New Hardware: Atari 400/800 Super Color CPU Card

[Faicuai]

51 minutes ago, Krenath said:

Here's with the original Atari CPU card and the same chips:  
The sky is still purple and the ground is dark green. 

Pay close attention to detail, on this one.

 

First, there are two variants (Disk and Cart). The only difference is the ODD/EVEN or EVEN/ODD arrangement of the halves of the horizon.  Second, with the original CPU card, you can now RETARD (dial negative values) on LCD's PHASE (tint/hue) parameter. Watch what happens to your artificial-horizon colors on FS2.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Faicuai

[Krenath]

4 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Pay close attention to detail, on this one.

 

First, there are two variants (Disk and Cart). The only difference is the ODD/EVEN or EVEN/ODD arrangement of the halves of the horizon.  Second, with the original CPU card, you can now RETARD (dial negative values) on LCD's PHASE (tint/hue) parameter. Watch what happens to your artificial-horizon colors on FS2.

You can see above in my screenshots what happens when I do exactly that. 

When I RETARD as much as possible, it won't go far enough to get BLUE&GREEN artifacts.  The best I can get is PURPLE&GREEN.
When I ADVANCE as much as possible, it won't go far enough to get ORANGE&BLUE artifacts.  The best I can get is RED&CYAN

And the disk version of Flight Simulator II by subLogic, on stock, unmodified, real hardware displays blue & green artifact colors just like Ultima.
 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

14 minutes ago, Krenath said:

You can see above in my screenshots what happens when I do exactly that. 

When I RETARD as much as possible, it won't go far enough to get BLUE&GREEN artifacts.  
When I ADVANCE as much as possible, it won't go far enough to get ORANGE&BLUE artifacts.
 

No, not the DELAY POT... The LCD's HUE / TINT control...

 

The color POT is only used to dial in the bottom-half of the color table (or, said in more practical terms), to nail down $0A hue-band (Star Raiders), while making sure that $0F ends up slightly behind $01, so you have a perfectly circular and gradual progression from $01 to $0F and back to $01.

 

To summarize (on UNMODIFIED 800):

1. FIRST, retard (dial negative values) on CRTs or LCDs or Video-Processor HUE / TINT control, so you get hue-band $01 as GOLD-YELLOW (not PARROT-GREEN).
2. SECOND, rotate CPU-board COLOR-POT to make sure that hue-band $0A (and luminance 0, left-side) ends up being darker blue-grayish, AND hue-band $0F ends up slightly behind of $01 (as seen in Altirra's COLORMAP).

That's all.

 

You should render the classical Bluish/Orangish artifacts, correctly.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Faicuai

[Krenath]

On my unmodified 800,

• hue band 01 is indeed gold-yellow and is not parrot green.  IN fact, I cannot seem to get parrot green no matter what I adjust.
• The color pot on the unmodified 800 is adjusted so that $0f IS just behind $01 and is getting a perfectly circular, gradual progression for $01 to $0F and back to $01.

On my modified 800.

• hue band 01 is indeed gold-yellow and is not parrot green.  IN fact, I cannot seem to get parrot green no matter what I adjust.
• The color pot on the unmodified 800 is adjusted so that $0f IS just behind $01 and is getting a perfectly circular, gradual progression for $01 to $0F and back to $01.

I have adjusted both machines the same as above, and the color square on the right side of COLORMAP.COM looks identical between the two machines. 
I have provided screenshots in previous posts of all of this.

On my unmodified 800, 

• Even pixels show vivid blue artifacts.
• Odd pixels show vivid green artifacts.
• There are no more adjustments I can make that would give me blue and orange.
• My classical artifacts have *never* been blue and orange.  

On my modified 800:

• Even pixels are reddish-purple
• Odd pixels are green.
• If I advance the delay pot all the way, purple turns to red and green turns to cyan.
• There are no more adjustments I can make that would give me blue and green OR red and green.

 

[Krenath]

Also of possible importance:

I do not have a PAL machine. I have two NTSC machines
I do not have a CTIA chip.  I have two GTIA chips.

I am currently setting up the cartridge version of Flight Simulator II for testing and screenshots.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Krenath]

This is the cartridge version of Flight Simulator II.  While there might possibly  be what looks like some hints of orangishness in the text and lines, the Artificial Horizon ball is blue and green on the original, stock Atari CPU card.

 

 

Here is the same thing from the modified  machine:

You can clearly see that the artificial horizon and many of the vertical lines in the control panel are *very* purple and neither blue nor orange. 
 

No matter whether I run the disk or cartridge version, if the correct artifact colors are blue and green, I cannot get those colors from the SCCC.  If the correct colors are blue and orange, I cannot get those colors on *either* machine.

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

32 minutes ago, Krenath said:

hue band 01 is indeed gold-yellow and is not parrot green.  IN fact, I cannot seem to get parrot green no matter what I adjust.

If you CANNOT transition back and forth from Yellow-Gold to Parrot-Green on hue $01 by retarding or advancing LCD's HUE / TINT control, then your LCD is Color-Phase locked (!!) How in the world is that possible?

 

If you could, you would be seeing NOW correct artifact rendition on FS2 cart-version, on your stock / unmodified 800.

 

Seems like it is the end of the road, here.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Faicuai

[Krenath]

To be clear, I am not actually trying to adjust anything to be the "correct" blue and orange artifact colors for FS2.  If I did, it would be incorrect colors for every other game I have that uses artifact colors.  Not to mention the fact that the monitor colors would be wrong for my PC when I switch back to it.

I am trying to somehow get the SCCC card to match the artifact colors of the unmodified 800 on the *same* monitor with the *same* monitor settings.  

I cannot see why I would want to adjust my monitor and disassemble my 800 to adjust its delay pot every time I wanted to switch between FS2 and a game like Ultima III.

Out of curiosity, if you were to run Ultima III on your own machine, what colors do you see on the screen?

Additionally, if my LCD is *already* adjusted so that my stock 800 *already* shows band $01 as yellow-gold, and band $0f is indeed one step behind band $01, should that not indicate that the hue settings on both my LCD and my CPU card are *already* correct?  Because they are on both machines.

And no matter what, the original machine shows blue and green artifacts and the modified one shows purple and green and neither one can get orange artifacts unless I adjust the hue settings on the LCD so much that NONE of the other colors are correct.

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

16 minutes ago, Krenath said:

To be clear, I am not actually trying to adjust anything to be the "correct" artifact colors for FS2.  If I did, it would be incorrect colors for every other game I have that uses artifact colors.

FS2 is the only solid and verifiable reference (which predates most, BTW). The rest is mostly speculative (e.g. there no such green tree-trunks in real life, whereas we could argue there are no such brownish/orangish tree-leaves, as well).

 

Don't know about Ultima-III. However, here's what how Ultima IV looks, before upgrading to Sophia-2 (now, THAT is a freaking jump in image quality and consistency, but with another host of considerations):

 

 

16 minutes ago, Krenath said:

Additionally, if my LCD is *already* adjusted so that my stock 800 *already* shows band $01 as yellow-gold, and band $0f is indeed one step behind band $01, should that not indicate that the hue settings on both my LCD and my CPU card are *already* correct? 

On one side, it seems you LCD is decoding $01 in perceptually-correct terms (when compared to1980-1983 renditions), which explains why there is no point in further retarding LCD's color phase/tint, to chase a correct artifacts rendition.

 

for the moment, confirm by launching Start Raiders, and activating shields. If it shows as dark-grayish blue, it also means you have nailed-down hue-band $0A, and no further adjustments are necessary.

 

The last possible adjustment, then, would ARTIFACTS PHASE / ANGLE right at the SCCC level (I don't know if its on-board UAV provides such facility). You can see it in action in Altirra's Color Adjust panel. If not, that's about it, you are stuck, unless you modify some specific passive components on the 800's final stage of analog-video interfacing.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Faicuai

[Krenath]

If you compare ports of Ultima III to other systems, you can see that the grass in the game is intended to be green dots.  The trees are intended to be green circles.  The water is intended to be wavy blue lines.  This is true on every other computer system that runs a port of the game and it's true on unmodified Atari original hardware.   Even if you use the Colormap program to adjust the hue, original hardware matches other systems.

The only time it is *not* blue and green is on emulated or modified hardware.  You can see screenshots all over the Internet of odd color variations on emulated or modified Ataris that do not match the color scheme of other platforms.  Purple, red, or cyan trees where every other platform has them as green.  Purple, cyan, or red water where every other platform has them as blue.

I'm quite certain we can verify from the other platforms that the colors on Ultima III that my unmodified machine generates are the ones intended by the programmers.

All I want is some way to modify my version of the SCCC card to allow me more adjustment range in the delay pot so I can match original colors. 
I do not want to make FS2 look a certain way just so every other game I have can look entirely wrong.

I am loading up Star Raiders now...
 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Krenath]

On Star Raiders, the shields color on both machines appears to be the same.  
 

The status bar is blue and the shields background is a darker, grayer blue. 
 

original 800:

 

 

modified 800:

 

The brightness difference is mostly camera angle.  I could not see a difference in person. 
On both screens, I see a medium-dark blue status bar, a darker gray-blue shield, cyan-ish text with some pinkish-purple and yellow-green colors for K and E numbers.
 

I believe the hue setting has been accurate on both machines the entire time.  
 

The problem remains that I cannot adjust the SCCC card to either your idea of correct or mine. The delay pot just doesn't give me enough adjustment in either extreme to get to the colors we want.   

To get to my idea of the correct color, it appears I'd need to be able to retard the delay more.  To get to yours, I'd need to be able to advance it more.
 

Could this specific card have been damaged during its two-month-long journey from tf_hh to me?
 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[Faicuai]

21 minutes ago, Krenath said:

To get to my idea of the correct color, it appears I'd need to be able to retard the delay more.  To get to yours, I'd need to be able to advance it more.
 

Could this specific card have been damaged during its two-month-long journey from tf_hh to me?
 

I don't think there is anything wrong with your SCCC.

 

However, you should check this out (these are UAV Rev.D features, not sure they are present on SCCC, but will address your discrepancy, most likely):

 

1. Has an on-board regulator to create a clean video power source.
2. Has a 3-channel video amplifier designed for 75 ohm loads.
3. Has a pixel re-clocking circuit to remove skew and better align the 4 luminance signals into a perfect pixel edge.
4. Has a carefully designed chroma-shaping circuit.
5. an adjustable pot on the board which controls the phase between the chroma and luma signals. A nice side-effect of this that you can change the artifact colors. There's also a jumper to invert the chroma which swaps the positions of the artifact colors.

[Krenath]

The SCCC card I have is supposed to incorporate the UAV circuit. 

I do have a UAV Rev.D  on hand that I planned on putting into a 130XE that I can move into this 800 for testing since the case is off and the shape of the UAV won't get in the way of a shield that isn't there.


 

[Krenath]

I removed the SCCC card from my modified machine and put its original CPU card back.
I then wired up the UAV Rev. D kit that I had handy and, miracle of miracles, it powered right up and displayed normal hues properly in Colormap the first time.

However, its default artifact colors are indeed cyan and red-orange.  While this would probably please Faicuai, it's artifact colors are even worse in my opinion.

It does not appear as if it can be adjusted as far in the purple direction.  Its limit seems to be around magenta. 
It seems to have about the same amount of adjustment, but shifted even more to the red end than the SCCC.   This means that it's even less useful to those like who want accurate, stock blue+green artifact colors

If the UAV is even *more* red than the SCCC, that might give me a clue what about it is different so I can try to change my SCCC to shift its delay range in the other direction.

Star Raiders looked exactly the same on the UAV as it did stock and using the SCCC card.
Ultima III looks terrible, as *all* of its color comes from artifacts and magenta water looks silly.  
Flight Simulator II Could indeed be adjusted to have a cyan and red-orange artificial horizon, but for the orange to be on bottom and blue on top, the UAV had to be set to not invert artifacts.

Not inverting artifacts and leaving it on FS2 colors made Ultima look like boiled ass.  Trees were now red and water was cyan.  That game was never meant to look like that.

The UAV is definitely coming back out and the SCCC will probably get modded for a different delay pot adjustment range.




 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[+tf_hh]

13 hours ago, Krenath said:

And I tested every part of the range of this pot, but nowhere in its range did it come even close to the original blue/green artifact colors.   

If I remove the Super Color CPU Card and put my original CPU card in place, the artifact colors are blue and green on the same monitor with the same cable and same SVideo-to-HDMI adaptor.

Could it be that this delay pot doesn't have enough range for approximating the original artifact colors?

 

Unfortunately the options to give more support by me ends here ? - The Super Color CPU Card includes exact the same circuit as in UAV rev.D which is sold until today by The Brewing Academy. Bryan, who made UAV, give me the complete schematics and I exactly uses the same BOM from Mouser like he does, when he offers UAV before the business was transferred to TBA.

 

Every SCCC is tested by me before shipping out in PAL and in NTSC using a good 4K CVBS / S-Video to HDMI converter. None of my CRTs is able to display NTSC, so I must use this way. I test S-Video and CVBS in NTSC and PAL using ACP - Atari Control Picture. Because every time I test a new SCCC card the color put must new adjusted, I also turn the delay pot until it looks like always in the ACP screen.

 

Do you have any system with UAV rev.D equipped for a test?

 

Maybe any other can help here. There are some dozens SCCC sold to the U.S. and I think hundreds of UAV. It should be possible that any NTSC user can reproduce the test conditions.

 

[Krenath]

9 minutes ago, tf_hh said:

Do you have any system with UAV rev.D equipped for a test?

I did remove the SCCC card and Temporarily install a UAV Rev. D that I had purchased for a 130XE I have.

The UAV had the same issue with artifact colors, but a more pronounced version of it.  I couldn't even get as dark a purple color on the UAV as I did on the SCCC.  So I removed the UAV and went back to the SCCC.  I like the SCCC's cleaner install better anyway.

Despite the widespread insistence that the artifact colors should be either purple/green or red/cyan, my machine has displayed blue/green artifact colors for almost 40 years, and many games like Ultima III count on those colors.  Ultima III looks wrong with any artifact color setting I can squeeze out of either the SCCC or UAV.  

I need a way to mod the board so I can get the equivalent of more room to turn the pot left(counterclockwise).  Since I have the artifact colors inverted, that should make the purple more blue while the green is still greenish and get me back to my stock artifact colors.  

It appears there are resistors inline with the 1K pot. Perhaps a different resistor value?  I don't have a UAV schematic in front of me to look at.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[+tf_hh]

13 hours ago, Krenath said:

Meanwhile, here are a pile of images that show what I see on my old CPU card as compared to the new Super Color CPU Card:

 

SCCC Card, Svideo.  You can see that Ultima is entirely monochrome since it got all its color from artifacts.

Very tiny hints of artifact colors, but not the same as above.

 

Well, this is normal and wanted ? - One of the reason why Bryan made UAV is to get clear, sharp and distinct colors. Of course is only possible with S-Video, where the color information (Chroma) is electronically seperated from the sync and brightness/luminance information (Luma). Every game or application which may use of artifact effects will shown in b&w with real S-Video.

 

The stock video circuit of an Atari 800 offers S-Video, but Chroma and Luma are not really electronically seperated. So you have also artifact effects using the genuine CPU card, but a not so clear and crisp display.

 

If you´re installing UAV in your Atari 800 and use the genuine CPU card, the results are the same like using the SCCC.

 

[Krenath]

3 minutes ago, tf_hh said:

 

Well, this is normal and wanted ? -

Right.  I was just illustrating that Ultima's colors are entirely artifact-based.  

On my unmodified machine as well as on every other machine Ultima III was ported to, water is blue and grass is green. 

On my SCCC-equipped machine, water is green and grass is purple until I invert the colors to get purple water and green grass.  But while plenty of posts on the forums seem to think this is correct, it's definitely not.

And if I set my machine up to play Flight Simulator II as Faiquai described, Ultima would display red grass and cyan trees.  This is *definitely* not what the author intended.  I even have cloth maps to prove it.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[leech]

3 hours ago, Krenath said:

Right.  I was just illustrating that Ultima's colors are entirely artifact-based.  

On my unmodified machine as well as on every other machine Ultima III was ported to, water is blue and grass is green. 

On my SCCC-equipped machine, water is green and grass is purple until I invert the colors to get purple water and green grass.  But while plenty of posts on the forums seem to think this is correct, it's definitely not.

And if I set my machine up to play Flight Simulator II as Faiquai described, Ultima would display red grass and cyan trees.  This is *definitely* not what the author intended.  I even have cloth maps to prove it.

So here's the fun thing about Ultima III.  It was created on the Apple II, like the rest of Ultima 1-5.  I have no idea why they chose the 4 colors that they did for U3, but the EXODUS title is the same color as the trees, basically you're stuck with either blue water and red trees (maybe it's permanently in Fall?) or you get red water / blue trees.  I found on my 800xl, that there is a slight area on the pot between complete lack of color, and very bright / vibrant blue outline / red Exodus title.  Then if I turn it just slightly more, it dims more.  This results in this;

[Krenath]

On all three machines I have, two 800s and a 130XE, the title and the trees are green and the water is blue.   It's always been that way.  
 

The above colors have always been the normal colors on my machines. 
 

if you look at screenshots of other types of machines, Apples, Commodores, Amigas, PCs, they all also have blue water and green trees.  Even the later adaptations for machines that had the luxury of more colors to choose from.

I have never seen an unmodified Atari before that had any artifact colors other than blue and green. 

 

I still don't see why I would want to change that.  
 

 

And certainly not just because one single game has one single control that might be that color on a different platform

 

It's much less believable that Ultima should be correct with alien colors on only Atari machines while every other platform has the same colors that my unmodified machines get than the idea that FSII users should have to deal with an artificial horizon ball that's not orange.  

 

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Krenath

[_The Doctor__]

Artifacting was different as I stated for a number of reasons. Artifacting was also listed out for folks by machine and what you should see the last time we  re visited this. The were also instructions on how some software let you invert the artifact from it's own start up. Some let you use a key combo to do it others only offered it on initial unused copy run. I have also shown that you can change capacitors on the XL and XE to change the artifact colors somewhat. Bryan did a nice job with the UAV and even listened to my discussions, he included another artifact representation as a result, and allowed for inversion etc. The uav did not include an external switch to include all artifact color choices / modes however.... but I wish it would have, the 800 had two different artifact results over time and the result was the software asking which you saw and swapped it. The XL's did another color, as did the XE line.. this resulted in some interesting discussion about artifacts, the reason and causes. You don't have a one size fits all solution but you could. The UAV was the only device that tried to handle all of it and it did a pretty good job. You can alter the machines to mimic each other to a degree. So yes this is as far as you are going to go without a soldering iron and physically changing stuff.

 

Just for fun, load up Jingle disk on all the different machines and let the story play...see what that looks like... include an XL in the mix

Edited February 20, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Krenath]

Look, I'm not looking for help trying to deal with the color change from my unmodified machine to the bizarro colors Faicuai insists are normal.

I'm looking for information I can use to restore my colors to the same colors I started with before this mod. In my mind, that would make the mod perfect.  It would then match the colors I already had before on that same machine and it would let my copy of the game match copies on every other 8-bit and 16-bit platform that it's available on.

I'd far rather put up with a blue/green horizon ball than alien trees.

Faicuai is perfectly free to keep his own color preference on his machine.

[Faicuai]

42 minutes ago, Krenath said:

Look, I'm not looking for help trying to deal with the color change from my unmodified machine to the bizarro colors Faicuai insists are normal.

(...)

Nothing tops the "bizarro" scale than purple/green or blue/green artifacts on Filght Sumulator Ii instruments (which is a landmark title, a real masterpiece).

 

Both my 1980 CTIA (Week-4) and 1983 GTIA 800s delivered it impeccably (as it should). Even Drol, Choplifter (1st version) and other titles will come right with such artifacts-phase rendition.

 

The rest is just cross-platform hysteria that does not really portray our own platform's origins, as well as how artifact-phase changed throughout production of the HW, nor how NTSC color-decode has changed during the commercial life of Atari's 8bt product line.

 

The bottom-line: we have a solid, starting point that we happen to know about, and cross-check with author's intent and (more importantly) physical reality. No better place to start from, and also to understand what may have happened (and how things may have evolved) along the way. 

 

Good luck with your holy-grail Ultima-III, cross-platform Artifacts-Reproduction quest!

Edited February 20, 2021 by Faicuai

[leech]

3 hours ago, Krenath said:

On all three machines I have, two 800s and a 130XE, the title and the trees are green and the water is blue.   It's always been that way.  
 

The above colors have always been the normal colors on my machines. 
 

if you look at screenshots of other types of machines, Apples, Commodores, Amigas, PCs, they all also have blue water and green trees.  Even the later adaptations for machines that had the luxury of more colors to choose from.

I have never seen an unmodified Atari before that had any artifact colors other than blue and green. 

 

I still don't see why I would want to change that.  
 

 

And certainly not just because one single game has one single control that might be that color on a different platform

 

It's much less believable that Ultima should be correct with alien colors on only Atari machines while every other platform has the same colors that my unmodified machines get than the idea that FSII users should have to deal with an artificial horizon ball that's not orange.  

 

 

Can you please share the images you are using for these?

When I originally played Ultima III on the 8bit, the water was red, never understood why back then.  I can only get all of my machines, including the 800 with SCCC to show like my screenshots at best, or the colirs flip if I change the pot the other way.

Edited February 20, 2021 by leech

[leech]

Well here's something fun.  I've tested multiple copies of Ultima III and IV on multiple systems.  800 with SCCC and Incognito, 800 Stock, and three different 800XLs (three different keyboards), and one of my 1200xls. 

Only the Stock 800 presents the correct colors, and that was only after fiddling with the POT so that the blue with white cursor became purple.  But the fun thing with that one is I tweaked it back and the correct colors remained, and the blue memo pad screen came back.  This may legit be due to the old girl needing some warm up time.  On that note, it sadly did something weird where it wouldn't turn on until I put it all back together, but when it did, it will no longer power the Fujinet by itself, or the SDrive Max   Will have to figure that one out later.  I've messed with the POT on two of the 800XLs and couldn't get the correct color mix.

 

@tf_hh

Curious, when you designed the SCCC (awesome card!) was there a particular design reason why you didn't put the POT for adjustment in the whole where the 800 has a spot for it already?  It was super convenient for messing with it without taking the whole thing apart again!