Spectre AV

[deffroe]

Has anyone installed a Spectre AV mod?  Am I missing something?

I installed it in place of a UGV to see if there is any difference.  Installation instructions have been none existent in my searches but gather from the images I've seen it is installed pretty much the same as UAV and UGV, hence, swapping UGV.  Pins for Spectre are Chroma, Luma, CVBS and Csync.  Pins for UGV, Chroma, Luma, CVBS, GND.  

With UGV I get colour, with Spectre I get Black and White, same composite video cable, same screen.  The only obvious differences is socket they are installed to and that Spectre doesn't have a ground pin.  I checked Spectre wires for continuity and ohm'd them out too and wires are nice and short.

 

What am I missing? 🤔

Edited February 17, 2023 by deffroe
grammar

[mimo]

Flashjazzcat did a review on his youtube channel, not sure if it showed installation 

[mimo]

6 minutes ago, deffroe said:

What am I missing? 🤔

Jumper settings?

[deffroe]

By default jumpers are set to XL/XE.

[deffroe]

8 minutes ago, mimo said:

Flashjazzcat did a review on his youtube channel, not sure if it showed installation 

Did see his video, it jumps from being in hand to showing side by side comparison with UAV.

Edited February 17, 2023 by deffroe

[Beeblebrox]

Yup said video was just a roundup vid for up and coming tech. 

 

I am intrigued about Spectre but at present I am quite happy with UGV, as well as VBXE and Sophia 2 installs in my A8's. 

 

Pop a few pics up when you have Spectre running.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[+mytek]

Don't forget Spectre just like UAV has a separate connection to the color output pin on GTIA, whereas UGV gets this automatically via its GTIA piggyback.

[candle]

there is a COL labeled pin on Spectre, you need to connect to GTIA colour pin to get any colour at all

Spectre was something I needed for my 400 to get any usable picture, so I made it to fit other systems aswell

Anyways, if one has already UAV or UGV i see a very little point of replacing those with Spectre - it was just something for people on the other side of the pond, when cost added to the UAV were getting ridicious

 

[mimo]

48 minutes ago, candle said:

there is a COL labeled pin on Spectre, you need to connect to GTIA colour pin to get any colour at all

Spectre was something I needed for my 400 to get any usable picture, so I made it to fit other systems aswell

Anyways, if one has already UAV or UGV i see a very little point of replacing those with Spectre - it was just something for people on the other side of the pond, when cost added to the UAV were getting ridicious

 

did you use it on my 400 too?  

[deffroe]

2 hours ago, mytek said:

Don't forget Spectre just like UAV has a separate connection to the color output pin on GTIA, whereas UGV gets this automatically via its GTIA piggyback.

 

2 hours ago, candle said:

there is a COL labeled pin on Spectre, you need to connect to GTIA colour pin to get any colour at all

Spectre was something I needed for my 400 to get any usable picture, so I made it to fit other systems aswell

Anyways, if one has already UAV or UGV i see a very little point of replacing those with Spectre - it was just something for people on the other side of the pond, when cost added to the UAV were getting ridicious

Thanks, I'll give it another go and pop some pics up.  Spectre wasn't bought to replace UGV, more another option for one of my Ataris, and like has been said, UAV is just too expensive for the UK.

[deffroe]

2 hours ago, candle said:

there is a COL labeled pin on Spectre, you need to connect to GTIA colour pin to get any colour at all

Spectre was something I needed for my 400 to get any usable picture, so I made it to fit other systems aswell

Ahhhhh colour!!...Thanks Candle, even with composite it's a nice image.

 

[Beeblebrox]

Be interesting to compare Spectre to UGV. 😊

 

 

[deffroe]

4 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Be interesting to compare Spectre to UGV. 😊

Just because I was bored and have a bit of time...Starting with Yoomp, IK and Henrys house.  Tried to keep angle and lighting same but we are experiencing some bright sunny spells.

Marked all of UGV images with a U, realised it wasn't such a good idea with Spectre so only first 1 or 2 images are marked with an S.

(Splitting over 2 posts)

[deffroe]

Spectre images in this post

[deffroe]

Same 65XE used, same composite cable, same screen.

 

One thing I noticed with UGV is a white line on the left hand border which is present in 2 different UGV's.

 

Also IK Looks a lot cleaner with Spectre.

 

Phil

 

[+MrFish]

13 hours ago, deffroe said:

Also IK Looks a lot cleaner with Spectre.

It does... but, also notice that there is a background-colored line along the lower-left half of the screen on the Spectre that doesn't appear on the UGV for IK.

 

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Let's put those pictures next to each other, so it becomes easier to compare them.

 

13 hours ago, deffroe said:

   

 

 

 

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmmmm,

 

the pictures of Spectre appear to be a bit brighter than the pictures of UGV, but maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me ?

 

Regarding UGV, there is a) that white/grey line on the left of every picture/screen and b) if you have good eyes, you can see some stripes in the IK picture (in the brown sand area) and also some stripes in the Henry's House picture (in the blue water)... so Spectre more or less wins - except for that coloured stripe in the IK picture...

 

[Beeblebrox]

Interesting. I'm not entirely convinced we can rely on photos taken of screens to always compare, but appreciate that's all we can do on the forum. 

 

I know the above test system is composite cable on an lcd screen for both. 

 

My svideo cable on an lcd for an IK (Rastaconverter image) screen looks great:

 

 

 

Tmrw I'll upload the same game screens from my UGV XE setup on svideo on lcd. 

(Obviously at this stage I can't compare my setup with a Spectre on the same setup given I don't have a Spectre board installed). 

I'll also do the same on a composite cable also. 

 

Spectre looks great I agree but my experience of the UGV is great output, albeit obviously using an svideo cable.

Edited February 19, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[+mytek]

I don't think the stripes in this photo are directly attributable to the UGV. Looks more like a wiring or grounding issue. I'll have to run this same game screen on one of my UGV modded units to compare, and then perhaps I can figure out why this happened. Although there are grounding pins on the UGV interface, they are mainly there if a person wishes to run individual coax cables or install the S-Video Mini-Din board. For most internal installations that feed the video out the DIN5 jack, they probably can be left unconnected. Anyway I'll see what I can find out

 

 

Update 2/20/2023

 

I've been kinda swamped with work on a different project lately, so I haven't been able to jump in and investigate the white line issue being seen by @deffroe , but I suspect it may require a change in one resistor's value to eliminate it.

An increase in R16's value may be the ticket, because from what I saw in the screenshots it appears to be happening at the V-Gate switching point.

 

I have a couple of questions to help me:

• What video mode is in play -- NTSC or PAL?
• I believe you are using the Composite output for your tests. Have you tried S-Video for comparison, and if so does the white line remain?

[deffroe]

On 2/19/2023 at 1:37 AM, mytek said:

I have a couple of questions to help me:

• What video mode is in play -- NTSC or PAL?
• I believe you are using the Composite output for your tests. Have you tried S-Video for comparison, and if so does the white line remain?

PAL video and yes it is composite.  I don't have an S-Video connection to give it a try.  Stuck with Composite, RF and (not yet installed) I recently purchased a SAVO XE board that can be connected by SCART.

[+mytek]

BUMP

 

I did recently see the white line on a UGV mounted in a NTSC 1200XL. It's definitely connected with the V-Gate function, and can be seen occurring at the place where the video over scan gets turned off -- disabling V-Gate eliminates it. I gave away that system a couple days ago , but I also have an NTSC 65XE with a UGV board in it, but no time presently to open it up and do some experiments in order to fix the white line issue. I do promise to get to it within the next week or two.

 

In the meantime I still suspect that R16's 3K value might be too low, and by increasing the resistance (=>4.7K?) might be the ticket.

[+mytek]

Ok as I suspected, the value for R16 in the UGV board is too low. Presently the build calls for it to be 3K, but in reality it should be 4.7K. Because it is a lower resistance than needed, it's causing a white vertical line to sometimes be evident when the V-Gate function is enabled. I haven't actually tested this on a real UGV board, since I don't presently have one built (my prototype was given away). However I did cross check to a 576NUC+ that I do have, and there is no white line on its video display, and it's using a 4.7K for this same function (the 576NUC+ has a nearly identical video circuit).

 

 

All the resistors have an 1/8 watt rating, and are thus physically smaller than more normally used 1/4 watt varieties.

Here are the vendors and part numbers for the correct replacement...

Digi-Key P/N: CF18JT4K70CT-ND

Mouser P/N: 594-5063JD4K700F5

 

@MacRorie FYI

[Panther]

Change noted!  Just in time, since I was thinking about building one of these.  I'm just curious as to why this ended up with the 3K while the 576NUC+ was already using the 4.7K.  Now, where's the more compact all-SMD version of the board? 

 

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, Panther said:

I'm just curious as to why this ended up with the 3K while the 576NUC+ was already using the 4.7K.

I must have messed up, or perhaps I was trying to minimize the number of different parts required (most likely reason).

 

1 hour ago, Panther said:

Now, where's the more compact all-SMD version of the board? 

It really starts getting outside of the DIY category if it's also using SMD discrete components. Of course you could use the largest SMD resistors made, but they actually take a bit more space than the 1/8 watt THT ones. And as you start getting smaller, things really get fiddly for most builders to deal with, and you certainly don't want to sneeze    Also headers and dip switches really dominant the space outside of the 40 pin GTIA socket, so the footprint would still need to be about what it presently is no matter what.