MyTek "Studio II" Genlock

[Brentarian]

This question is for Michael (mytekcontrols). If you don't mind me asking, how many Studio II's did you end up selling? Doing genlocking on an Atari 8bit would have been awesome back in the day! I was a poor college kid during that time or I would have bought one. I used my 8bit quite often for home video titling with GR.2 text.

[Kyle22]

Wow, Absolutely WOW. I never knew this was available. After listening to the interview with Dale Lemke, I thought this was only available for the Amiga. This is awesome.

 

Mike, if you see this, please explain the details

[Brentarian]

I remember reading about it in Current Notes or Atari Classics (or both). I stumbled upon this review today:

http://atari.a8maestro.com/info/8ball/studio/studio.htm

[+mytek]

This question is for Michael (mytekcontrols). If you don't mind me asking, how many Studio II's did you end up selling? Doing genlocking on an Atari 8bit would have been awesome back in the day! I was a poor college kid during that time or I would have bought one. I used my 8bit quite often for home video titling with GR.2 text.

 

I sold six complete units (including the enclosure in the advertisement). This was pretty much what was required to break-even on the cost of all the parts including a run of PCB's. I might even have a bare board around here someplace as well as an earlier model DIY etched prototype. I'll try to take some pics and post it here. And there might even be some schematics around someplace.

 

The color lock was only good with a very high quality source such as a camera or Hi8 video tape. Gray scale was good with almost any source.

 

- Michael

[+mytek]

I found the schematics and installation/adjustment documentation and scanned it: Mytek_StudioII_Genlock_datasheet.PDF

 

Unfortunately I no longer have the disk that had the video fade and video mode control routines on it, or the original source code for that

 

I'll keep looking around for the PCB's I used to have, hopefully I'll find it and get some pics posted soon. About 12+ years ago I still had one complete working version, but I suspect that got given away with my original Atari collection to Curt Vendel at a swap meet. Curt if you are reading this, it would be great to have some photos if you still have it

 

- Michael

 

[+mytek]

I found the schematics and installation/adjustment documentation and scanned it: Mytek_StudioII_Genlock_datasheet.PDF

 

Unfortunately I no longer have the disk that had the video fade and video mode control routines on it, or the original source code for that

 

I'll keep looking around for the PCB's I used to have, hopefully I'll find it and get some pics posted soon. About 12+ years ago I still had one complete working version, but I suspect that got given away with my original Atari collection to Curt Vendel at a swap meet. Curt if you are reading this, it would be great to have some photos if you still have it

 

- Michael

 

 

There is a missing page to the schematics, and that is the GTIA piggyback board. I believe there was some address decoding logic on that board that tied in the SPI controlled stuff, mapping it to some unused area of the A8's memory. As to where in memory that was I don't recall. If I can ever find the bare PCB, I might be able to decipher what was going on. After 21 years that is the only way I'll be able to figure it out, because those memories haven't been refreshed in way to long

 

- Michael

[Mathy]

Hello Michael

 

I drooled over the add every time I saw it. But IIRC it was NTSC-only. I live in PAL-Land.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

PS with today's technology, how much smaller would it be?

[+mytek]

Hello Michael

 

I drooled over the add every time I saw it. But IIRC it was NTSC-only. I live in PAL-Land.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

PS with today's technology, how much smaller would it be?

 

Maybe a 50% reduction with SMD. Problem would be finding a source for the color regenerator chip and the delay lines. And quite frankly it's not really worth doing since everything has gone digital now days. It just makes way more sense to do stuff like this on the Mac or a PC, and if you are coming from an analog format, there are converters to bring it in as digital first.

 

Prior to this 'product' I had done a very good DIY gray scale only overlay board (this was covered in great detail as a two-part feature article in the SLCC Journal November & December 1991). It was a hell of a lot simpler. I have both of those issues and can scan the articles if they aren't already available on-line (anyone have a link?).

 

- Michael

[TXG/MNX]

Interesting would you be interested to make a new batch ?

[+mytek]

Interesting would you be interested to make a new batch ?

 

Thanks for the interest, but I'll have to say no. For one thing I don't even have the original PCB files, and for another some parts will be near impossible to get. Basically it would require a lot of effort to recreate this.

 

- Michael

[+mytek]

I found and scanned the SLCC Journal Nov-Dec 1991 article I did on gen-locking your A8. It shows in very good detail how to create a monochrome NTSC overlay board which will take whatever appears on the A8 screen based on luminance only and can overlay this on an external B&W or color video signal. And to be perfectly clear, only the A8's video is in monochrome, whereas the video signal it overlays can be in ful color.

 

I also found (and attached to this pdf) some of the original emails between me and Bob Wooley, as well as what looks like some later modifications I was playing around with. There is also an additional schematic of an overlay board created by a guy by the name of Larry Brown that inspired me to do the same thing for the Atari. We both worked for a company at the time that was manufacturing remote video cameras for inspection of sewers and storm drains (RS Technical Services).

 

Enjoy

 

Atari DIY Monochrome GenLock.pdf

 

 

- Michael

Edited December 3, 2016 by mytekcontrols

[+mytek]

Yet another Color GenLock for the A8...

 

 

 

This was the precursor to the 1995 Studio II version, and was first introduced in the later part of 1993. I built a total of two units, kept one and sold the other. It's a far simpler system as compared to it's big brother Studio II, and as such didn't synchronize quite as well or stay as perfectly color locked. It also lacked the electronically controlled 'fader' and 'selective luminace fade' feature, opting for manual controls instead.

 

Unfortunately once again I am missing the GTIA interface board details, but the schematics are reasonably labeled to allow figuring out what went where. And I think there is a chance that I still have one of the original units as built, complete with self-etched PCB. When I find it I'll be sure to post some pics.

 

This is the manual and schematics that were sent with the one I sold: Prism Studio GenLock.pdf

 

Edit: Funny thing is, the manual for this 'one hit wonder' is actually much better than what I sent with the six Studio II's that were sold a couple years later. I think I was getting burned out and just didn't feel like putting in the time (producing good documentation is very time consuming).

 

- Michael

Edited December 3, 2016 by mytekcontrols

[Pakrat]

I have one of the six Mytek Studio-II genlocks. Bought it new.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Pakrat

[+mytek]

I have one of the six Mytek Studio-II genlocks. Bought it new.

 

Can you take a few PICs of it and post them here? It would be especially nice to see a close-up of both sides of the GTIA adapter so that I can generate a schematic from it, and I'll post that here as well.

 

So you were one of my customers on the batch of six pre-order I did so many long years ago

 

- Michael

Edited December 12, 2016 by mytekcontrols