827 replies to this topic

[Vectorman0]

bcombee, on Thu Mar 5, 2009 11:02 AM, said:

Longhorn Engineer, on Thu Mar 5, 2009 12:46 AM, said:

Cool! If you don't mind when you finish can you post pictures of the install and images of the TV screen?

Here's the console


Here are close-ups of the jacks



Here are some screen shots:








The only oddness I've noticed is that the TV's video processor doesn't love double line kernels and will offset the second scanline some. However, the picture is still far nicer than I've ever seen a 2600 do. The colors look more subdued here; I'm not sure why, but it's likely just my screen's adjustment, since I like to have more of a film-like look. It may also be a weak joint with the color pin on the TIA, but I'd expect that to be more intermittent.

I'd show the interior, but I'm not planning on opening this one up until I move the mod to another console.

Are those photo's of composite? (without s-video plugged in?)

I have a similar issue with composite video. It's very washed out (to the point where the background in Kabobber is gray) - but when I plug in an s-video cable between both the console and into the TV, the background becomes much more visible.

The S-video output is perfect. It looks much better than the 8bitdomain mod I have.

[Longhorn Engineer]

Vectorman0, on Fri Mar 6, 2009 8:48 PM, said:

Are those photo's of composite? (without s-video plugged in?)

I have a similar issue with composite video. It's very washed out (to the point where the background in Kabobber is gray) - but when I plug in an s-video cable between both the console and into the TV, the background becomes much more visible.

The S-video output is perfect. It looks much better than the 8bitdomain mod I have.

Huh Can you post pictures of the washed out composite? Its weird that it would be washed out in the Composite and not the S-video. I would double check your board to make sure you didn't bridge anything. What model TV (LCD/Tube?)?

[bcombee]

Vectorman0, on Fri Mar 6, 2009 9:48 PM, said:

Are those photo's of composite? (without s-video plugged in?)

No, they're s-video only. I used a composite cable for testing, but I didn't have it hooked up at all when taking the screen shots. However, I did have my set in film mode and it was mid-day with a lot of extra light.

[cwilkson]

bcombee-
Bunch of questions for you. I see lots of vertical banding in the last picture. Is that s-video or composite? Also, is it a CRT or LCD TV? That's important. And did your camera make it better or worse? Is the wavyness in the second to the last picture supposed to be there? (I don't recognize that game.) Oh. Is that what you were talking about with 2-line kernals? I agree the colors seem washed out. Did your camera do that, or is it really like that on the tv?

EDIT: I see you were using S-video. Ok. I should read the whole thread before posting. But my other questions still apply.

Here's a hint for fixing that broken pin. It's ugly as sin, but it's robust. You'll need the following: #30 kynar wire (wire wrap wire), *liquid* solder flux, isopropyl alcohol (99% is preferred...get it at your drugstore), a hot glue gun. First clean the chip around and including the broken pin with alcohol and a cotton swab. Air dry it then remove any cotton fibers that got stuck. Apply a liberal amount of flux (a drop big enough to submerge the pin stump). Evaporate it with your soldering iron. That should take about 1-2 seconds. Apply another drop of flux and tin the stump with solder. Cut the kynar wire to length and strip 1/16" off of one end and 1/4" off the other end. Tin both ends - be sure to apply flux first. Solder the tinned wire (the 1/16" end) to the tinned stump and let it cool. Put a hot glue ball where the broken pin used to be. Make sure it gets under the chip and behind but touching the neighboring pins. If pin 9 is missing, that would be pins 8 and 10. That's your anchor. Cover your solder joint with hot glue making sure you get a good melt into the anchor you created behind pins 8 and 10. And make sure the glue makes a good strain relief all the way around the wire. Put more glue on top of the chip. Let the whole thing cool for at least an hour at room temperature. After it's cooled, you can solder to the other end of the wire.


Longhorn-
I noticed your screenshots looked a little washed out too, though not this bad. Did you reduce the color saturation in an attempt to reduce the vertical banding?

Edited by cwilkson, Sun Mar 8, 2009 4:14 AM.

[cwilkson]

Carpenter, on Fri Mar 6, 2009 3:18 PM, said:

The act of modulating and demodulating the video signal [...] introduces unacceptable noise in the signal.

Correct. Every time you convert the signal, you lose information and you add a little garbage. Or a lot of garbage in the case of RF.

Quote

Generating a RGB signal wouldn't improve noise ratio by any means. This mod is the best we cand do for the Atari 2600.

Close, but not quite true. RGB output conversion would be much better than RF or composite out of the 2600. And it could probably be better than s-video. Even the new CyberTech s-video output - which is stellar. But the RGB conversion would be difficult (ie. expensive) to implement. I had it worked out on paper about 3 years ago, and I had much of it actually built. But there seemed to be little interest at the time so I abandoned it. The prototype showed much promise though.

[Longhorn Engineer]

cwilkson, on Sun Mar 8, 2009 4:12 AM, said:

Longhorn-
I noticed your screenshots looked a little washed out too, though not this bad. Did you reduce the color saturation in an attempt to reduce the vertical banding?

No I did not reduce it. The LCD I used was set to "Default Factory" settings. Granted my mod does not "umpf" the chroma line as much as the old CD4050 mod.

cwilkson, on Sun Mar 8, 2009 4:30 AM, said:

But there seemed to be little interest at the time so I abandoned it. The prototype showed much promise though.

Why did you stop it? Even if there was zero interest in my mod I still would have finished it and published the schematics. You have some screenshots or willing to post some schematics?

[bcombee]

cwilkson, on Sun Mar 8, 2009 5:12 AM, said:

bcombee-
Bunch of questions for you. I see lots of vertical banding in the last picture. Is that s-video or composite? Also, is it a CRT or LCD TV? That's important. And did your camera make it better or worse? Is the wavyness in the second to the last picture supposed to be there? (I don't recognize that game.) Oh. Is that what you were talking about with 2-line kernals? I agree the colors seem washed out. Did your camera do that, or is it really like that on the tv?

The last game is Chopper Command, just a rather extreme closeup. I was wanting to show the color in the skyline. The camera probably made it worse than it looks on the set. It's a 40" 1080p LCD TV, and the input was using film mode.

Thanks for the broken pin fix idea. If I have problems and need to resolder it, I'll try that out.

[InactiveX]

Hello all.

Very much looking forward to seeing the PAL version. You will have another customer when it is.

Kind regards.

[Longhorn Engineer]

InactiveX, on Mon Mar 9, 2009 2:45 PM, said:

Hello all.

Very much looking forward to seeing the PAL version. You will have another customer when it is.

Kind regards.

A Pal version is in the works. Most likely it will just be a slight tweak (Same PCB) as the current version. Mimo is going to test it out for me.

For the 7800 the PAL and NTSC will release at the same time. (I still have Mimo's PAL 7800 )

[mimo]

PCBs arrived this morning, I have been and bought the rest of the parts this afternoon.
Hopefully get them built up tonight and start playing with installation over the weekend.
@Parker, are you ready for a whole heap of questions

[Longhorn Engineer]

My fingers are ready Mimo! Make sure to take enough pictures for me to piece together a Guide!

[mimo]

Longhorn Engineer, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:33 PM, said:

My fingers are ready Mimo! Make sure to take enough pictures for me to piece together a Guide!

you want pictures?!!
Thats extra

[Longhorn Engineer]

mimo, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 4:00 PM, said:

Longhorn Engineer, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:33 PM, said:

My fingers are ready Mimo! Make sure to take enough pictures for me to piece together a Guide!

you want pictures?!!
Thats extra

I will answer a question per 5 pictures!

[mimo]

Longhorn Engineer, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:05 PM, said:

mimo, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 4:00 PM, said:

Longhorn Engineer, on Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:33 PM, said:

My fingers are ready Mimo! Make sure to take enough pictures for me to piece together a Guide!

you want pictures?!!
Thats extra

I will answer a question per 5 pictures!

lol,
well to coin a cricketing phrase, bad light (and bad eyesight) stopped play. I can't decipher the bloody resistor colours!
Most of the first board is together though. Hope my 3 year old decides to have a sleep tomorrow afternoon

[cwilkson]

Longhorn Engineer, on Sun Mar 8, 2009 2:40 PM, said:

No I did not reduce it. The LCD I used was set to "Default Factory" settings. Granted my mod does not "umpf" the chroma line as much as the old CD4050 mod.

Ok. That may be why. Thanks.

Quote

Why did you stop it? Even if there was zero interest in my mod I still would have finished it and published the schematics. You have some screenshots or willing to post some schematics?

There were many reasons for my abandoning it. Real life was kicking me in the teeth. And to be honest, there was a political thing going on in the hobby that made me leave for several years. I still haven't really come back. But for the RGB project it was just plain hard. I couldn't justify doing it just for myself. Sadly, I don't have any of that stuff anymore. But I did manage to reconstruct a colormap in the past few days. You can check it out here

bcombee, on Sun Mar 8, 2009 6:50 PM, said:

The last game is Chopper Command, just a rather extreme closeup. I was wanting to show the color in the skyline. The camera probably made it worse than it looks on the set. It's a 40" 1080p LCD TV, and the input was using film mode.

I was actually talking about the second to last image. The one with what looks like a UFO next to 4 zeros and a 99. What is that? Is it some part of Chopper Command? Atari is great on a big screen like that. We had a 42" at work that we commandeered for Space Invaders and Combat.

[bcombee]

cwilkson, on Wed Mar 11, 2009 1:31 AM, said:

I was actually talking about the second to last image. The one with what looks like a UFO next to 4 zeros and a 99. What is that? Is it some part of Chopper Command? Atari is great on a big screen like that. We had a 42" at work that we commandeered for Space Invaders and Combat.

Ah, that's "This Planet Sucks", a really nice and hard homebrew. More details at http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?ma...products_id=197 -- I've got one of the pre-AtariAge copies that I got at a CGExpo.

[cwilkson]

bcombee, on Wed Mar 11, 2009 1:06 PM, said:

Ah, that's "This Planet Sucks", a really nice and hard homebrew.

Oh wow. TPS. That takes me back. Very cool game. But yeah it's pretty hard...I was never very good at it.

[Longhorn Engineer]

cwilkson, on Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:31 AM, said:

There were many reasons for my abandoning it. Real life was kicking me in the teeth. And to be honest, there was a political thing going on in the hobby that made me leave for several years. I still haven't really come back. But for the RGB project it was just plain hard. I couldn't justify doing it just for myself. Sadly, I don't have any of that stuff anymore. But I did manage to reconstruct a colormap in the past few days. You can check it out here

Understandable. Hopefully you get around to it someday.

[lgallair]

I received the blank PCB and I am in the process of installing the components.
When installing the ceramic disk caps (47pF, 10µF), does it matter which way they go onto the board?
I know with electrolytic caps there are positive and negative leads which indicate polarity.
The positives for these are marked on the PCB but not for the ceramic caps.
Just wondering if it matters which way they go in. Thanks.

[Ian Primus]

lgallair, on Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:30 AM, said:

I received the blank PCB and I am in the process of installing the components.
When installing the ceramic disk caps (47pF, 10µF), does it matter which way they go onto the board?
I know with electrolytic caps there are positive and negative leads which indicate polarity.
The positives for these are marked on the PCB but not for the ceramic caps.
Just wondering if it matters which way they go in. Thanks.

Ceramic capacitors have no polarity. They can be installed any direction.

Electrolytic capacitors have polarity, and must be installed in the proper orientation. Reversing them is a Bad Thing.

-Ian

[lgallair]

Just thought I'd share a few pictures for those who are doing this mod. I noticed the hole left by the old RF cable (once it's removed) is the perfect diameter for the s-video connector. All I did to make it fit was to sand away the ends where the screws go into. And with a little contact cement it fits nicely in the hole. I think it looks cosmetically nicer than attaching it with a couple of screws.



Also, as Longhorn points out in his guide, you have to counter-sink the holes for the RCA connectors if modding your heavy six'r inorder for the threads to show through on the other side. I used a 3/8" forstener bit to make the counter-sink holes.

[HARMIK]

That really dose look nice and clean, is the Svideo in there nice and strong or do you think it might work loose without the screws.

[lgallair]

Oh, it's in there nice and tight. I had to set it the rest if the way with a rubber mallet. And in combo with the contact cement, that baby ain't going anywhere.
I also, roughed up the edges of the hole with a file before inserting the connector just to give the contact cement more surface area to grab onto.

Edited by lgallair, Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:35 AM.

[Frotz]

Very nice work, Igallar. I'll have to remember to refer to your post when I finally get my modboards.

[HARMIK]

How about something like this take a look at the clean looking S-Video conector and the gold RCA jacks.








Photos taken from Neotropolis site who dose Neo-Geo Mods.

Edited by HARMIK, Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:05 PM.