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SYNCHRONISATION
Usually refers to the synchro-. nization pulses necessary to coordinate the operation of several intercon-. nected video components. When the components are properly synchro-. nized, they are said to be “in sync”. b) Signals which control the sweep of. SO WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? I'm sure the followers of this blog have been asking the same question. Due to other pressures/commitments I stopped all development work for the first 5 months of 2015 and have recently resumed. There is a backlog of work and projects to finish, which is progressing. The existing Amiga adaptors I sold have been updated, TOO MANY SPINNING PLATES Too many spinning plates. Sorry I have neglected this blog for over a year. I’ve come to realise I have too many ideas on the go at once, which whilst great for variety, does not allow much progression. I took a long hard look at what I was doing and I have suspended all work on project Hermes (CD32 expansion) indefinitely. INTRODUCING PROJECT HERMES (RIP) Update August 2017, project now on indefinite hold Project Hermes was the codename for an expansion card for the venerable, Amiga CD32 games console, spurned from discussions on SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY The output voltage is 75/ (75+330) x Vin which gives an output voltage that is ~18% of the. input or around 0.92V. The second variant is for the GBS-8200 or a modern monitor that is not 5V tolerant. With a VESA VGA video monitor or equivalent, the input impedance of the display is much higher, in this instance, 2K. IANSTEDMAN – SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY The output voltage is 75/ (75+330) x Vin which gives an output voltage that is ~18% of the. input or around 0.92V. The second variant is for the GBS-8200 or a modern monitor that is not 5V tolerant. With a VESA VGA video monitor or equivalent, the input impedance of the display is much higher, in this instance, 2K. SYNCHRONISE YOUR VIDEO ENGINES Synchronise your video engines. The importance of applying the correct video sync signal to your TV, monitor, scan converter, HDMI adaptor or projector. This post tries to answer some of the many questions I get relating to the GBS-8200 and non-standard video types. I will. provide information on how to help identify the correct synchronisation GBS-82XX EXPERIMENTS GBS-8200 and GBS-8220 experiments part 1 GBS-82XX experiments part 2 now posted here (26th Jan 2015). You may have seen on ebay and quite a few arcade accessory sites, a number of “GBS-8220 RGB / CGA / EGA / YUV to VGA Arcade Games HD Video Converter Boards”, which for the low cost promise a cheap solution to connecting a modern LCD monitor to retro consoles and video arcade GBS-82XX EXPERIMENTS PART 2 IT HAS BEEN A WHILE…. I have not forgotten about this blog, have been a bit busy with some other projects, a few details of which I'll share. I don't do a lot of project development during the summer months, heck we had a decent summer in the UK this year, as I like to get out and about. ISYNCHRONISATION
Usually refers to the synchro-. nization pulses necessary to coordinate the operation of several intercon-. nected video components. When the components are properly synchro-. nized, they are said to be “in sync”. b) Signals which control the sweep of. SO WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? I'm sure the followers of this blog have been asking the same question. Due to other pressures/commitments I stopped all development work for the first 5 months of 2015 and have recently resumed. There is a backlog of work and projects to finish, which is progressing. The existing Amiga adaptors I sold have been updated, TOO MANY SPINNING PLATES Too many spinning plates. Sorry I have neglected this blog for over a year. I’ve come to realise I have too many ideas on the go at once, which whilst great for variety, does not allow much progression. I took a long hard look at what I was doing and I have suspended all work on project Hermes (CD32 expansion) indefinitely. INTRODUCING PROJECT HERMES (RIP) Update August 2017, project now on indefinite hold Project Hermes was the codename for an expansion card for the venerable, Amiga CD32 games console, spurned from discussions on IANSTEDMAN – SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY The output voltage is 75/ (75+330) x Vin which gives an output voltage that is ~18% of the. input or around 0.92V. The second variant is for the GBS-8200 or a modern monitor that is not 5V tolerant. With a VESA VGA video monitor or equivalent, the input impedance of the display is much higher, in this instance, 2K. SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY Component selection decisions for project Hermes. I thought I would share some of the decisions made whilst selecting the components for the design and how they impact the overall design, in terms of cost, complexity and testability. AMIGA – SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY Posts about Amiga written by ianstedman. Component selection decisions for project Hermes. I thought I would share some of the decisions made whilst selecting the components for the design and how they impact the overall design, in terms of cost, complexity and testability. VIDEO – SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY The second variant is for the GBS-8200 or a modern monitor that is not 5V tolerant. With a VESA VGA video monitor or equivalent, the input impedance of the display is much higher, in this instance, 2K. As the aim is to. reduce the signal to be approximately 3.3V, SO WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? I'm sure the followers of this blog have been asking the same question. Due to other pressures/commitments I stopped all development work for the first 5 months of 2015 and have recently resumed. There is a backlog of work and projects to finish, which is progressing. The existing Amiga adaptors I sold have been updated, MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU Forgive me it has been six months since my last posting, I have been a little busy. Project Hermes is still in development but has progressed nicely. I started my review work on the design back in March 2016 and made a few tweaks to the design. The review schematics are here: Hermes_development. One of the WELL IT WORKED IN THE SIMULATIONS!? For the original prototype, designed back in 2012, I simulated the circuit using a SPICE simulator, all worked well, tracked the PCB, ordered a PCB and built it. It did not work! The output of the op-amps was a DC level, it would not respond to any input stimulus. I isolated the other input, in case this was causing an offset, no joy, isolatedCOMPONENT SELECTION
Component selection decisions for project Hermes I thought I would share some of the decisions made whilst selecting the components for the design and how they impact the overall design, in terms of cost, complexity and testability. The first big decision is the number and types of CPLD/FPGA devices for the interface logic. The original THE BENEFITS OF PROTOTYPING, EVEN THE SMALLEST OF DESIGNS As the existing stock has being cleared, it needs to be replenished, progress has been made to do this. The Retro ATX adaptors (not Amiga specific now), have been prototyped and the first two prototypes assembled as shown here On the left is the small form factor design,primarily aimed at
SLOW AND STEDY
The design has three discretes/jumpers. The first is an enable/disable jumper (or switch). If A game refuses to work with the extra RAM, you can easily disable the whole card. PATA should not be affected but is to be confirmed. There are another two discretes are related to the floppy drive interface.Skip to content
SOMETHING INTERESTING IS UNDER WAY IAN STEDMAN'S DEVELOPMENT BLOGNovember 15, 2018
ianstedman
IT HAS BEEN A WHILE…. I have not forgotten about this blog, have been a bit busy with some other projects, a few details of which I’ll share. I don’t do a lot of project development during the summer months, heck we had a decent summer in the UK this year, as I like to get out and about. I race radio control cars and boats, which is great fun. This has also given me some project ideas. I have a tripped out Tamiya Lunchbox monster truck, with up-rated motor, suspension and lights, the next step is an engine sound effects unit. I have a crude Arduino based system with a Class D amplifier that changes pitch depending on throttle. It kind of works but the sample size is limited and difficult to change, it uses Wav2c for the sample. I plan to change the design to use PCM audio files which can be handled by an Arduino. Work will continue over the winter. Not every project approach was right nor does it work first time. It was educational though. I like my projects to use minimal components in a project, the simplicity and getting everything I can out of a Micro like the Atmega 328. It also makes it cheaper. The other RC design, currently in the concept stage is a R/C assistant tool. The idea was borne earlier this year when I took my boat to the lake in Herne Bay, and when I got it out, nothing worked! I was 70 miles from home with limited diagnostic tools, all I had was a multimeter, not much use for a dead boat once I had verified power was present and correct. What I needed was something that could detect the presence, or lack of, the pulse width modulated signals between the modules. As well as detecting the presence of the signals, it also needs to create test signals to allow swapping in of known good sources. A microcontroller can easily do this. I would also want it to measure battery voltages to allow testing of 1-4 cell LiPo batteries. Such a device should help with most track side/pond side issues and hopefully allow for more successful days out. The problem with my boat was due to the transmitter failing. The electrics went into Fail-safe mode. A cheap replacement radio system fixed the issue but I could not diagnose the fault until I got home. If anyone reading this is also in to R/C and would be interested or has some suggestions, please contact me. I originally started this blog to discuss projects in development for the Amiga retro computer, this still goes on but at a slower pace. I still manufacture the adaptors for power supplies and floppy drives for the Amiga and Atari computers and will continue for a while yet. Brexit and the poor UK exchange rates have pushed up my manufacturing costs by 25% over the last year, so I have had to increase my prices by 20%. I try to keep the costs down to be competitive but when you are only making small batches it can be difficult to get the costs low enough. I don’t make much from this endeavour, any profits are reinvested in developing new designs and financing the next production run. I do it as a service to the retro computer fraternity. There are other ideas being progressed, the less is more approach will continue so as to avoid disappointment. I have been asked numerous questions about the GBS8200/8220/HD9800 converter boards. I try to keep the comments moderated and I thank those who have answered some of the queries on this blog. Have you seen the great work on gbs-controlproject?
I have been asked about designing an improved GBS-8200 board based on the Tvia 5725. It’s a good chip, not necessarily programmed correctly, evident in the issues with motion in video games. Personally I would not use this for a video converter card of my own. These video chips are very complex. The last group of devices I used professionally took around 500 hours to develop and test a product for. You can probably see my reluctance to entertain the idea of a video converter card. The problem with video devices, be they decoders (that convert analogue or digital video to a pixel stream) or encoders (that convert the pixel stream back to either analogue waveform or packet based/low voltage digital signal) is that the datasheets and manuals already assume you know how they work. Motion estimation, de-interlacing, chroma edge enhancement, 3D comb filters, PLL programming/coast time all have a major impact on the end video image. I should write some more on this in another post, when I get the time. Sometimes you need to play with these settings, but use the right source material tofully test them.
The TVIA5725 outputs analogue VGA by default, this was fine back in 2011 but for 2018 and beyond, any solution needs to have an HDMI output. You can convert VGA to DVI/HDMI with another adaptor but it’s much neater to do it in one or two chips and avoid extracables.
I will try and post a bit more often, stay tuned folks.Advertisements
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August 14, 2017
ianstedman
TOO MANY SPINNING PLATES Sorry I have neglected this blog for over a year. I’ve come to realise I have too many ideas on the go at once, which whilst great for variety, does not allow much progression. I took a long hard look at what I was doing and I have suspended all work on project Hermes (CD32 expansion) indefinitely. It was not due to technical issues, it was due to support. The original intent of the project was to produce 100 assembled and tested PCBs and then via a third party, sell them, I had a tacit agreement on this. The realisation, in part driven by bad experience in the day job, was that a more complicated design than a ‘simple’ ATX or floppy adaptor, would take a significant amount of my time to support. Currently I spend 8-10 hours a month dealing with enquiries, order packing and support requests for the products Icurrently sell .
Allowing for a design that is more 4-5x more complex with more variables, I can easily see that the support time will increase considerably, easily to 10x the current level. When (not if) it gets to that level of effort, it becomes more of a chore than a fun hobby. This is the time to stop. I will continue to support the products I currently sell. There are two small, Amiga related, projects, in the final stages of development. Will release details when they are ready. Once released and manufactured, they will be the last Amiga specific projects I workon.
The other projects I work on are increasingly micro-controller based and two of them use CPLDs for video and logic functions. These projects are more generic retro projects. I also develop designs for Radio Control systems, more on this when I finish them. Like most of my current projects, all the design data will be publicly available.
I realise this announcement will disappoint some people. Over the past 10 years, I have, on average, finished 7 projects a year. The past year, I’ve done 2. I’m older now and life has other distractions so I’ve decided to do what is best for me and to actually achieve success on smaller, more manageable projects rather than failure onone large project.
Thank you,
Ian
July 6, 2016July 6, 2016ianstedman
SYNCHRONISE YOUR VIDEO ENGINES The importance of applying the correct video sync signal to your TV, monitor, scan converter, HDMI adaptor or projector. This post tries to answer some of the many questions I get relating to the GBS-8200 and non-standard video types. I will provide information on how to help identify the correct synchronisation or sync signal for shortness, for common applications and describe some of the effects you may see when you get it wrong. I do not have a guaranteed fix for any problem, this is more a how to guide to help you fix any issues you may encounter. Topics covered in this post What are synchronisation(sync) signal(s)? Understanding your composite from your H/V and Sync On green type? Basic information on video sync timings, PAL, NTSC, CGA, EGA, VGA. Converting video sync amplitude Sync strippers/cleaners/separators Best options for the GBS-8200 WHAT ARE SYNCHRONISATION(SYNC) SIGNAL(S)? Let’s start with a basic description of a sync signal. I took the following from the Tektronix Video Measurements glossary:
_Sync – a) Abbreviation for synchronization. Usually refers to thesynchro-_
_nization pulses necessary to coordinate the operation of severalintercon-_
_nected video components. When the components are properly synchro-_ _nized, they are said to be “in sync”. b) Signals which controlthe sweep of_
_the electron beam across the face of the display. The horizontalsync, or_
_HSYNC for short, tells the display where to put the picture in theleft-to-_
_right dimension, while the vertical sync (VSYNC) tells the displaywhere_
_to put the picture from top-to-bottom. c) The portion of an encodedvideo_
_signal which occurs during blanking and is used to synchronize theopera-_
_tion of cameras, monitors, and other equipment. Horizontal syncoccurs_
_within the blanking period in each horizontal scanning line, andvertical_
_sync occurs within the vertical blanking period._ With the move to LCD displays we are not concerned with movement of an electron beam but it is useful to understand how the horizontal and vertical sync signals play their part in creating the display you see. BASIC INFORMATION ON VIDEO SYNC TIMINGS, PAL, NTSC, CGA, EGA, VGA.VIDEO TYPE
Horizontal
frequency Vertical
frequency INTERLACED?Number
of lines NOTES
PAL
50 Hz
15.625 KHz
Yes
576 active
(1)
NTSC
59.94 Hz
15.750 KHz
Yes
480 active
(1)
CGA
60 Hz
15.750 KHz
Yes
200
TTL signals. (2)
EGA
60 Hz
15.750 KHz/21.80 KHzNo
350?
Vertical frequency changes depending on the mode, 200 line display is 15.750KHz, 350 line display is 21.80 KHz. TTLsignals
VGA
60 Hz
31.469 KHz
No
480+
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(1) Quite often when a system states PAL or NTSC output, e.g. a camera, the signal is a composite video signal. For higher quality conversions, either a Y/C(S-video) or an RGB output is preferred. The sync is embedded with the video. (2) CGA is unique in that it uses TTL digital signals, with an intensity pin to get 16 colours. If you don’t have an adaptor boardto convert
the RGB+intensity to analogue, most converters will struggle. Hasseparate H/V syncs
You will note that I state that NTSC has a vertical frequency of 59.94 Hz, where as most of the other standards are 60Hz, indeed some literature states 60 Hz for NTSC. In practice, most of the time this 0.06Hz deviation makes no difference. UNDERSTANDING YOUR COMPOSITE FROM YOUR H/V AND SYNC ON GREEN TYPE? So you have a retro game console or computer and you want to connect it to a modern LCD display or a projector, should be straightforwardright?
Depending on the equipment you may have a single signal or multiple types. The table below details the main types:SYNC TYPE
VOLTAGE
DESCRIPTION
Composite video
1V
Normally a yellow plug, contains video and a combined sync. Used bySCART inputs.
CSYNC
TTL (2-5V signal)
Output by some graphics cards or a TTL signal from retro equipment. It only contains timing information, no video.HSYNC
TTL (2-5V) signal
Provides the horizontal video timing, which details the start andend of a line.
VSYNC
TTL (2-5V) signal
Provides the vertical sync timing, which describes the frame rate.Sync-on-green
1V
A -0.3V sync signal attached to a 0.7V peak green video signal. An important point is that you need to know what signal amplitude is expected by your TV/monitor/scaler/converter. A common mistake, is toconnect
a CSYNC signal, either from a retro device or a computer, to a SCART socket. The SCART standard expects composite video on pin 20, if youfeed in a
TTL CSYNC signal, you could be supplying a signal upto 5x higher than expected. My Amiga SCARTand
Atari SCART
cables
fixed multiple video issues, with a simple fix to the sync amplitude, by adding a series resistoron the sync signal.
I show a TTL signal as a 2-5V signal, for good reason. A retro computer or video system will have 5V logic, a logic 1 output can be from 2.4V (min) to 5.5V(max). When you connect one of these signals to a 3.3V video chip, like that on the GBS-8200, you are damaging the device as the input signal exceeds the supply voltage. The ESD protection diodes conduct and soft of allow the system to work, but they are not meant to be used continuously and will fail, at the same time as your board. The next section details various methods of converting sync signals. CONVERTING VIDEO SYNC AMPLITUDE So how do you convert a composite video to separate h/v sync or reduce a 5V TTL signal to 3.3V LVTTL or any or a number of options?Report this ad
Some conversions are simple and can use readily available modules, others need a little circuit board. The table below will help:FROM
TO
SOLUTION
Composite
CSYNC (3.3V or 5V)
Sync stripper
Composite
H & V Sync (3.3V or 5V)Sync stripper2
CSYNC
Composite (1V) levelResistor circuit
H & V Sync
CSYNC (3.3V or 5V)
OR/XOR gate
Sync on green
CSYNC (3.3V or 5V)
Sync stripper2
Sync on green
H & V Sync ((3.3V or 5V)Sync stripper2
5V TTL
3.3V TTL
Level converter
Examples of each circuit element are shown in the sections below. What is not shown are power supplies and connectors. This is left to thedeveloper,
though for all circuits shown, a simple linear regulator wouldsuffice.
SYNC STRIPPERS/CLEANERS/SEPARATORS When I first started researching video adaptors and converters I came across ‘sync strippers’ and wondered what they were. They arerelatively simple
circuits, based around commonly available sync separators, the most widely used being the National Semiconductor (now Texas Instruments)LM1881.
They accept a composite video signal and strip the colour burst off the signal and in the case of the LM1881, output a 5V TTL CSYNCsignal.
SYNCSTRIPPER CIRCUIT Taken from the LM1881 datasheet. Widely used as it’s a readily available part in a DIP package. There are two limitations of this part: 1) The 5V TTL output is not compatible with modern TVs/HDMI adapters/projectors. It needs a level translator. 2) It does not provide a separate horizontal sync output. If your adaptor only needs CSYNC, great, otherwise try the Syncstripper2circuit below.
You may get away with using CSYNC for HSYNC but it is by no meansguaranteed.
SYNCSTRIPPER2 CIRCUIT Again taken from the datasheet. Being a surface mount device will put some people off, the VSSOP-10 package is a bit small but you can easily buy a SSOP to DIP adaptor off ebay. If you power it from a 3.3V supply, the logic level outputs will be compatible with modern display devices, no external converter needed. It provides true H/V and C sync outputs and works with a wider range of video types andfrequencies.
Would an adaptor board with this circuit, video amplifier and maybe a scanline generator be of interest? POTENTIAL DIVIDER AND LOGIC LEVEL CONVERTERS Resistive potential divider circuits The first circuit converts 5V TTL signals to 1V CSYNC for SCART This is a simple potential divider circuit. The output voltage is 75/(75+330) x Vin which gives an output voltage that is ~18% of the input or around 0.92V. The second variant is for the GBS-8200 or a modern monitor that is not5V tolerant.
With a VESA VGA video monitor or equivalent, the input impedance of the display is much higher, in this instance, 2K. As the aim is to reduce the signal to be approximately 3.3V, we reduce the amplitude by27-30%.
One disadvantage of this circuit is that the RC time delay does affect the rising/falling edge of the sync pulse slightly. In mostcircumstances,
this will not matter but some systems may have issues if the time delay extends past a 100ns rise/fall time. For a cleaner, fastersignal, use
logic devices.
TRANSISTOR LOGIC LEVEL CONVERTOR An improvement is to use a transistor circuit. This circuit is simple to implement and provides faster edges than resistor networks. You will also find this on ebay as a level translator for the Arduino, it is acceptable to use it forvideo.
OR/XOR SYNC COMBINER CIRCUIT The circuit shown above has the option to use either an OR gate or an XOR gate to combine separate HSYNC and VSYNC into a CSYNC signal. Most of the time, the OR gate will suffice. Depending on the display you interface, you may need to invert the vertical syn portion, hence the option to use an XOR gate. The 33R resistors were added to damp any ringing when driving long cables. With careful selection ofthe logic
family, you can use a 5V tolerant part, operating from a 3.3V supply. EFFECT OF SUPPLYING A 5V SIGNAL TO A 3.3V DEVICE This could be very detailed and lengthy discussion detail the effects of electromigration and it’s detrimental impact on device reliability. I’ll summarise, DON’T CONNECT 5V LOGIC TO MODERN MONITORS OR ADAPTORS! Whilst it will appear to work, you may see odd effects, occasional display artefacts or issues displaying a stable image occasionally. Ifa device is powered
from 3.3V and you feed in 5V, you are exceeding the power supply by upto 1.7V, not a good start. The internal ESD protection diodes, willclamp the signal
to around 3.9/4.0V, which you might think is OK. The clamping action distorts the signal and can cause the video display/adaptor to incorrectly sample the sync signal. The ESD diodes are only meant to have short term use to protect from static electricity, which is normally a short, sharp shock. If they are continuously used, they will fail and when they do, the full 5V signal is fed into the IC. Depending on many factors, the distortion will get worse but one thing is 100% certain, the device will fail. BEST OPTIONS FOR THE GBS-8200 I would recommend as a minimum that any sync signals are scaled using at least a potential divider circuit or a transistor level shifter asthey are readily
available, providing your source produces a C sync signal. If you need to to combine H and V Sync, use the logic circuit shown above. If your system provides a composite video signal, use one of the sync strippers but ensure you condition the output to be 3.3V LVTTLcompatible.
SUMMARY
I hope this guide has been useful and informative. It is only meant to provide guidance on common issue I have encountered when inter-connecting various video systems it is not a definitive guide of what you must do. Sometimes you need to experiment, if you have an oscilloscope, make somemeasurements.
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I’ll be taking a break for a bit whilst I get busy with the CAD tools but I will read and respond to your comments.May 4, 2016
ianstedman
MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU Forgive me it has been six months since my last posting, I have been alittle busy.
Project Hermes is still in development but has progressed nicely. I started my review work on the design back in March 2016 and made a few tweaks to the design. The review schematics are here: Hermes_development.
One of the principal design requirements was to make it work within the CD32 power/space/performance envelope. One are the design was struggling with a little was power. Most of the anticipated power consumption was in the 5V to 3.3V converters for all the new logic and 2xCPLDs. One evening, with some help from Ti’s WEBBENCH(R),
I had a solution that nearly halved the power consumption of the card. The BOM and schematics were updated accordingly. When you look at the circuit on page 3 (which is not sexy), you may wonder why that was a few hours work. Component selection, simulations, schematic and BOM updates take time but the task is now done. This is one of many little tasks to complete. The biggest challenge has and still is the programmable logic. I have a preliminary design which needs a test bench to prove it. I have ‘re-used’ some concepts from other projects but very little code. A few designs I looked at for the 6800/68020 processor bus used asynchronous logic. Whilst this will work, it does have the potential to cause a metastabilityproblem.
As someone who works with high integrity hardware, the design needed to be changed to a synchronous system. To speed up the logic decode, a 28 MHz clock is generated from the 14 MHz clock provided by the CD32. This ensures I have a higher speed, time aligned, clock for the logic decode and to help reduce the need for wait states. IT DOES NOT CONVERT THE DESIGN INTO AN ACCELERATOR! IT WAS WHILST DEVELOPING THE PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC THAT A CLASH OF PROJECTS OCCURRED, SOMETHING WHICH TOOK TIME TO EFFECTIVELY RESOLVE. One of the features added by the MIA CPLD was the floppy disc interface. The core design was based on the CD32 floppy design on Aminet . One of my other projects was a prototype floppy interface in VHDL for the classic Amiga. It made sense to finalise that design before incorporating that design into Hermes. The basic double density only design has been incorporated after the final compliance testing was integrated with my A1200. In the near future I plan to release the V3 floppy interface, with the highly experimental, HD support. If I can get the HD support working reliably, it can be incorporated into Hermes. The second conflict was from my Retro Video Adaptor, another
project, which looking at that page, has gone nowhere since 2013. It’s not the whole truth it stalled for good reason, it would not work reliably with 240p/288p video. The basic concept was fatally flawed. It was inspired great success achieved using these video decoder parts with non-standard video but the tricks I learnt did not work with the Amiga! Without using timebase correctionon the video
output, I could not get YPbPr or HDMI outputs to work reliably. It was from this issue that I initially started playing with the GBS-8200as this has
a timebase correction feature. The critical feature of the GBS-8200 is that it has a framebuffer memory to convert the 240p(NTSC) and 288p(PAL) video to a higher resolution and provide a 60Hz output at a standard resolution. Without a stable output conversion, the downstream video output can not be converted to YPbPr or HDMI. It is this issue with 240p/288p video that causes many SCART to HDMI adaptors to fail as they do not know how to handle this video system. Some will interpret 240p as 480i (NTSC) and de-interlace, thus causing fuzziness. The same goes for 288p being interpreted as PAL video. Switching off the de-interlacer greatly improves the GBS-8200 video output with 240p/288p. Tecnobabble out of the way, how is this relevant to the long delays onHermes?
I have been looking into incorporating an HDMI output into the design. Handling the audio is easy, I have a stereo audio ADC for that that outputs the correct transport stream, it’s just the Amiga video I need to solve. Some experiments with a small FPGA to ‘adjust’ the timing were trialled with no success. Experimenting with the GBS-8200, I have seen what a system that can re-time and re-scale the video can achieve, whilst being fully aware of the issues of motion compensation and blurring among other artefacts. It was with regret that the implementation of an HDMI interface will not be part of the Hermes design. This decision was made due to the amount of time required to implement a reliable interface. It will be better to run the two projects in parallel and maybe add this in at a later date if a solution becomes viable. I have a candidate solution which is undergoing technical evaluation.Report this ad
Someone will ask why don’t I use the Vampire FPGA accelerator andHDMI core?
The HDMI output is incorporated into the CPU core design and associated FPGA. The Vampire design is a very clever implementation but currently only supports 68000 instructions, the CD32 has a 68EC020 which supports a slightly different instruction set. The other reason is that at my current development rate, adding a new FPGA accelerator the design would never be finished!!! :p The third and final conflict was finishing the updated Amiga/Atari floppy adaptor. I’ve just sent out the purchase order for a production run of 75 units. Yes you did read that correctly, the new design has been updated to work with the Atari ST/TT/Falcon in double density mode. This was a late design addition that delayed production by 2 months whilst a new prototype was successfully built and tested.WHAT’S NEXT?
I still have a few changes from my design review to incorporate, mainly to improve testability and reduce emissions. Once complete, I’ll finish tracking the PCB. The prototype PCB will be a six layer PCB, this will make it easier to track and to provide some controlled impedance signals. Experience gained from getting the existing adaptor PCBs has helped me find lower cost quality PCB suppliers andassemblers.
I’ll answer another question, why have I not just made a prototype of the design I had 6-9 months ago? Cost. A batch of 3 assembled prototype PCBs would cost >£500. It would be a bit cheaper if I assemble the prototypes myself. I’d rather spend a bit longer doing my innate design checks/double checks before committing to a prototype. I will try and update this blog more often. There’ll be another post shortly related to the GBS-8200 experiments. May the force be with you!November 30, 2015
ianstedman
BEING CREATIVE ON CYBER MONDAY It has been some time since my last post, I meant to post earlier but got a bit distracted reviewing and deleting 24 emails and text messages I had regarding Black Friday! Cyber Monday added another 16 emails. Decided to be creative and write another blog post instead. First of all, after a few unforeseen delays, the ATX power adaptors will be available soon. My expected delivery date from the manufacturer is 25/12/2015, a nice early christmas present! It will take a few days to get the boards programmed and tested once complete I will list the adaptors for sale on my website . Realistically, it will be January 2016. The CDTV ATX adaptors are in stock, as are the audio mixer PCBs. The smaller floppy adaptors (for double density Amiga use) will follow in approximately 2 weeks, so middle of January. A late change for further use, has delayed sending this order out to manufacture. Pricing is largely unchanged: CDTV power adaptor £9 picoPSU adaptor £10 Mega adaptor (replaces original and big box) £11Audio mixer PCB £4
Postage and packaging to be added to all orders. Getting PCBs fabricated is easy, I have used multiple vendors with comparative ease. Getting PCBs fabricated and assembled, for a reasonable price is another story. I contacted 7 companies for quotes and only got responses from 2 of them. I guess small quantities (75 of each PCB) was too low for some of them. The company I chose to manufacture and assemble the PCBs has been good, so far. With a few minor changes and advice from them I managed to remove one of the higher costs from the Mega adaptor PCB by removing the need for 2Oz copper to take the power, this halved the PCB costs. Hopefully I will not be disappointed with the assembled units when they arrive atChristmas.
I do try and respond to comments on the blog as soon as possible. I added the information regarding my upcoming projects to try and reduce the number of ‘is it done yet’ emails I’m getting. This blog and my development projects are a hobby activity, I have a full time job working in the electronics industry, so sometimes it is necessary to take a break from electronics! Sometimes work is not fun but at least I get paid to do it, if the ‘hobby’ ceases to be fun, it’s time to stop and do something else. I am committed to my current projects, just taking my time to get them right Project Hermes is one of my more popular projects, the current quickstatus is this:
Schematics complete and in internal review. Changes made to fix potential EMC and signal integrity issues. First draft PCB layout in progress. Feeding in some lessons learned to reduce the PCB costs ETA 2016. See my comments in the previous paragraphs. The other project I have many comments about is regarding my experiments with the GBS82XX video cards and retro games hardware. I started developing an Arduino programme/sketch that reads the numerous status registers, decodes the input video type and then sets the correct output display. I had a bit of fun with 3.3V/5V I2C interfaces, fixed with a cheap level converter from Squirrel Labs.
It needs a lot of work to finish the basic input testing and resolve a few bugs and is not currently in a format to release. I know what I need to do and roughly how to do it, but I can’t release anything yet as it will leave more questions than answers. This will be a nice project to experiment with over the Christmas break! I’m not going to respond to any further questions of ‘can you make this work with system X’ or ‘why does this not work with my antique video system Y’. Sorry to be so blunt but I have other things to do. I am working on my retro video guide, which when finished (and published on my website), will help you to resolve the more common issues and hopefully give a better understanding of thevagaries of video.
That’s all for now, I plan another update by year end, hopefullywith some pictures.
July 19, 2015November 29, 2015ianstedman
THE BENEFITS OF PROTOTYPING, EVEN THE SMALLEST OF DESIGNS. As the existing stock has being cleared, it needs to be replenished, progress has been made to do this. The Retro ATX adaptors (not Amiga specific now), have been prototyped and the first two prototypes assembled as shown here On the left is the small form factor design, primarily aimed at the picoPSU ATX power supply. On the right is the multi-purpose ATX adaptor (formerly Big Box), aimed at higher power systems and those that require additional features, notably -5V supply, 50/60Hz mains tick and AC fail status. Some of my regular customers will notice a move away from the Amiga specific titles. The reason is simple, these adaptors will work with multiple retro systems, a name change can help generate more sales and of course happy customers. This has in part been driven by feedback from customers, asking if these adaptors work with other systems, the answer is yes. If you have a vintage retro system, with a 1980’s power supply, you may be at higher risk of power supply failure due to aging effects due to heat and dried up electrolytic capacitors. Replacing your old power supply can provide some peace of mind. I will provide details on wiring up these adaptors for various Retro systems, including the BBC Micro, Apple II and Sam Coupe among others on my website in due course. It is not viable for me to supply power adaptors for systems that require a 9V DC supply, like the Oric Atmos or Sinclair Spectrum, as you can easily purchase modern switchmodeconverters.
For low power systems, I recommend a genuine picoPSU adaptor, manufactured by Mini box . Unlike most high power ATX adaptors, these converters have no minimum load requirement and are silent. A typical 230W+ power supply will have a minimum load rating, to ensure the outputs are stable so to use a regular 230W+ power supply with a retro system, using 25W, you need load resistors, sometimes dissipating upto 25W of power! The prototype PCBs were ordered from a local company, Ragworm , hence the orange silk screen. The build quality was very good and it took me just over an hour to assemble the boards. As the aim was to get these PCBs assembled by a contract manufacturer, the existing designs needed a few refinements. All components are now on one side of the PCB, this reduces the number of process to 2 (SMT load top side and hand solder) from 3 (+SMT bottom side). This saves on the recurring costs. The control electronics have been simplified, reducing the part count. All control is now via a Microchip PIC10F202 micro-controller in a tiny 6 pin SOT023 package (3mm x 3mm), programmed on card via an ICD 3 programmer. This allowed for easy configuration for momentary or latched power switches and improved de-bounce compared to the previous design. It also provides a 50/60Hz square wave output, useful for some Amiga models that require a mains ‘tick’ signal. Finally the design also switches on/off thesupply.
On both boards, I have added extra, larger, pads for connecting your own power wiring in addition to a 2 pin header. On the multi-purpose adaptor, the number of +5V and 0V connections have increased from 2 to 4, making it easier to connect to a high power, 100W+, system (mainly Amiga 2000/3000/4000). Simple changes that were easy to implement.Report this ad
What did I learn from these prototypes? For the Multi-purpose adaptor, the text describing each power rail, by the screw terminals, should be rotated 180 degrees, making it easier to read when wiring up. The linear -5V regulator needs more copper area to act as a heatsink. Order your programming cables long in advance! To program the PIC micro and save on recurring costs, I decided to use a Tag Connect, TC2030-MCP-NL
programming cable, this only requires a tiny PCB land pattern on the PCB. It may not seem much, adding a 20p, 1.25mm connector to each PCB but on a batch of 200 PCBs, it certainly adds up. The annoying part is getting hold of the cables. I currently have a cable on back order from Farnell, expected delivery date is 10th August! Finding stock in the UK has been tricky. The other prototype PCB has been the V2.5 Amiga floppy adaptor shownhere:
This board showed the benefits of prototyping. You may notice the orientation of the drive connector is odd? I designed this board to have a reduced form-factor to easily fit behind the floppy drive, adjacent to the drive, this did not work. The problem was that some drives, like the Mitsumi drives in my collection, have the +5V power connector above the 34 way IDC connector. So with the PCB plugged in, you can not connect the power,oops.
This new PCB is 60x24mm, the previous (V2.1) PCB was 53x40mm. The ideas was to make it smaller to fit more easily inside the Amiga and to allow easy assembly into a case to act as an external DF1 floppy drive, either with a real floppy drive or with a HxC or USB (Gotek) virtual drive. Moving the design to Little Logic and 0603 surface mount components allowed me to make the PCB much smaller. As well as the mechanical error with the power connector, it also highlighted a limitation of the Design Rule Checks (DRC) that I run on the PCB data. One of the floppy drive connectors (the white one in the photo) is too close to a couple of resistors, this could easily be damaged in assembly and would limit inspection and rework. The production PCB will be 5-7mm longer and the same width as the IDC box header, the two jumpers, one on either side will move into theextra space.
I am learning how to use mechanical 3D design tools (Sketchup and 123D), as an electronic engineer, they have taken some learning. I do want to master one or both tools as a 3D printer is on my wishlist. Sometimes you can’t beat a real prototype though. The PCBs shown above need further testing before I release them for manufacture in batches of 100 of each design. The lessons learnt, minor in some cases, from these prototypes has been invaluable. Once the design release is complete I can get back to my other projects in earnest. Until the next post.Ian
June 13, 2015June 13, 2015ianstedman
SO WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? I’m sure the followers of this blog have been asking the samequestion.
Due to other pressures/commitments I stopped all development work for the first 5 months of 2015 and have recently resumed. There is a backlog of work and projects to finish, which is progressing. The existing Amiga adaptors I sold have been updated, new, simpler, ATX power adaptors are in prototype PCBs, once testing is complete, a production order will be placed. Likewise the floppy drive adaptor has been updated, the new PCB is much smaller and easy to manufacture. Have also updated the un-released V3 design to support USB/SD card floppy adaptors internally/externally and experimental HD support. Previously the Amiga adaptors were hand made by myself. This was getting time consuming as the volume of orders was increasing, great for business but I was struggling to make enough in batches to deliver. To alleviate this, all new designs will be outsourced to UK based contract manufacturers. This leaves me more time to design andtest products.
Project Hermes is progressing, I have the core of the MIA CPLD coded but not tested. The schematic took longer, due to my decision to use Designspark, which was a big mistake. After getting rather frustrated with the tool, I ditched it and went back to the familiar Eagle CAD software, which I can use. I’ve been using Mentor Graphics tools for 19 years, Eagle for 12 years and used OrCAD for a bit, Designspark was the worst I’ve used! I’ve written the Arduino code for the GBS-8200 board to detect the incoming video and scale/de-interlace accordingly but have not tested it yet. It’s a lower priority project at the moment but one I want to return to in the future. In my next update, I’ll show the assembled prototype PCBs of the Amiga adaptors and the complete schematics for project Hermes. Hopefully June/July time.Regards,
Ian
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