Let's design a new video mod

[Osgeld]

its a discontinued part

 

I just did my JR with a FMS6363ACSX, wich is a 3 channel filter/driver meant for component video, but its doing pretty good just a little jailbaring which I wasn't getting with modding resistors... course modding resistors got me weak red's and bleeding like mad greens, but awesome blues, besides the point

 

the FMS chips have little to do with the video production or whats going where, its just a final output filter, small amplifier and line driver (so if you have a weak dark signal it will bring it in line)

 

If you already have svideo going but a weak signal the 6363 should clean that up, but its not going to magically split colorburst (chroma) from video (luma) and output svideo.

Edited September 24, 2013 by Osgeld

[Osgeld]

I still am tweaking resistors on my 2600JR but here is what I have so far using the FMS6363ACSX hooked up as composite output (a little bit bleedy, need to tone it down a notch)

 

[arabsniper]

Hello, i been reading about this as i been doing the lhe mods. I like to offer help with this. I have fms 6310 smd ic.

I work doing electronic work and we keep 20+ year old games alive that are not that cool !?! thats chuck cheese for you

We get stuff and i was able to get fms6310 still. I will ask if there is more. 25 min thou.

If it helps to better what you been doing for 2 years. i can try to breadboard with it and help report back.

[Osgeld]

there's a half dozen current and easily available FMS parts on the market now that do the same thing as the older chips mentioned in this thread, but like the one I chose, are made for things like component video, so you get 3 channels instead of 2

[lodbro]

Has anyone installed the mod in a PAL console using this method???

 

.....I have purchased some mods so when they arrive i will give it a go. Hopefully, if I don't blow-up my atari, I will post some installation pics to help others.

Have you had any succes in getting the mods to work on PAL systems?

I only get black and white picture so I need help

[Unstablewarpfield]

I tried to get this to work on my atari 2600 PAL 4 switch and it is giving me some problems. The comp image is working fine and with a bit of tweaking I can get the colors right, however... I tried this mod for the s-video! When I connect it to s-video it gives me these weird "ghost colors" that I can't get rid of, no matter how I try by turning the adjustment pot meter on the main board. When I turn it as far as black and white there is no ghosting at all. I connected everything according to the guide on the electronic sentimentalities website, except for the legs of the IC. That was done as described in post 86 of this thread and I did not lift them. In stead I soldered everything to the backside of the pcb. Might this be the problem?

 

I will attach some pictures. Hopefully some wizards on the forum here might recognize this and will be able to help me out. I tested this on a an lcd tv with a scart connector. Any ideas?

 

Cheers!

 

image upload no compression

free image upload

Edited May 30, 2015 by Unstablewarpfield

[Unstablewarpfield]

In the mean time I lifted the pins on the TIA. Not much difference. I did how discover that the image got a bit better when I connected both the s-video and the composite kabel. No idea why, but I am playing like that now. If anyone has any ideas they are welcome.

[alex_79]

/BLK, COLOR, AUD0 and AUD1 must be isolated from the board by either lifting the pins or by removing connected components (see post #33), so that might cause your problem.

PAL doesn't have /BLK and AUD1, so you only need to isolate COLOR and AUD0. Personally, Since TIA isn't an off-the-shelf part and it can be difficult to find a replacement in case of damage, I prefer to remove components (and even cut traces if necessary) instead of lifting the pins and soldering directly onto them. If your board correspond to the one in this schematic, you can isolate those two pins by removing only 4 components: r228, c210, r206, c208. You can desolder and lift just one end of those resistors and caps, so you won't lose them if you want to restore the board in its original state.

Check with a multimeter just to be sure, as components might be labeled differently on different revision boards.

Edited June 16, 2015 by alex_79

[alex_79]

Btw, are you sure that your TV accepts s-video through SCART?

Even if it does, most of the time there's not autodetection, so you must manually set the input to s-video mode, else it defaults to composite.

[Unstablewarpfield]

Thanks for the reply alex_79. Before your reply I already tried bending pin 9 from the TIA, since that has the colour signal as far as I saw from the pinouts. It didn't help much.

 

I tried this on two tv's (both LG, different models though) and they both give me thesame result. What I did notice is when I connect both s-video and composite, the image improves. With a bit of tweaking on the colour wheel I managed to get a bit of a better image but by no means perfect. I will see if my tv supports S-video through scart. To be fair I haven't checked that yet. The weird thing is that in black and white the image is picture perfect.

[Unstablewarpfield]

Thanks for the reply alex_79. Before your reply I already tried bending pin 9 from the TIA, since that has the colour signal as far as I saw from the pinouts. It didn't help much.

I tried this on two tv's (both LG, different models though) and they both give me thesame result. What I did notice is when I connect both s-video and composite, the image improves. With a bit of tweaking on the colour wheel I managed to get a bit of a better image but by no means perfect. I will see if my tv supports S-video through scart. To be fair I haven't checked that yet. The weird thing is that in black and white the image is picture perfect.

[alex_79]

I will see if my tv supports S-video through scart. To be fair I haven't checked that yet.

The CRT TV I use has 2 SCART sockets (AV1, AV2) and additional RCA and s-video inputs (AV3).

AV1 can do RGB and composite

AV2 and AV3 can do s-video or composite (you must manually set the right signal)

 

By pressing the "AV" button on the remote I cycle through the inputs:

 

AV1 -> AV2 -> AV2s -> AV3 -> AV3s, where the "s" stands for s-video.

 

On modern TVs usually you have an on-screen menu to select the correct input signal for each av port.

 

The weird thing is that in black and white the image is picture perfect.

That's normal. S-video was not part of the original SCART specs, so it reuses pins assigned to RGB and composite. The LUMA signal is on the same pin used for composite video. Ideally, when you feed an S-video signal into a SCART input set to composite, you should get only a b/w image. In real world, instead, cheap cables and adapters which rarely are well shielded allows for interferences between CHROMA and LUMA wires which might generate those "ghost colors" you experienced. When the source video is in black and white, there's no CHROMA signal at all, therefore no interference.

 

Note that, when using a rca-svideo to scart adapter, you should connect either the yellow RCA or the s-video cable, not both.

[Unstablewarpfield]

Again... thanks for the input. Really appreciate it. I am currently away from home, so unable to verify both my tv's. One of them I do know by head which model it is and I already figured out that it actually doesn't support s-video. Whether this means it doesn't support s-video over scart I don't know.This was the tv I took the pictures from in my post above. I might try my 2600 on an old CRT to see what that does. If all else fails I'll stick to composite a bit until I have an xrgb framemeister. I believe this would take in s-video, as well as all the other consoles I have.

[Unstablewarpfield]

Allright... My other tv is an LG 55LE5500. It supports RGB over scart, but as far as I see no s-video. This would explain why the colors don't look right. Now only find an old crt to see what happens when I try that. Fingers crossed it will work...

[Unstablewarpfield]

I tested about everything I could test now on this problem and still it persists. Connected the Atari to an old CRT tv and it also gave me the color problem. It's like it's shifted out of phase for some reason. Composite image is fine. I'm about to give up on this mod. Guess I'll be just using the composite video part of it then.

[Imperious]

Try experimenting with 2k to 5k pots before and after the Amp chip, also try some small value capacitors with the signal and see what affect You get.

I tried caps and resistors inline and connected to ground.

I could get a very good s-video image, but the constant diagonal line interference is annoying, and most noticeable on Blue for some reason.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Imperious

[Unstablewarpfield]

Ok... long time no reaction and everything has been on hold a bit since I bought a new house. But... finally I have space now to create my gameroom with a new Samsung tv and a Framemeister xrgb mini. When I fired up my Atari through the Framemeister's svideo port low and behold... perfect s-video signal! Problem solved. Next up... getting a second boxed 2600 and rgb mod it.

[sdave]

OK. So I realize this thread has been dormant for a long time, but I'm going to see if I can spark some new life into this topic. If it doesn't work, I'll just start a new thread!

 

I recently picked up a light sixer and I'm interested in installing a good s-video mod. I've got the simple (though not to install) composite video mod based on the single 2N3904. Unfortunately, I'm less than satisfied with the results (works but picture quality is not that great.)

 

What I would like to do is make a PCB with the s-video and composite video out that uses the standard SNES (and N64, GameCube) multi-out connector. These cables are available everywhere at a low cost, and I'm sure most gamers already have them lying around anyway. The connector is basically just a PCB edge connector. I plan to make a housing using a 3D printer.

 

I've already started the PCB design, but after reading through this thread, I was left with several questions as to what mod is best. I've got quite a bit of experience with electronics, and I know I could shed some light on some of the discussions that were raised here.

 

Anyone game to get this started again? I would love to know where the latest mods left off, and if there was any consensus as to which circuit design worked best.

[Osgeld]

if you just want a board to plop in look for a UAV here on the forums, I have not used one but its touted as the beeez-knneeez and it configures to just about every atari system made

 

for all the composite modded system's I do I use a FMS6363 or its slightly cheaper cousin the THS7316, that gives you a proper filter, driver and buffer in 1 chip

 

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ths7316.pdf

 

I dont think that would work well for svideo and composite, you might be able to diode and the two inputs and use the third channel as a composite output, never tried

 

for svideo AND composite I use a FMS6410 which is the successor to the 6400 that the longhorn mod uses. you put in Y and C and it spits out buffered filtered svideo and composite on its outputs, its more picky about its input levels, but you can use a resistor from the input pin to ground (i use trim pot's to figure out where it needs to be)

 

http://static6.arrow.com/aropdfconversion/cd31ba7cfdc9d0ffed0be4eead66751cb92fb9ee/3666331084480706fms6410b.pdf

 

I just dropped one of those in my 65XE today even though its svideo output was crisp it was full of noise, that chip removed the noise and gave me back composite (since I removed the rf box)

[sdave]

I'm looking to have both composite and s-video, so I'll use one of the fms64xx chips. My plan is to design a new PCB that incorporates the SNES style multi-out connector. I'll start with a design similar to the LHE or batari versions from earlier posts in this thread. There seemed to be some debate over which signals should be buffered for best video quality (in particular the color and blanking signals). I was curious if any consensus had been reached. I don't mind doing some testing myself, but I don't want to waste too much time reinventing the wheel here.

 

Also, I'd like to know if anyone has compared video quality with the mod board mounted inside the shield box versus outside.

[mobiusstriptech]

In all honesty the UAV will give you what you want. I was working on a new design and stopped after getting my hands on the UAV. The quality is exceptional and does both composite and s-video.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

In all honesty the UAV will give you what you want. I was working on a new design and stopped after getting my hands on the UAV. The quality is exceptional and does both composite and s-video.

 

Except I'm hearing rumor that Bryan has ceased offering the UAV for now until he has a newer revision done. I hope that is misguided info because I'm in need of like 3 - 5 UAVs now for MOD work requests...LOL

[Osgeld]

I would not mind getting one either but I am not exactly sure how about even asking about it as (it seems like) there's a zillion threads, I am probably being dense though

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I would not mind getting one either but I am not exactly sure how about even asking about it as (it seems like) there's a zillion threads, I am probably being dense though

 

I've just always sent Bryan a PM asking for a price on however many I'm requesting. Also the UAVs can be ordered in a number of ways. You can get the plain board which is preferable for the 7800 and any other systems with low clearance for it. You can get one fully populated with the solderless terminal block, interconnects and socket soldered on..etc for use with the 5200 and other 8bits where the 4050 is involved.. or you can order a basic board with the extra bits separate just not soldered on.

 

So it really depends on what your needs might be.

[sdave]

I've just sent Bryan a PM to see if the UAV is available. I'll post here when/if I hear back from him.

 

I was planning to do my own design so I could include a PCB mounted output connector. I was originally planning to use an SNES style multi-out connector (it's basically just an edge connector on the PCB) and 3D print the housing. I've also been looking at the Sega Saturn multi-out connector. I've got cables for both. The Sega connector is a single 10-pin mini DIN style connector. This would be nice and clean with only a single hole in the 2600 case. The problem is, I can't find any source for the connector.

 

Ultimately though, if the UAV is still available, it will be much faster and easier. I can still mount whatever type of output connector I like on the back.