darcagn

Got mine in today, swapped over the sockets and headers, finished installation, works great. Finally can get that Atari off of my bench.

Still haven't gotten my updated board yet I figured it would be here by now. Probably will be soon, though.

I would say this issue is with the XRGB-mini. It's not unusual for a specific game to give it issues. There are certain games on SNES, for example, that drop sync or cause the screen to bob up and down when a certain type of event happens.

Warlords drops sync on my Framemeister as well, but I didn't have the time to mess with the sync settings. It works fine on my BVM monitor though.

I understand that default settings are not going to be perfect; I've had it for years and use it as a video processor for many different consoles. Given that the point of this kit is to get RGB from the 2600 it's obviously worth comparing RGB to S-Video and Composite, and I chose not to tweak the settings to make any input look better lest we defeat the entire point of doing the comparison to begin with (i.e. if the kit really did have dimmer RGB output then tweaking the settings would have just covered it up). Hence why I also used another display to compare as well, to eliminate the processor or display as a factor.

Alright, I soldered up a SCART cable so I could connect the Atari up to my Sony BVM via SCART->BNC cable. I can say with certainty that the brightness/dim difference that is apparent on the XRGB-mini is NOT present on the BVM, so it is definitely just the way that the XRGB-mini is processing different types of sources. Here's some pictures: Pitfall on Sony BVM Pitfall in RGB vs. Pitfall in Composite on Sony BVM Close up detail comparison

That's bizarre. I wonder if that has something to do with YouTube in Germany (I see that your location is Germany)? Either way, I can assure you that the menus on the Harmony Encore cartridge are 100% compatible with the 2600RGB. The menus actually look pretty amazing.

I didn't demonstrate scanlines in my pictures or video, but they do look good on Atari games. A lot of people don't like scanlines, but I'm of the opinion that they work great on some games and other games they don't (in general, not just on Atari). They provide a certain "textured" feeling to the image that really helps benefit when you have such a sharp picture. The nice thing about the XRGB-mini though is the ability to tweak the image processing in a variety of ways that can help soften or sharpen the image to your liking. I prefer a super sharp picture, myself, but on some games I like to complement the sharp picture with scanlines to ease the abrasiveness of the sharpness.

It's YouTube; you were probably viewing in 480p30. My pop-up notice says to view in 720p60 mode, so that you can see the interleaved graphics. Once you view in 720p60, the Harmony's menu looks incredibly legible via RGB, unlike viewing in RF where I have to strain my eyes to see what the heck is going on. As for my RGB cable, I'm using a straight through 3' mini-DIN 8 to mini-DIN 8 cable from the 2600 to the XRGB-mini's RGB-in port, with a separate phono cable for the audio that splits with a y-cable to the front inputs of the XRGB-mini. I haven't gotten around to making a better cable yet that's long so for right now I have to sit right in front of the TV to test it.

Palette 1 is the default palette, but palette 2 definitely looks a whole lot better in Pitfall. As for the dimness of the RGB picture, I'm not sure the reason. I reset my XRGB-mini to factory settings in case I adjusted the picture and it still appears different. At the moment I don't have a cable made up to hook it up to my CRT monitor so I don't have another way to test the picture at the moment. Here's some more palette comparison pics: Dig Dug Custer's Revenge Frogger

Video footage: Pitfall (XRGB-mini 720p via RGB) Video footage: Harmony Encore main menu, Pole Position (XRGB-mini 720p via RGB) Images, all through XRGB-mini at 720p: Pitfall (palette 1) via RGB Pitfall (palette 2) via RGB Pitfall (palette 3) via RGB Pitfall (palette 2) via Composite Pitfall (palette 2) via S-Video Comparison image:

Fantastic! Shorting those two pins did indeed work (and actually worked for Ms. Pac-Man as well, though there were some weird lines on the side of the screen). Here's a screenshot of Space Invaders over RGB -> XRGB-mini -> 720p HDMI to elgato Game Capture HD. Will take some more screenshots and footage soon.

I mounted them horizontally so that I could keep the shielding on the bottom of the motherboard. I had to horizontally mount a crystal, the orange coil, and a capacitor.

I would suggest to wait personally. I got too excited and stubbornly installed mine and I can't get it to start up. Tried a variety of games, but I just get a blank black screen out of all of the inputs. The XRGB-mini sees it as input, it's just black. No audio either. And I know all the connections on the TIA and sockets are fine because the RF output still works fine, and I know all the connections for the video are fine because composite, s-video, and RGB all get an input/sync light on the XRGB-mini, indicating there's a signal, just no picture. I know it seems unlikely that it affects a ton of boards and scenarios given the testing, but then again during the second manufacturing run of the NESRGB Tim selected RAM for the board with a slightly different timing, and it bugged out a massive amount of NES games from working properly, and it was only discovered after shipment. I was really puzzled as to how that slipped through because it was pretty obvious. This isn't a slight on Tim in the least bit though, his products are excellent and top-notch quality, but it's not like he has an entire team of QA people to test all the different scenarios. I too use pin headers for my installations so it will be no big deal to reverse the installation; bummer that I have to wait another 2 weeks but oh well. In the mean time, here's some install-porn to keep you guys happy.