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The UAV Rev. D Video Upgrade Thread


Bryan

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Okay great I got the first UAV working! Thank you Bryan!! I see a big improvement so far but read on...

 

A few important notes. Right now I'm only using composite on a 1 year old Vizio 1080p LCD TV. It doesn't have s-video. I see some mild vertical lines, not severe. The Vizio is doing some processing or interpreting of the composite signal, I'm guessing. The Vizio looks rather good on RF but composite is not truly represented I believe. For example I see flickering pixels on some parts of the screen on all my A8's, even with this UAV. I'm now shopping for a proper LCD or even CRT.

 

Bryan, the top GND on the terminal block next to composite - I wired that to the ground plane in front of the monitor jack port. Is that okay? For all wiring, I used a thicker grade wire than what you sent. There wasn't much wire in your package and I have lots more of this Elenco 885220. Is that good for this task? I got it at Micro Center in the hobby/electronics DIY section. Searches show it to be "22 AWG Stranded Wire - Red".

 

Thanks again! I'll post photos soon.

Edited by Sugarland
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Yeah, this is all light duty stuff so no problem using tiny wire. Some TVs don't filter the color carrier out of the picture very well and this presents a problem (shows up as tight banding). If you make the carrier weak, the picture looks worse because the TV can't distinguish color well and you get a lot of color fringing on everything. If you make it stronger (to spec, actually) then it might show up more if the TVs doesn't filter it properly for some reason. I think they're just getting lazy on some of these new LCD models and some handle video games better than others.

 

Flickering pixels probably means the Vizio does some pretty lousy digitizing of the composite signal. Composite performance isn't really a selling point for TVs anymore.

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Hi All

I just went online to research the best video mod for my untouched 1200XL and was STUNNED to see an Atari 8 bit video improvement thread active in 2017!
Quadrunner: Thank you soo much for your work on this. I can't wait to show my 2 young boys the great video quality. Please put me down for 2 on the next run. I'd like to get one basic for my 800 and one plug-in for my 1200XL as i don't mind cutting into my shield. As a tech I can accept other versions if availability dictates. Please PM me what to do next. Paypal standing by.

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Yes thanks for noticing, Kheller2

It was a lucky serial number ebay buy a few years back.

It has rev 11 OS ROMs also if that is of any interest and a "dark" Rev A motherboard..................

well I just noticed that per http://atariage.com/forums/topic/201076-anyone-have-a-1200xl-with-rev-11-os/

it looks like I musta bought this unit from Bryan!

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That is the black wire in the pics that disappears under the board correct?? I would like to know where that goes as well!

 

James

 

On the 800XL, looking down onto the motherboard, there is a row of resistors below the 4050 socket, with one very small capacitor (looks like another resistor) on the far right. You want to take the Color signal off the last resistor in the row, not that sneaky capacitor that's trying to fool ya' on the end (Color is the yellow wire).

post-30400-0-39902800-1487212917_thumb.jpg

Edited by DrVenkman
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On the 800XL, looking down onto the motherboard, there is a row of resistors below the 4050 socket, with one very small capacitor (looks like another resistor) on the far right. You want to take the Color signal off the last resistor in the row, not that sneaky capacitor that's trying to fool ya' on the end (Color is the yellow wire).

attachicon.gifUAC rev C.jpg

Yeah, but on the pictures Bryan linked it looks like Color in coming from the second resistor from right, so that was my first attempt.

Which naturally didn't work. That's the reason, I wrote that post.

Edited by JoSch
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I finally got a s-video LCD, a Dell Ultrasharp 2007FPb. Anyone here using this screen? Is it a good screen?? Does it have good s-video output? It seems a little dark. I see lots of retro users with Dell 4:3 LCD screens.

 

With UAV installed it looks good but I'm seeing some vertical lines and also some screen noise. I think it is RAM activity induced since when I run the RAM test it changes the pattern between the ROM and RAM test. At the OS diagnostic menu the ram noise is not present. Also when playing Blue Max (for example) there is much more noise visible on the green landscape than when at a ready or DOS prompt. My wiring seems fine. I checked it four times. I wiggled wires to make sure the connections are good. After seeing the vertical bars and some noise I ran the dedicated ground off the right side of the ground pad and sliced the middle as advised. Didn't make a difference as far as I can tell.

 

The atari s-video cable I'm using is never used and only 2 years old. Got it from the guy on e-bay selling Atari/C64 to s-video cables with left/right audio. Cable seems nice.

 

Bryan question please. Your UAV.XEX program.. How can I change the colors bars filling most of the screen to anything other than B&W? I see in your screenshots you did that. I tried every key and they stay as white bars on a black background.

 

edit: I just put it all back together otherwise I'd take some photos of the install. I don't think the photos would help but I'll do it tomorrow. The noise or bars won't come across in video or photos, I think.

Edited by Sugarland
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I finally got a s-video LCD, a Dell Ultrasharp 2007FPb. Anyone here using this screen? Is it a good screen?? Does it have good s-video output? It seems a little dark. I see lots of retro users with Dell 4:3 LCD screens.

 

With UAV installed it looks good but I'm seeing some vertical lines and also some screen noise. I think it is RAM activity induced since when I run the RAM test it changes the pattern between the ROM and RAM test. At the OS diagnostic menu the ram noise is not present. Also when playing Blue Max (for example) there is much more noise visible on the green landscape than when at a ready or DOS prompt. My wiring seems fine. I checked it four times. I wiggled wires to make sure the connections are good. After seeing the vertical bars and some noise I ran the dedicated ground off the right side of the ground pad and sliced the middle as advised. Didn't make a difference as far as I can tell.

 

Post a picture of your install. That level of noise doesn't sound normal. Unfortunately, LCD's sometimes show very subtle noise quite vividly. Sometimes I think they have sharpening filters to give nice edges to anything they pick up. What type of computer is it? It might be one that benefits from a separate 5V connection too. Also, does the picture look noise free if you remove the Chroma wire? I'll be attempting to work on a fix for machines that show refresh banding on the chroma signal coming out of GTIA.

 

The atari s-video cable I'm using is never used and only 2 years old. Got it from the guy on e-bay selling Atari/C64 to s-video cables with left/right audio. Cable seems nice.

 

Doesn't sound like a cable issue anyway.

 

 

Bryan question please. Your UAV.XEX program.. How can I change the colors bars filling most of the screen to anything other than B&W? I see in your screenshots you did that. I tried every key and they stay as white bars on a black background.

 

The bars are for Composite mode since artifact colors won't show up in S-Video.

 

 

edit: I just put it all back together otherwise I'd take some photos of the install. I don't think the photos would help but I'll do it tomorrow. The noise or bars won't come across in video or photos, I think.

 

There's a few board revisions that had horrible power routing problems. I'm hoping you have one of those and we can improve it with a couple new wires.

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Post a picture of your install. That level of noise doesn't sound normal. Unfortunately, LCD's sometimes show very subtle noise quite vividly. Sometimes I think they have sharpening filters to give nice edges to anything they pick up. What type of computer is it? It might be one that benefits from a separate 5V connection too. Also, does the picture look noise free if you remove the Chroma wire? I'll be attempting to work on a fix for machines that show refresh banding on the chroma signal coming out of GTIA.

 

 

Doesn't sound like a cable issue anyway.

 

 

 

The bars are for Composite mode since artifact colors won't show up in S-Video.

 

 

 

There's a few board revisions that had horrible power routing problems. I'm hoping you have one of those and we can improve it with a couple new wires.

 

Thank you for responding so quickly Bryan! Okay I have attached photos below. It's an 800XL NTSC machine. Today I made sure the ground and volt pads were electrically severed with a volt meter's continuity test. The ground pad cut might look sloppy. I didn't have a razor blade at first. Today I re-cut it with a razor blade along with the 5v pad. You'll note I do have a U1MB installed. Might that cause additional power noise? The motherboard doesn't show a revision just a CO number near the SIO port. Maybe there is a revision shown on the under side I don't know. You'll notice one photo shows no 5v line, but the others do. I ran the wire this evening. No improvement. :(

 

Here is a video showing the waviness and vertical bars

The Vizio screen later on in that video (to compare) only has composite, no s-video...

 

Thank you!

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Edited by Sugarland
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It seems to me someone else was having this issue with an Ultimate 1MB.

 

1. Did the same moving noise appear on the Vizio?

2. Try pulling out the Chroma wire and see if the resulting B&W image still has the refresh bars (just for my information of the source of the noise).

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It seems to me someone else was having this issue with an Ultimate 1MB.

 

1. Did the same moving noise appear on the Vizio?

2. Try pulling out the Chroma wire and see if the resulting B&W image still has the refresh bars (just for my information of the source of the noise).

 

Yes the moving noise appears on the Vizio too. At first the moving noise is not there, then when I start the RAM test, it starts.

The noise is gone when I pull out the chroma wire.

 

I can remove the U1MB to see if that removes the noise. I will report tomorrow on that. I hope the noise came across in the video above.

 

Thank you very much!

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