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New video upgrade coming soon!


Bryan

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The easiest way to think about it is that the pot changes the angular distance between the colors on the wheel:

 

phase_colour_wheel_big.jpg

 

When the pot is set correctly, the 15 color options are distributed evenly around the wheel.

 

That does make it a lot clearer Bryan! I also hear the phrase 'colour timing' used frequently in the video world. Is this concept related?

 

A totally different question - do you know what the standard wiring colours are for chroma and luma? Obviously composite video is usually yellow and I read after a bit of googling that luma might be green. However I could not discover what the standard for chroma was.

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Maybe if you have a really powerful soldering iron you can do it non-destructively, but I found the thermal mass of both the can itself and the ground plane just sucked all the heat away from even a 60W iron before it would melt the solder fixings.

I find it's possible even with a 25W iron, although you need to hold the tip on the lug for a long time until the chassis stops dissipating all the heat. I then gently lever up that side of the RF box (with a jeweller's screwdriver on the top side) before moving onto the next leg. After doing a complete circuit of the lugs about 4-5 times, they're free of the motherboard with only minor flexing. It may not be the ideal reference method but it works.

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no remowilliams, if you get a chance its in the thread. A UAV is a REPLACEMENT VIDEO SYSTEM - it does not modify the one on the board. IF you leave your DAC(4050) in .. you can use both the superVideo and the UAV with separate outputs.

 

So, for example, since I now have to wait for another batch of these to be produced. I am going to do the best current video mod (in the other thread) to my 800xl.. and I will get one of these when they are available.

 

Looking forward to the next batch. I have not been around here long enough to know all about various sites and stores etc.. but why are you going through Atariage for the next group? are they providing you some better margin? doing the assembly work for you? Just asking?

 

James

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no remowilliams, if you get a chance its in the thread. A UAV is a REPLACEMENT VIDEO SYSTEM - it does not modify the one on the board. IF you leave your DAC(4050) in .. you can use both the superVideo and the UAV with separate outputs.

 

So, for example, since I now have to wait for another batch of these to be produced. I am going to do the best current video mod (in the other thread) to my 800xl.. and I will get one of these when they are available.

 

Looking forward to the next batch. I have not been around here long enough to know all about various sites and stores etc.. but why are you going through Atariage for the next group? are they providing you some better margin? doing the assembly work for you? Just asking?

 

James

Never mind, posted by mistake.

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Has anyone here successfully installed the UAV board on a PAL Atari 400 ??

 

I am planning to do both a PAL and NTSC 400 install but am still waiting on the 400 sound pickup instructions from Bryan in order to run a standard video/audio cable out of the 400 instead of the current RF cable.

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Finished installing into my 130XE yesterday, decided to keep the shield, so had to assemble the board myself... stupidly soldered in the socket legs first and had a really hard time soldering in the pin cradle after that. Should have just ordered a fully assembled board and same myself some hassle. My LCD TV doesn't have an SV input, so I can only see composite video at the moment. Picture is much better than it was before, the left third of the screen is completely free of vertical banding, on the right 2/3 of the screen I see some really faint banding that doesn't appear on the camera if I take a picture of it. The word READY and the cursor rectangle shows a greenish line on the left and a reddish line on the right - is it the famous artifacting and considered normal? Disclaimer: I'm afraid the composite cable that this unit came from is the crappiest possible.

post-44749-0-04888600-1459184828_thumb.jpg

post-44749-0-43578600-1459184861_thumb.jpg

post-44749-0-72755600-1459184867_thumb.jpg

post-44749-0-77341900-1459184875_thumb.jpg

post-44749-0-28453200-1459184879_thumb.jpg

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no remowilliams, if you get a chance its in the thread. A UAV is a REPLACEMENT VIDEO SYSTEM - it does not modify the one on the board. IF you leave your DAC(4050) in .. you can use both the superVideo and the UAV with separate outputs

 

Ah yes I see the comment earlier in the thread, thanks for confirming. The 1200XL is done now and looks amazing too, and the UAV just fits under the U1MB :D

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I am planning to do both a PAL and NTSC 400 install but am still waiting on the 400 sound pickup instructions from Bryan in order to run a standard video/audio cable out of the 400 instead of the current RF cable.

I see you are from Austria. You got PAL B/G there, same as Italy, right ??

 

Any Atari 400 PAL computer ever produced outputs from factory a PAL-I (UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Macau) RF signal... (afaik).

 

This lead to a problem when we try to RF tune the output of a PAL-I (UK) on a standard PAL B/G TV set (Italy, Austria, most of Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand).

 

The video part is tuned with no problem, but the audio is "%&/%$/%£&/%$/&&/£%"£%$"%£&/$"£####" (you get the point, right?).

 

Is this the same reason why you want to install a UAV board in your 400 ?? You have the same issue on your 400 ??

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

C.

Edited by iratasan
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Finished installing into my 130XE yesterday, decided to keep the shield, so had to assemble the board myself... stupidly soldered in the socket legs first and had a really hard time soldering in the pin cradle after that. Should have just ordered a fully assembled board and same myself some hassle. My LCD TV doesn't have an SV input, so I can only see composite video at the moment. Picture is much better than it was before, the left third of the screen is completely free of vertical banding, on the right 2/3 of the screen I see some really faint banding that doesn't appear on the camera if I take a picture of it. The word READY and the cursor rectangle shows a greenish line on the left and a reddish line on the right - is it the famous artifacting and considered normal? Disclaimer: I'm afraid the composite cable that this unit came from is the crappiest possible.

 

Those pictures are HUGE!! :)

 

With composite video you cannot eliminate color errors on the edges of pixels so you will always see a little artifacting (which refers to colors appearing where not intended).

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Hey Bryan - installed on my 800XL, I've got those damned dreaded vertical lines on the screen along the left side, most noticeable with the usual blue background and white text. I've run a separate ground to the terminal block but haven't cut the UAV pad or run a separate +5V line. Which do you recommend I try first?

 

Thanks!

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Hey Bryan - installed on my 800XL, I've got those damned dreaded vertical lines on the screen along the left side, most noticeable with the usual blue background and white text. I've run a separate ground to the terminal block but haven't cut the UAV pad or run a separate +5V line. Which do you recommend I try first?

 

Thanks!

Can you post a picture of the board you have and the installation (or is it in the thread already)? The problem showed up after the 1MB board was installed?

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Can you post a picture of the board you have and the installation (or is it in the thread already)?

 

 

It's a full board (which I put together from a parts kit), installed in an NTSC 800XL. I've installed per your 800XL instructions in previous posts - COLOR from the resistor right below the 4050 socket, CHROMA run to pin 5 of the DIN jack, COMPOSITE and LUMA run to the pads under the lifted legs of the two ferrite beads as shown in your photos. GROUND is run from the terminal block to the thick ground at the top of the bank of 7 resistors just left of the 4050 socket, as you recommended in one of your 800XL-related posts.

 

(PLEASE IGNORE THE SPAGHETTI WIRING :) I took this pic when I did the first test installation - I've since trimmed and shortened things up, and moved the GROUND wire to the the other ground connection in the terminal block).

 

post-30400-0-39893400-1459197694_thumb.jpg

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I really, really hate to say it, but for me the UAV made no difference to my video at all.

 

I know the thing is installed properly and working because it produces the correct 'READY' screen. This cannot be coming from anywhere but the UAV as I removed the 4050, the RF can and the inductors. Therefore so far as the mod goes I am pretty sure it is running as it should.

 

However, the screen it produces is identical to how it was when running from the native parts - 'jail bar' bands, sporadic appearance of dots overlaying the jail-bars and worst of all very badly artefacted text. All this is from the composite video output as I do not have a monitor that will accept SVIDEO in - maybe that would be better, but I don't know. I'm guessing if the problems are present in the clean composite video from UAV then they would be there in the chroma/luma output as well.

 

It is also worth mentioning that I get this behaviour whether it is running from the power from the 4050 socket or if I break the pads and run patches directly from the middle pin of the power switch for +5 and the GND pin at the base of the big capacitor at the top left of the board.

 

All I can now assume is my video problems are unrelated to noise from the system RAM. Maybe the GTIA or ANTIC chip? Who knows.

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I really, really hate to say it, but for me the UAV made no difference to my video at all.

 

I know the thing is installed properly and working because it produces the correct 'READY' screen. This cannot be coming from anywhere but the UAV as I removed the 4050, the RF can and the inductors. Therefore so far as the mod goes I am pretty sure it is running as it should.

 

However, the screen it produces is identical to how it was when running from the native parts - 'jail bar' bands, sporadic appearance of dots overlaying the jail-bars and worst of all very badly artefacted text. All this is from the composite video output as I do not have a monitor that will accept SVIDEO in - maybe that would be better, but I don't know. I'm guessing if the problems are present in the clean composite video from UAV then they would be there in the chroma/luma output as well.

 

It is also worth mentioning that I get this behaviour whether it is running from the power from the 4050 socket or if I break the pads and run patches directly from the middle pin of the power switch for +5 and the GND pin at the base of the big capacitor at the top left of the board.

 

All I can now assume is my video problems are unrelated to noise from the system RAM. Maybe the GTIA or ANTIC chip? Who knows.

 

I'm pretty sure we can sort it out because you have a 130XE and it cleared up the picture of my 130XE:

 

From this:

 

post-38669-0-56934100-1394249683_thumb.j

 

To this:

 

post-3606-0-73059300-1453132385.jpg

 

However, sporadic dots sounds like a failing GTIA.

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I am noticing some vertical banding across the entire screen when viewing large areas of contiguous artifacted color (using the composite output obviously). It's most easily noticed by loading something like Autoduel.

 

 

It's difficult to remove all banding within artifact regions because the color is coming from a pixel pattern which creates a square wave, rather than a chroma pattern which is a sine wave. It's very monitor dependent. Do solid areas of normal (not artifact) color produce any banding?

 

The #1 problem is that LCDs are all over the place in how they decode analog video and what kinds of artifacts they create. I've seen one that produced banding no matter what the source due to internal noise.

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Do solid areas of normal (not artifact) color produce any banding?

 

No, not seen anything outside of what you see in that artifacted shot. Here's one from Spelunker, these are direct xrgb captures by the way. Amazing quality considering they are composite.

 

 

5Mkfbq.png

 

 

Bryan - in my case, I'm seeing some vertical banding even on my CRT, especially to the left side of the screen, and during RAM operations. Do you think I should split that ground pad on the UAV and/or run a +5V line?

 

 

When I installed the UAV in the 800XL I ran a separate ground and left the UAV ground pad intact - and what I got was some really bad banding that had moving bits during memory/SIO access... Removing the separate ground and/or splitting the UAV pad stopped that.

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I'm pretty sure we can sort it out because you have a 130XE and it cleared up the picture of my 130XE:

 

From this:

 

post-38669-0-56934100-1394249683_thumb.j

 

To this:

 

post-3606-0-73059300-1453132385.jpg

 

However, sporadic dots sounds like a failing GTIA.

 

I think you're right Bryan - and as long as I can think of ideas I'll keep plugging away at it for a while.

 

I also think you're probably right about the GTIA... I'll have to have a look at EBay and see if I can pick up a junker for pennies that might still have a good IC.

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I think you're right Bryan - and as long as I can think of ideas I'll keep plugging away at it for a while.

 

I also think you're probably right about the GTIA... I'll have to have a look at EBay and see if I can pick up a junker for pennies that might still have a good IC.

It could also be a clocking issue since the PAL GTIA uses 2 clocks.

 

I'm working on fixing a couple of my spare (broken) machines to see if any of them show any video issues. This is why I haven't done a new run of the boards. I'm making sure I haven't missed something.

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