Sophia 2 - improved GTIA replacement

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

I just installed a Sophia board into my 1200XL. Some observations.

 

First, it was very, very difficult to install the board into the GTIA socket. It seems the socket is super tight! Maybe it is a "precision" socket with smaller holes for the pins. I had to press down with a bit of force to even gently get the Sophia installed.

 

Second, my 1200XL has the UAV Rev D mod installed and the Sophia works fine. No need to remove the UAV.

 

Third, the color rendering in the Sophia is very different than what I am used to seeing through the UAV Rev D and my S-Video connection. This is not a complaint.  I think this could be the difference between analog and digital rendering. Maybe I am now seeing true-true-true colors and I am not used to them. I need to some A/B comparison between my two inputs.

 

Fourth, the color/saturation trim pot doesn't affect the colors.

 

I am attaching some photos of my TV screen showing a demo screen.

 

 

 

The Sophia is almost a life-changing product for me! Now I am not limited to "TV sets". A whole world of "monitors" is now open to me. 

 

@Simius Thanks for making this available to the Atari community!  

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

Oh, and I wanted to ask how are people modifying their case to accommodate the DVI connector? Are you using a knockout/punch to cleanly cut the plastic?

[Faicuai]

26 minutes ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

 

 

 

The Sophia is almost a life-changing product for me! Now I am not limited to "TV sets". A whole world of "monitors" is now open to me. 

 

@Simius Thanks for making this available to the Atari community!  

There's something unusual on that ACP color-map capture (not sure if it is induced by your capture device / camera, though).

 

First, notice that hue-band $00 should be, in reality, a fully neutral gray-ramp in 16 increasing steps... yours shows a strange yellowish/greenish tone on the first 10 steps... there should not be any color there, other than GRAY.

 

Second, on hue-band $A0, you see about fours steps in dark GREEN and then jumping to purplish-blue still on the same hue-band... that is odd, as well.

 

While something is definitely off on that ACP color-table, I do agree that Sophia-2 pretty much re-defines the entire user-experience with the A8-bit line.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Faicuai

[Mazzspeed]

3 hours ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

I just installed a Sophia board into my 1200XL. Some observations.

 

First, it was very, very difficult to install the board into the GTIA socket. It seems the socket is super tight! Maybe it is a "precision" socket with smaller holes for the pins. I had to press down with a bit of force to even gently get the Sophia installed.

 

Second, my 1200XL has the UAV Rev D mod installed and the Sophia works fine. No need to remove the UAV.

 

Third, the color rendering in the Sophia is very different than what I am used to seeing through the UAV Rev D and my S-Video connection. This is not a complaint.  I think this could be the difference between analog and digital rendering. Maybe I am now seeing true-true-true colors and I am not used to them. I need to some A/B comparison between my two inputs.

 

Fourth, the color/saturation trim pot doesn't affect the colors.

 

I am attaching some photos of my TV screen showing a demo screen.

 

 

 

The Sophia is almost a life-changing product for me! Now I am not limited to "TV sets". A whole world of "monitors" is now open to me. 

 

@Simius Thanks for making this available to the Atari community!  

Can I ask, where would I download that 'Atari Control Picture' software from?

[Faicuai]

7 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

Can I ask, where would I download that 'Atari Control Picture' software from?

You already have it on the 16 MB .ATR 

 

If you boot from it, just type "-ACP" . If not, go to \TOOLS\VIDEO\ and plenty of stuff there besides it.

[Mazzspeed]

11 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

You already have it on the 16 MB .ATR 

 

If you boot from it, just type "-ACP" . If not, go to \TOOLS\VIDEO\ and plenty of stuff there besides it.

Cheers Faicuai, I'm slowly working through the image you gave me, some interesting batch files in there.

 

My ACP image looks nothing like the one above (PAL 600XL via svideo):

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

2 hours ago, Faicuai said:

There's something unusual on that ACP color-map capture (not sure if it is induced by your capture device / camera, though).

 

First, notice that hue-band $00 should be, in reality, a fully neutral gray-ramp in 16 increasing steps... yours shows a strange yellowish/greenish tone on the first 10 steps... there should not be any color there, other than GRAY.

 

Second, on hue-band $A0, you see about fours steps in dark GREEN and then jumping to purplish-blue still on the same hue-band... that is odd, as well.

 

While something is definitely off on that ACP color-table, I do agree that Sophia-2 pretty much re-defines the entire user-experience with the A8-bit line.

@Faicuai Good eye!  Yes, that photograph does look wonky. It was made by an iPhone 12 Mini and I think the camera is trying to play some tricks with slow shutter speeds, multiple stacked exposures to reduce noise, night mode, and auto white balance. The result of all those digital magic tricks is bad color rendition.  My phone renders a different photograph each time I press the shutter button. Now my phone gave me this photogragh.

 

 

?

 

To address your comment, I can confirm my 0 band (top row) does show a grey scale gradient in 16 steps.

 

The A band starts with a dark blue and goes to a light green-blue before going to emerald-ish and ending at something like cyan-ish?

 

The B bands starts at dark green and increases brightness/color/luminosity to almost like a green-turquoise before stopping at a green-cyan.

 

It's really hard to describe these colors and the wonky iPhone photos only make it worse.

 

The RGB in the upper right hand corner there is actually orange-ish, green/blue, and light purple. 

[Mclaneinc]

Yes, these mobile phone camera's are flaky at best, mine shows an extended depth of field and the colours are just washed out...I so wish I'd not sold my real camera..

[Rybags]

Surprised Apple would let something like that through though some have "warm", "sepia" etc modes but it's reasonable to assume the default should be no effects.

 

One thing most phone cameras are good at is for testing IR remotes - they pick up and register the infrared as white.

[Mazzspeed]

Mine was taken with a phone camera and as far as I can tell seems pretty accurate. Not Apple though, Android all the way!

[Calab]

9 hours ago, Faicuai said:

You already have it on the 16 MB .ATR 

 

If you boot from it, just type "-ACP" . If not, go to \TOOLS\VIDEO\ and plenty of stuff there besides it.

Am I missing something here? Where does one acquire this 16 MB .ATR?

[Faicuai]

11 hours ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

It's really hard to describe these colors and the wonky iPhone photos only make it worse

 

Yours and Mazz's latest captures are pretty much what you would expect to see on an ACP color-table.

 

Today, Apple is world's computational-photography capital, providing you with a concocted sort of digital-to-digital tools that could do wonders for your images... but badly creep and get in the middle of your way, really easily... Just like alcohol, take a little too much and watch how the world around you quickly warps...

 

That´s why I keep most auto-stuff OFF except HDR, which usually works well. Here's mine, from iPhone:

 

 

It is pretty much spot on on most counts, except the obvious boost in saturation. which is evidenced by loss of tonal/hue separation of A, C and P initials, in title (these have distinctive hues, clearly visible on DVI rendition from Sophia, with naked eyes).

 

FYI, there are TWO main problems with Sophia's built-in Color Table. I will go into them a bit later here but, fortunately, they can be addressed with its user-defined color-maps facilitiy.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Faicuai

[Faicuai]

2 hours ago, Calab said:

Am I missing something here? Where does one acquire this 16 MB .ATR?

 

Its a prior thread. For the sake of expediency, here's the download link (but you should check the whole thread, as it is quite relevant)

 

 

 

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

My Sophia installation seems to work without any tweaking of the board's settings through SCONF.XEX ... but I am curious to know more about the settings.

 

I understand resolution. It's pretty obvious.  Mine is set to 720x480p and it works with my plasma TV. I get a stretched 16:9 screen. Can one of those settings make a 4:3 screen? Or, is the stretching more from my TV than the Sophia?

 

How about those "Special Features"? It looks like I can set my analog output to RGB (SCART?), Component, or VGA. Mine is set to RGB but I am also not using any of the analog features. Does the analog output enable something special that would be missing from the digital DVI output? I understand the sync options change with the output selection. The next three sound like something I should recognize but I will admit I don't. They are set to "off".

 

The bottom half allows configuration of registers. I remember seeing something about that in the PDF and I am leaving those alone.

 

Suppose I set something and lose my picture. Is there a way to clear the settings or reset them to default?

 

(sorry if all this was discussed and I missed it!)

[Rybags]

Aspect ratio correction will likely need to be set at the TV or monitor.

 

Analog output gives no advantage, just as with modern computers the signal quality is inferior to digital but given we're doing a pretty low res you'd not notice a huge difference.

RGB mode is for traditional VGA type displays, YUV is for component video input on TVs.

Other settings can enhance the default 320 mode graphics and overall colour palette, such as allowing use of bit 0 in all modes for 256 instead of 128 colours in the palette and allowing totally independent PF1 and PF2 colours in 320 modes instead of them being the same colour and independent luma.

 

[Simius]

There is no reset to default but you don’t have to be affraid. You will always have an image on the standard monitor output. 

[Rybags]

Yep, and in theory it'd be pretty easy to remember the blind key sequence to get out of trouble.

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

59 minutes ago, Simius said:

There is no reset to default but you don’t have to be affraid. You will always have an image on the standard monitor output. 

@Simius Ahh, this saved me. I experimented with different resolutions and my TV turned black at every setting except the default 720x480! Thankfully I could always revert back. Then I attached one of my modern HD monitors and it can work with any resolution. That monitor has a setting to “compress” the image into a 4:3 ratio. The image on the monitor was even more bright, more vivid, and even more sharp than what my TV shows. Outstanding! Simply outstanding!  
 

I was once very excited about finding my TV at my local thrift store. It has 3 S-Video inputs, 2 Component inputs, and 2 HDMI inputs. That seemed to make it an almost perfect screen for my Atari “laboratory” and beyond. Now with Sophia all those analog inputs can be brushed aside. I truly hope Sophia becomes a de facto video standard that is as readily available as the UAV Rev D modification is today. 

 

I still have to figure out how to mount the DVI connector board. The massive heatsink in the 1200Xl covers so much valuable space and I’d rather not remove the RF modulator. What is the name of the cable connecting Sophia to the DVI board? Is that something standard which can be ordered in different lengths?

[Simius]

2 hours ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

I still have to figure out how to mount the DVI connector board. The massive heatsink in the 1200Xl covers so much valuable space and I’d rather not remove the RF modulator. What is the name of the cable connecting Sophia to the DVI board? Is that something standard which can be ordered in different lengths?

 

Yes, it is.

For instance

150mm - https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/2205109-2/5761907

200mm - https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/2205066-3/5423520

250mm - https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/1483356-3/6042600

 

[Mclaneinc]

And finally my DVI solder connector arrived from China, time to see what RGB looks like on it......CRT all the way here, the HDMI pic is great but I hate LCD / LED TV's for stuff like this..

[Rybags]

Threw out my last modern CRT monitor years ago - just take up too much space.

Though I've still got 4 CRT devices - 14" TV, ST and Amiga monitors and a little 4" combo TV/radio.

[Mclaneinc]

The CRT's I have are a Amiga 1081,  a Philips 8852 and a Philips 8833 mk2 (no scart), basically the things I grew up playing on and they still feel right, especially with any shooters. Watching emulated Snes stuff on my Samsung HDMI monitor just feels wrong, there's a definite shimmy on the picture which just makes fast moving games look a bit odd. Can't afford those super fast switching transistor ones (silly money).

 

Can't wait to see the picture on the RGB Atari..

[Rybags]

Shimmy in an emulated picture would be either/both mismatch of frame rate or wait for VSync turned off.

But even with mismatched framerates most emulators can give a smooth pic these days.

[Calab]

6 hours ago, 1200XL M.U.L.E. said:

I still have to figure out how to mount the DVI connector board. The massive heatsink in the 1200Xl covers so much valuable space and I’d rather not remove the RF modulator. What is the name of the cable connecting Sophia to the DVI board? Is that something standard which can be ordered in different lengths?

 

What I've decided to do is use a drill bit the same size as my DVI cable and cut a small notch at the back of the case in the top cover. That way I can make the DVI connection inside the computer, insulate it from the rest of the electronics, and feed the cable out the back of the machine. Just need to be sure that the cable will be long enough to reach the monitor. 

 

I've ordered a DVI cable that is narrow to minimize the size of notch that I will need, and it should fit around the heatsink.

As much as I hate to mod the case, it's the least intrusive way of setting it up in my 1200XL. 

 

I thought about hanging the supplied cable out the back of the case, but when the Sophia2 arrived the cable is just a little too short.

[Calab]

Does anyone have the Sophia2 configuration program on a diskette image that I could download?

 

I have the EXE, but no way to move it from my Windows PC to my Atari as I only have a FujiNet. I don't see any way to move files into ATR images on my Windows PC, or using the FujiNet.

 

(which reminds me that I need to update my Fuji firmware)