111 replies to this topic

[www.atarimania.com]

BTW, what happened to the TI-99/4A GameBase project?

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

[Longhorn Engineer]

Thanks! was looking in the wrong spot on the .pdf and I was trying to look up the manufacturer part

Looks really easy to make. Just two Amps and some caps/resistors. Then an odd +8.2V but a little adjustable regulator should do the trick.

Now that RGB is there and looking good A simple RGB->S-Video is possible. To bad I have alot of projects on my plate already, guess I will wait till winter break.

Though since its a computer VGA makes a hell alot more sense.

Edited by Longhorn Engineer, Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:28 AM.

[djpubba]

Here are some pics of the TI on a VGA LCD monitor running through a line doubler (XRGB-2).

Attached Thumbnails

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[djpubba]

ti99_forever, on Sat Oct 13, 2007 1:04 PM, said:

Have you tried some color tests from TI Basic?

No. I would like to do that, though. It's a bit of a PITA trying to adjust the colors without a nice color gradient to look at while adjusting. The color bars on the title screen work fairly well, but it could be better. I realize there are only 16 colors, but if I had a screen with them arranged like:

Light Red	  Light Green	  Light Blue
Medium Red	 Medium Green	 
Dark Red	   Dark Green	   Dark Blue
White		  Grey

On a black background. That'd be pretty cool.

Anyone got some TI-BASIC code for something like that? I totally suck at TI-BASIC.

Edited by djpubba, Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:25 AM.

[Longhorn Engineer]

djpubba, on Fri Oct 19, 2007 6:58 PM, said:

Here are some pics of the TI on a VGA LCD monitor running through a line doubler (XRGB-2).

To bad you can't get RGB out of an Atari 2600

[djpubba]

Longhorn Engineer, on Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:55 PM, said:

To bad you can't get RGB out of an Atari 2600

Flashback 3?

[Tursi]

Quote

No. I would like to do that, though. It's a bit of a PITA trying to adjust the colors without a nice color gradient to look at while adjusting. The color bars on the title screen work fairly well, but it could be better. I realize there are only 16 colors, but if I had a screen with them arranged like:

Light Red Light Green Light Blue
Medium Red Medium Green
Dark Red Dark Green Dark Blue
White Grey

On a black background. That'd be pretty cool.

Anyone got some TI-BASIC code for something like that? I totally suck at TI-BASIC.

Not entirely certain what you want, but here's a start:

10 CALL SCREEN(2)
20 CALL CLEAR
100 FOR I=40 TO 72 STEP 2
110 CALL CHAR(I, "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF")
120 CALL CHAR(I+1, "0000000000000000")
130 NEXT I
140 CALL COLOR(2, 10, 4)
150 CALL COLOR(3, 9, 3)
160 CALL COLOR(4, 7, 13)
170 CALL COLOR(5, 16, 15)
180 CALL COLOR(6, 6, 5)
190 FOR I=1 TO 6
200 PRINT "((((((((()))))))))HHHHHHHHH"
210 NEXT I
220 FOR I=1 TO 6
230 PRINT "000000000111111111HHHHHHHHH"
240 NEXT I
250 FOR I=1 TO 6
260 PRINT "888888888999999999IIIIIIIII"
270 NEXT I
280 FOR I=1 TO 5
290 PRINT "@@@@@@@@@AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIII"
300 NEXT I
310 GOTO 310

Breakpoint when you're done with FCTN-4. It's a lot to type, so if you have a MiniMemory cartridge, you can save it on that with SAVE MINIMEM and reload it with OLD MINIMEM (that's the simplest if you don't have disk, and tape would take less time to type it than save it).

Looks like this:

[djpubba]

That's perfect, thanks!! That helped a ton. I've got the color looking absolutely gorgeous now.

Edited by djpubba, Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:35 PM.

[djpubba]

FYI, I wrote up the details of this mod for the latest Retrogaming Times.

http://my.stratos.ne...TM42/RTM42.html

[remowilliams]

Very cool indeed. I'd probably do this if I didn't need a hulking piece of a Vidiot board.

[djpubba]

That's what Longhorn Engineers are for. If he made up a circuit for ColecoVision, it'd work on the TI/99-4a (and a Tandy CoCo 2, I think!) too.

[Longhorn Engineer]

djpubba, on Fri Nov 9, 2007 7:49 PM, said:

That's what Longhorn Engineers are for. If he made up a circuit for ColecoVision, it'd work on the TI/99-4a (and a Tandy CoCo 2, I think!) too.

Once I get my Atari video mods rolling (all thats left is the 2600 instructions) I will be free to work on some "other" projects.

[birdie3]

I just scored a TI with the RF cable and the picture is quite good. What gives?

[missyrelm]

Thanks for taking the time to write such a cool article!
The photo of Miner 2049er in RGB is beautiful!

djpubba, on Fri Nov 9, 2007 6:50 PM, said:

FYI, I wrote up the details of this mod for the latest Retrogaming Times.

http://my.stratos.ne...TM42/RTM42.html

[Tursi]

I am still waiting for my 9928s to arrive. I got an email claiming shipping problems.

[Longhorn Engineer]

Going to give this a swing this winter break.

This mod doesn't look to bad. The Vidiot looks pretty straight forward to make and there are plenty of RGB->S-Video schematics out there.

missyrelm you will get your S-Video Ti one day

[missyrelm]

I'm just glad this mod has been proven to work! Very exciting stuff!

Longhorn Engineer, on Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:02 PM, said:

Going to give this a swing this winter break.

This mod doesn't look to bad. The Vidiot looks pretty straight forward to make and there are plenty of RGB->S-Video schematics out there.

missyrelm you will get your S-Video Ti one day

[missyrelm]

Just a side-note, I've been getting into the Tomy Tutor/Pyuuta simply because of it's simiarities with the TI, (it's very similiar in some ways to the TI) and came across the following:

http://www.floodgap....ti-vs-tomy.html
Video Capabilities
The Tutor has the 9918ANL, same as the 99/8, which is functionally equivalent to the 9918A in the 99/4A (but not the 9918 in the 99/4). As such, it has the same screen resolution, characteristics and sprite capabilities.

missyrelm, on Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:49 PM, said:

I'm just glad this mod has been proven to work! Very exciting stuff!

Longhorn Engineer, on Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:02 PM, said:

Going to give this a swing this winter break.

This mod doesn't look to bad. The Vidiot looks pretty straight forward to make and there are plenty of RGB->S-Video schematics out there.

missyrelm you will get your S-Video Ti one day

[Tursi]

I thought I'd update that to this date I am *still* waiting for my 9928s to arrive from arcadechips.com.

I received an email saying "the new girl" caused some shipping mistakes, and upon a prompting email from me a tracking number that did not seem to work. A second prompt was not replied to. I'm going to send a third one as I haven't given up yet - but a warning seemed prudent.

(edit) Just checked and the tracking number DOES now show up - it shows as accepted Nov 27th (yesterday). So that means it actually IS on its way now. Yay!

Edited by Tursi, Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:58 AM.

[djpubba]

From what I've read on rgvac, this seems to be a common issue with them. I'd definitely keep that in mind when ordering again.

[Tursi]

Happy to report that my 9928s showed up today, and a few extra were included as consolation!

[mhcapps]

Tursi, on Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:33 PM, said:

Happy to report that my 9928s showed up today, and a few extra were included as consolation!

Hi,

There were some problems but everything is back on track now.

Thanks for your order,
Mark Capps

[Tursi]

So I sat down tonight and played with one of the 9928s in my TI-99 - on it's own it did work and produced a nice greyscale picture from the Y pin.

Now, I don't want RGB, that's been done, I wanted S-Video. The first thing I learned is SV is not just the two component values added together. I now know all about quadrature encoding and reduced color space. Neat, but doesn't solve my wish.

Does anyone know any converter ICs or simple circuits that can do the conversion? I did an extensive search and the best I came up with, in the end, was using a pair of Analog digital encoder/decoder ICs to manage it. It's possible I didn't search for the right terms!

[djpubba]

Tursi, on Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:11 PM, said:

So I sat down tonight and played with one of the 9928s in my TI-99 - on it's own it did work and produced a nice greyscale picture from the Y pin.

Now, I don't want RGB, that's been done, I wanted S-Video. The first thing I learned is SV is not just the two component values added together. I now know all about quadrature encoding and reduced color space. Neat, but doesn't solve my wish.

Does anyone know any converter ICs or simple circuits that can do the conversion? I did an extensive search and the best I came up with, in the end, was using a pair of Analog digital encoder/decoder ICs to manage it. It's possible I didn't search for the right terms!

I would say that whatever works for ColecoVision should work for this too, since it's the same chip.

[missyrelm]

There's been a lot of activity about this on the TI-99/4A yahoo group, in case anyones been wondering...

djpubba, on Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:14 PM, said:

Tursi, on Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:11 PM, said:

So I sat down tonight and played with one of the 9928s in my TI-99 - on it's own it did work and produced a nice greyscale picture from the Y pin.

Now, I don't want RGB, that's been done, I wanted S-Video. The first thing I learned is SV is not just the two component values added together. I now know all about quadrature encoding and reduced color space. Neat, but doesn't solve my wish.

Does anyone know any converter ICs or simple circuits that can do the conversion? I did an extensive search and the best I came up with, in the end, was using a pair of Analog digital encoder/decoder ICs to manage it. It's possible I didn't search for the right terms!

I would say that whatever works for ColecoVision should work for this too, since it's the same chip.

Edited by missyrelm, Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:24 AM.