 

[_The Doctor__]

poke 82,0  or it's equivalent and see if it's 79 across?

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[BillC]

Just now, _The Doctor__ said:

poke 82,0 and see if it's 79 across?

I had already set the left cursor to 0 before counting the characters that could be displayed.

[phaeron]

49 minutes ago, BillC said:

 

I have tested all the drivers I could find for Altirra, the 50Hz versions don't work well with this NTSC LG.

The XEP80 drivers from the Altirra 3.90 Additions ATR had the same issue as the SDX 4.49 version, the bottom line is off the screen.

I tested the BASIC code posted by @phaeron, with the Altirra/SDX drivers but it didn't have any affect.

I decided to try this code with the Atari driver/DOS 2.5, the code did relocate the bottom line up about 2 rows in BASIC but it was unable to survive a return to DOS.

I then tested with SDX 4.49 and the Atari driver, the BASIC code still relocated the bottom line in BASIC and also after returning to the SDX prompt. This does make for a more useful image, unfortunately I also discovered it is only 77 characters wide, the last 3 are cut off.

This is a picture I took of this final test on the LG 2382DL.

That program doesn't work with the SDX XEP80.SYS because that driver doesn't implement any XIO calls on its E: driver, so it isn't possible to send commands to the XEP80. It reverts with the Atari driver because that driver sends a master reset command to the XEP80 when the screen is reopened.

 

As for the Altirra XEP80 driver, you need the updated version. The Additions disk from the beta releases is attached, it has the v0.7 driver and XEPVHOLD.COM, the machine-language version of this program.

Additions.atr

[Faicuai]

2 hours ago, BillC said:

I then tested with SDX 4.49 and the Atari driver, the BASIC code still relocated the bottom line in BASIC and also after returning to the SDX prompt. This does make for a more useful image, unfortunately I also discovered it is only 77 characters wide, the last 3 are cut off.

This is a picture I took of this final test on the LG 2382DL.

Your fundamental problem is that your video path + display render a limited amount of bandwidth, which is not enough to display (at least) a 80x24 characters frame out of the XEP.  Most CRT's out there won't help, either (unfortunately).

 

However, I concur you should try latest v.07 drivers (and signal-scan tuning) provided on Avery's Additions disk. It will definitely help, at the expense of other things (but much better than a chopped display in both directions).

[Mazzspeed]

On 2/8/2021 at 2:26 AM, Faicuai said:

4. Component input + PAL 50 output from XEP80 will give 24 lines, with PIXEL-sharp output, with NO under or overshoot of high-contrast edges (Black or white halos around characters. which is a sure sign of post-process sharpening being applied

So the XEP80 can do component output?

[Faicuai]

10 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

So the XEP80 can do component output?

No, it does not.

 

However, you use the Y/Luma input from Component (on the video processor, or CRT/LCD if present) to capture as much bandwidth and sharpness from the XEP80 signal (which is fully monochromatic and, I would venture to say, at least 10Mhz of bandwidth). Same applies to Bit3/FullView.

 

All the images I posted above come from such principle.