Atari 2600 RGB mod

[DrSidneyZweibel]

Stella 5 is far from being crappy.

The accuracy of the emulator itself notwithstanding, you still have to factor in PC compatible controllers and their potential latency, modern display lag, the unpredictability of a computer OS driving the emulator, needing to have a spare computer to drive the emulator... It's an alternative, and Stella is a fine emulator. But it's still not quite the same experience as a genuine console with original controllers.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

We better find solutions for the problems you mention before the consoles start dying.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

We better find solutions for the problems you mention before the consoles start dying.

There's nothing wrong with building a replica 2600 console, either electrically identical to the original circuitry, or an AOAC type that does the same, with native HDMI output. I think that would be Stellar (pardon the pun). But the Retron 77, as I understand it, is neither of these, and is simply a mini-pc, with an old, far less accurate version of Stella in it. Why waste Atari compatible cart ports/cart readers on an outdated version of an emulator? It's basically a cart dumper.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

No clue what AOAC means, but trying to rebuild/recreate the original console in hardware is about as much emulation than using an emulator. To be 100% identical, you would need the original hardware.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

No clue what AOAC means, but trying to rebuild/recreate the original console in hardware is about as much emulation than using an emulator. To be 100% identical, you would need the original hardware.

I was stealing the acronym from "NOAC" or Nintendo on a Chip - the stuff that drives a lot of these AtGames and other Classic Console reduxes. A dedicated hardware console. Except, a genuine Atari one, not a Nintendo on a chip with Atari software rewritten to work with it.

 

The Atari Flashback 2 was a great example. But do it again, and this time actually incorporating a genuine cart port in the final product, instead of making it a complicated hobbyist soldering project.

Edited August 1, 2017 by DrSidneyZweibel

[Keatah]

I mean - at least Zylonbane is arguing to include HDMI in original consoles. You're basically giving people two choices: crappy RF, or crappy emulation. Thanks, but no.

 

Heh.. Analog out from the TIA going into an HDMI conversion device (internal or external) is still dealing with losses in digital-to-analog and then back from analog-to-digital. I'm not aware of any device that would replace the TIA, transistor for transistor, and spit out a digital HDMI signal straight to the TV. Stuff from Analogue may do that. But I don't think everything is compatible with it in its present state, you're certainly not going to be running DPC/ARM games on it. Not till a cart adapter is made. If it ever gets made.

 

And if anyone does make an HDMI VCS console it's still going to be filled with inaccuracies. Like those "crappy" emulaterz. The few one-off VCS console replacements like the Ben Heckendorn repackagings, the walk-man VCS, the Retron 77, they all have authenticity issues. They get a lot of the little things wrong. Not to mention all the flashbacks. There's compromises and small inaccuracies.

 

I'm not necessarily forcing anyone to adopt a digital-only mindset, but it *IS* coming.

 

It will be fun and interesting to watch how this all continues to evolve over the next 10 years.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Hardware does not automatically emulate any better than software. If you can build something in hardware, then you can build it in software too. There exists no magic that makes hardware automagically better.

 

Sure, software emulation has to overcome other problems, but those can be handled. Use a good real-time-OS and there are no lags. And in case of an emulation flaw, software can be updated.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

We've gotten pretty far off course here.

 

To get the thread back on subject - I think the RGB mod is a great idea. I also don't have a problem with Composite or S-Video mods, if you have a TV that supports them. RF is outmoded crap, and looks poor because of interference.

 

I also don't have a problem with emulation, but it is not a replacement for original hardware. It's a compromise, although a reasonable, cheap, and often convenient one.

[Keatah]

No clue what AOAC means, but trying to rebuild/recreate the original console in hardware is about as much emulation than using an emulator. To be 100% identical, you would need the original hardware.

 

AOAC likely means Atari On A Chip. Never head the term, but there's NOACs, Nintendo On A Chip.

 

NOAC is widely used and likely a generic name in certain groups. Like Kleenex.. And you can blow snot in it too! heh

[DrSidneyZweibel]

Hardware does not automatically emulate any better than software. If you can build something in hardware, then you can build it in software too. There exists no magic that makes hardware automagically better.

 

Sure, software emulation has to overcome other problems, but those can be handled. Use a good real-time-OS and there are no lags. And in case of an emulation flaw, software can be updated.

This isn't entirely true. Analog signals can only be reproduced digitally to an approximation. Take audio recording, for instance. Even though Pro Tools, and digital DAWs etc. have existed for 2 decades now, and digital audio recording is the industry standard because of ease of editing - lots of producers still prefer to record to 2" analog tape - because there is an organic, electrical "feel" that cannot be replaced digitally. ( look up things like 15ips audio "bump" and tape compression) Same with the argument of Celluloid film vs. Digital Cameras.

 

I get what you're saying about the digital hardware components that can be replicated in software, that is accurate. But analog video and audio output cannot be 100% replicated, in color, timing, and artifact. It's all a digital approximation based on anecdotal "eyes and ears".

 

I'm also not saying that for most applications it's not "good enough". for most people, it would be. But good enough isn't 100%. It's a compromise.

[Keatah]

The accuracy of the emulator itself notwithstanding, you still have to factor in PC compatible controllers and their potential latency, modern display lag, the unpredictability of a computer OS driving the emulator, needing to have a spare computer to drive the emulator... It's an alternative, and Stella is a fine emulator. But it's still not quite the same experience as a genuine console with original controllers.

 

I believe I can successfully argue Emulator Stella is better, beginning with these 5 points.

 

1- You do not have to maintain ratbaggy hardware

2- You have easy menu selection, perhaps even easier than Harmony

3- You have reliability and consistency

4- Compatibility is potentially better or the same

5- It is updatable and upgradeable

 

This last point, #5, is important and real because there are some consoles that refuse to work with some cartridges. And the hardware can't easily be changed. But an expert developer can recode the emulator for unique one-off situations. And the end user can simply update the old binary.

 

[DrSidneyZweibel]

 

I believe I can successfully argue Emulator Stella is better, beginning with these 5 points.

 

1- You do not have to maintain ratbaggy hardware

2- You have easy menu selection, perhaps even easier than Harmony

3- You have reliability and consistency

4- Compatibility is potentially better or the same

5- It is updatable and upgradeable

 

This last point, #5, is important and real because there are some consoles that refuse to work with some cartridges. And the hardware can't easily be changed. But an expert developer can recode the emulator for unique one-off situations. And the end user can simply update the old binary.

 

1. Ratbaggy? The only reason your consoles might be ratbaggy is if you cared for them poorly. Not sure how this can be the measure of an inanimate object. Nevertheless, insults won't win any arguments.

2. The harmony menu is as simple as it gets. Not sure how a menu is relevant to real hardware, as it had none. This is an apples vs. tractors argument.

3. What is more consistent and reliable than an original console that is 40 years old and still works exactly how it was intended to on the day it was made? The Atari 2600 is hands down the most consistent and reliable video game console ever made. No BSOD. no red ring or yellow light of death. No flashing NES "FU I don't like this cart" error. Argument fail.

4. Every original Atari 2600 cart is compatible with a genuine Atari 2600 console. We're not talking oddball 7800 incompatibilities, or others introduced by knockoff hardware.

5. The Atari 2600 hasn't needed an upgrade in 40 years. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Edited August 1, 2017 by DrSidneyZweibel

[Keatah]

There's nothing wrong with building a replica 2600 console, either electrically identical to the original circuitry, or an AOAC type that does the same, with native HDMI output. I think that would be Stellar (pardon the pun). But the Retron 77, as I understand it, is neither of these, and is simply a mini-pc, with an old, far less accurate version of Stella in it. Why waste Atari compatible cart ports/cart readers on an outdated version of an emulator? It's basically a cart dumper.

 

There's everything wrong with building a replica VCS console. I just mentioned a few. But.. No company is going to build a transistor-accurate TIA and all the original analog circuitry as in the real VCS. Simply will not happen. Because cost. Because today's companies do not believe such a project is viable. And they keep thinking an approximation is good enough. Like buttons for difficulty switches or old versions of emulators. Or lack of a BW switch. Or not supporting all bank schemes.

 

Things like that..

[DrSidneyZweibel]

 

There's everything wrong with building a replica VCS console. I just mentioned a few. But.. No company is going to build a transistor-accurate TIA and all the original analog circuitry as in the real VCS. Simply will not happen. Because cost. Because today's companies do not believe such a project is viable. And they keep thinking an approximation is good enough. Like buttons for difficulty switches or old versions of emulators. Or lack of a BW switch. Or not supporting all bank schemes.

 

Things like that..

im glad you know definitively what will happen in every company or crowdfunded venture, ever.

[Keatah]

1. Ratbaggy? The only reason your consoles might be ratbaggy is if you cared for them poorly. Not sure how this can be the measure of an inanimate object. Nevertheless, insults won't win any arguments.

 

Not an insult. A fact. More often than not, I see greasy controllers. And controller cables that are hardening and do not have the flexibility they once had. Some are sloppy in the mechanics. Or have gone shiny, lost their texture. General wear.

 

Inanimate objects can be ratbaggy or slick and cool, whatever.

 

2. The harmony menu is as simple as it gets. Not sure how a menu is relevant to real hardware, as it had none. This is an apples vs. tractors argument.

 

Stella, upon startup presents you with a list of games, of which you can hit "V" and go to the "Video" series, like VideoPinball VideoChess or VideoOlympics. This is easier than Harmony. Nature of the beast thing.

 

 

3. What is more consistent and reliable than an original console that is 40 years old and still works exactly how it was intended to. the day it was made. The Atari 2600 is hands down the most consistent and reliable video game console ever made. No BSOD. no red ring or yellow light of death. No flashing NES "FU I don't like this cart" error. Argument fail.

 

Argument win. Because the virtual console operates today the same as it did 5 years ago, the same as it will in 5 more years. The geometry and color is perfect on a matrix display. The sound identical. No interference patterns, unless you 'adjust them in' via sliders. There are no sagging voltage regulators, no aged capacitors, no sloppy RCL filters.

 

Ohh the host may die. And that is alright. Shit. Mine exploded one time. I had a Pentium III 850 rolling, and something went bad on the motherboard, caps I'm sure, and the processor instantly blew off the heatsink and out of the crack shot molten silicon. FUCKING cheap dot-com era motherboards.

 

But the virtual console, Emulator Stella, was unharmed. Migration is expected to happen from time to time, just as an expensive upscaler may need to be replaced to match newer higher resolution displays.

 

And I've never known Stella to crash on me. No CTD. One of my older host computers has BSOD one single time, due to network driver issue which I was working on. So even that can be forgiven.

 

To be fair, Emulation will have hardware issues, too. The maintenance and care & feeding is of a different nature, but not significantly more or less than real hardware. You may tweak a knob on the CRT to adjust TINT, emulator guys will move a slider. You may organize your wall of carts, and emulator buff will break down roms into different categories, similar to what RomHunter does. You may clean contacts and replace caps, emulator enthusiasts may adjust controller configs or change other settings or update their executable binaries. Emulator fans may have semi-custom front-ends, real hardware buffs may have ABC selector boxes and spend time cleaning contacts and switches.

 

The real hardware guy may re-arrange the game room every couple of years. The emulator guy may buy a new PC and spend a week transferring over the stuff, while he makes the wife take care of the rest of the room!

 

The maintenance is of a different nature. But it still takes similar amounts of time. And referring to number one. I've seen many slophouse lame emulator setups.

 

 

4. Every original Atari 2600 cart is compatible with a genuine Atari 2600 console. We're not talking oddball 7800 incompatibilities, or others introduced by knockoff hardware.

 

No. There were some issues with melody boards or some CBS SuperRam boards not starting right unless an inductor was installed or removed. Something like that. I'm not too clear. But I also recall some M-Network carts from back in the day not working on one of my VCSes.

 

 

5. The Atari 2600 hasn't needed an upgrade in 40 years. I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Emulators are still evolving. And they are still gaining new features above and beyond what the original console can do in its stock configuration. Always something new to look forward to. Emulators are far more versatile when compared against a console clone or any AOAC.

 

An emulator may be upgraded to support a future display technology, or a controller technology. Much easier than the vintage console could be. Or maybe some future way of selecting games that no one has ever thought of.

 

While maybe useless. It was amusing and revealing to play VideoPinball in slow-motion at 10FPS with phosphor set to 1 point below maximum. It was like a mix of VideoEasel (400/800) and a visualization of the ball dynamics.

[Keatah]

im glad you know definitively what will happen in every company or crowdfunded venture, ever.

 

I know enough to stay away from them till a real product sells in a real store or major online retailer.

 

So far they don't have a good track record. And people are beginning to see this kickstarter stuff as a cheap low-class way for a company to pass the risk to the consumer while they themselves ride free.

 

It's happening in the Ataribox gig right now. They haven't got a clue as to what it'll be.

[ZylonBane]

Christ, I leave this thread alone for a day and it goes full Keahaha.

 

Modern gaming consoles may not need a dedicated upscaler since their graphics are completely different and closer to TV content anyway. Again, content matters.

 

No, the graphics of modern consoles are not completely different. That's another nonsense assertion. They're colored pixels, in a grid. The only difference is density. Once you normalize a 2600's video output to a standard 1080p 60Hz signal, a 2600's picture is no different from a PS3's. That's the entire point.

[skooter]

If your statement was true we wouldn't be using different upscaler settings for different consoles.

 

A DVD movie is also colored pixels on a grid. But we upscale it differently.

 

Once again, content matters.

[ZylonBane]

You use different settings for different consoles to get them converted in the first place. Once they're converted, THAT'S DONE.

 

How are you not grasping this?

[Great Hierophant]

Mods like the 2600 RGB mod will become increasingly useful as the ability to use 240p consoles on modern displays decreases over time. Many of the 4K TVs on the market, including mine, will not accept a native 240p signal (unless I use an unterminated RF connection and suffer terrible interference). A 2600 needs some kind of mod or scaler, all 240p consoles do, to work with such TVs. There are many reasons why you should use a good scaler like the Framemeister or OSSC on a modern TV. These devices handle an RGB connection, US TVs do not. They can typically convert 240p into 480/720/1080p with the least amount of latency. They usually will have more and better scaling options than your TV.

 

LCDs do not scale or display RF or composite signals from 240p consoles well. S-Video is a little better, but component and RGB are the best. Some consoles have an RGB bypass mod (SNES, Genesis) available that allows you to tap the RGB from the graphics processors instead of the video encoder, eliminating interference from the composite signal and issues from second rate video amplifiers. CRTs can mask issues and flaws in a video signal that on an LCD display will rear a very ugly head. Anything you can do to get a cleaner, purer RGB signal from your console is much more likely to pay dividends once it gets to the scaler and your TV screen.

 

A PS3 does not need a scaler to work with modern 4K TVs. 20 years in the future, this may change depending on what the standards are of that time. However, a PS3's signal is a fully digital signal which can be tapped without any mods from the HDMI port. An Atari's signal is digital internally but only partially digital once you get to the TIA's pins, so you need a mod to get the digital pixel information being written into the TIA registers. A NES's video signal is fully analog by the time it gets to the pins, but it also outputs enough digital video information that its video can be reconstructed digitally by a similar mod.

 

When you design a mod, you have to assign RGB color values to the 128-color 2600 palette. The Atari 2600 used the NTSC color burst signal, a 3.58MHz square wave, to generate color with sixteen phase delays to determine which color would be output for a given object. The chip does not generate RGB color directly and there are as many ways to convert NTSC to RGB as there were TVs in existence.

 

If you want to eliminate the analog hole altogether, a Hi-Def 2600 Mod could designed based on the 2600 RGB mod principle. Things will get tricky because the 2600 lets the game control the frame rate and the HDMI specifications demand rather strict compliance to its official framerates. Or you could use an Analogue Nt Mini, which recreates the 2600 in an FPGA and has HDMI output support.

 

If you prefer emulation to real hardware, then this discussion isn't for you. Go fire up Stella and enjoy, it is the best option available, an excellent emulator and only likely to improve on accuracy in the future.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I get what you're saying about the digital hardware components that can be replicated in software, that is accurate. But analog video and audio output cannot be 100% replicated, in color, timing, and artifact. It's all a digital approximation based on anecdotal "eyes and ears".

True, but analog displays won't last forever. And many users don't use them anyway. Also, you could build a modern console, with software emulation and analog output. Not sure how many people would buy those.

 

Finally, old CRTs displayed differently (worse) than modern CRTs. The latter are already only an approximation of your original experience.

[skooter]

You use different settings for different consoles to get them converted in the first place. Once they're converted, THAT'S DONE.

 

How are you not grasping this?

 

Again, not true. Most games up to 4th gen use 2D graphics. They won't look good with the same techniques use for modern 3D graphics. Because content matters.

[ZylonBane]

If you want to eliminate the analog hole altogether, a Hi-Def 2600 Mod could designed based on the 2600 RGB mod principle.

 

For the love of god, read the 2600 RGB mod description page:

 

"The various luma outputs from the TIA, in addition to the colour data stored is then used to create a RGB version of the original video signal. Essentially, the board creates the RGB video signal by bypassing the colour generation logic in the TIA."

 

There is no analog hole in the 2600 RGB mod. It only uses raw digital data from the 2600.

 

Again, not true. Most games up to 4th gen use 2D graphics. They won't look good with the same techniques use for modern 3D graphics. Because content matters.

 

Content matters! Content matters! Content matters! Bu-bawk!

 

Clearly you have no idea what you're actually talking about. Otherwise you'd explain what you mean instead of parroting your little catchphrase over and over. Like, maybe you could explain to us the difference between a 2D pixel and a 3D pixel.

[DrSidneyZweibel]

Christ, I leave this thread alone for a day and it goes full Keahaha.

 

 

No, the graphics of modern consoles are not completely different. That's another nonsense assertion. They're colored pixels, in a grid. The only difference is density. Once you normalize a 2600's video output to a standard 1080p 60Hz signal, a 2600's picture is no different from a PS3's. That's the entire point.

The biggest differences are interlacing and 30Hz flicker. The 2600 used these analog display characteristics for purposeful effect in certain games, not just as a hardware limitation. This cannot be accurately duplicated using digital graphic displays. You're getting an approximation at best, and I've never seen an accurate representation of this, either through a dedicated scaler, or using a display's integrated scaler. They all botch it to varying degrees, in some cases to the point of rendering certain games unplayable.

[Great Hierophant]

 

For the love of god, read the 2600 RGB mod description page:

 

"The various luma outputs from the TIA, in addition to the colour data stored is then used to create a RGB version of the original video signal. Essentially, the board creates the RGB video signal by bypassing the colour generation logic in the TIA."

 

There is no analog hole in the 2600 RGB mod. It only uses raw digital data from the 2600.

 

 

I was referring to the output of the 2600 RGB mod, not the input (which I described accurately). It outputs analog RGB video like the NESRGB mod. The NES has a Hi-Def NES Mod which outputs digital video through an HDMI connector, the 2600 does not have a similar mod at present. Running analog RGB into a scaler or to a TV may not be quite as razor sharp as a signal which was never converted into the analog domain. Thus you still have an analog hole of sorts somewhere between the digital system (2600) and the digital display (LCD).

Edited August 2, 2017 by Great Hierophant