Best RGB mod?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

1 hour ago, grips03 said:

Did the person say what game they had an issue with?

They did not. Their only comment was that they were having issues with it on their PVM with the sync being all out of whack about 1/5 of the screen. I assume they are talking about the odd skewing that is present even in RGB on everything I've used that is visible on the upper portion of the display but I've never seen that skewing of the video actually show up in game play sections themselves. Just on title screens and other parts that are in the overscan area.

 

[walldog1]

On 11/23/2021 at 11:17 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

 

I noticed that Chips U13 & U16 are removed in your picture. Is that just a demo board or were they removed on purpose for the modification?

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

1 hour ago, walldog1 said:

I noticed that Chips U13 & U16 are removed in your picture. Is that just a demo board or were they removed on purpose for the modification?

 

Yes, it is just a demo of how it would look in place. None of that is even soldered down in that pic. This is one of several parts donor boards I have on hand.

 

[leonk]

I'm glad to see so much RGB love given to the Intellivision! I only have knowledge of the Fred Kono kit, as that's what I used to install a few years ago (I actually have 1 spare kit in my parts bin).  The install worked great on Intellivision 1 and 2 and never had an issue either on my PVM-20L2 or XRGB-mini (see attachement of how it looks on my LCD TV using XRGB below)

 

I am interested to find out how it compares to either the 2 new kits that are currently available.  Has anyone done real side by side testing? Or at the very least compare color of RF output vs RGB output? I'm also interested to see if someone did a test of the output on an oscilloscope to confirm RGB is 0.7Vpp and CSync is 0.3Vpp.

 

[leonk]

For those wondering, Fred Kono’s Intellivision RGB amp looks like this. It uses the Xilinx XC9536XL CPLD at its core.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

22 hours ago, leonk said:

I'm glad to see so much RGB love given to the Intellivision! I only have knowledge of the Fred Kono kit, as that's what I used to install a few years ago (I actually have 1 spare kit in my parts bin).  The install worked great on Intellivision 1 and 2 and never had an issue either on my PVM-20L2 or XRGB-mini (see attachement of how it looks on my LCD TV using XRGB below)

 

I am interested to find out how it compares to either the 2 new kits that are currently available.  Has anyone done real side by side testing? Or at the very least compare color of RF output vs RGB output? I'm also interested to see if someone did a test of the output on an oscilloscope to confirm RGB is 0.7Vpp and CSync is 0.3Vpp.

 

 

Yes, I have and Fred's RGB mod sucks. ? I have one too (same as the one you've shown), which I used for years, until the Crayola Rgb mod came along.. It totally blows Fred's out the water, so I uninstalled it and swapped in the Crayola mod instead. I now have one installed in both my model II and model 1/Sears console got much, much better results from it. I'm very pleased with it.. It's the end all, be all solution for my setup.

 

The Crayola mod has cleaner picture, more accurate colors (2 different switchable color pallette options), wider compatibility (compatible with pretty much every upscaler on the market, w/ the OSSC being the biggest win - at least for me, personally), more output options (besides the obvious Scart RGB, it does component/YUV and will do S-video, etc with his expansion board), it's far cheaper, more readily available, smaller, etc. The list goes on.

 

I don't have a scope, so I'm sure as far as that goes, but see this thread here, as it should answer all your questions and then some. I highly recommend swapping out Fred's for this one or the Yannick RGB mod, which is pretty much neck & neck with Crayola's. ?

 

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/311814-rgbypbpr-intellivision-thoughts/

Edited December 9, 2021 by SiLic0ne t0aD

[leonk]

Thanks for the feedback.  I'm surprised that you found Fred's RGB to not be as clean; I find it to be on par with NESRGB, 2600RGB, etc. on my PVM and XRGB Mini. Maybe it wasn't installed correctly? (e.g. using Genesis 2 SCART cables with the caps/resistors inside that need to be removed)  I'd love to see screen shot comparisons between all 3.

 

(Put on your conspiracy theory hat on for the next part; this is all wild speculation on my behalf):

• Crayola King has been around for a long time. He's been doing installs and mods for many different consoles.  That being said, I do recall watching YT videos that criticize his workmanship and overall install quality (Google "Voultar Crayola King" to see what I mean)
• The only recent discussion I saw (on the OSSC forum) talking about what the issue with OSSC and Intellivision is and how to fix it was between Marqs (OSSC developer) and Fred. They seem to understand the issue and how to fix it.
• I find it interesting Crayola's RGB amp looks like an updated version of Fred's RGB amp.  It uses the same CPLD and now includes extra glue logic to recreate the missing hsync pulses before/during/after vsync blanking.  Hence fixing OSSC support.

 

TLTR; based on visual inspection, I believe the Crayola King RGB kit to be of high quality and should work great.  If you don't care about OSSC support (because you use XRGB, RetroTink 5X or waiting for OSSC Pro) than Fred's original RGB amp should give similar results.

 

Thoughts?

Edited December 9, 2021 by leonk

[the_crayon_king]

@leonk Fred's mod and mine are more different than they are similar. The CPLD being the same is pure coincidence. 

If you narrow a search on TTL compatible, hand solderable, cheap, CPLDs you will probably only find a few (no I mean like 2 or 3 not hyperbole).

Also keep in mind my mod was never designed specifically for the Intellivision. 

 

His proposed fix is also just an idea., not the code. The gist is "using a counter to retime sync" which is just what you have to do; not some completed solution.

On review of his potential solution I can conclude my existing solution does not really match what he is talking about doing anyway (other than needing a counter). Honestly, if anyone else figures out exactly what I am doing they will probably laugh because of how weird it is. 

I had to do a lot of band-aid stuff to make it fit. The issue wasn't just how to make a fix. It was how to make a fix that will fit on a CPLD. Someone with a FPGA will have a much easier time of it.

 

If you follow the thread "Intellivision Thoughts" start to finish it is pretty clear I brute forced a fix. I had a lot of help in error testing from the community but much to my chagrin I wasn't handed a solution

 

In the future if you have some conspiracy involving my mod kits you can just ask me. I leave info out of my post for brevity; but I would not mind at all talking in detail about how I arrived at "X" or why I chose "X" over "Z" etc. Everything I do has a reason it just takes a lot of word salad to explain and I try to save people from reading through that. 

Edited December 29, 2021 by the_crayon_king

[walldog1]

I am about ready to retry Modding an 2609 with the "Orange Peel" by Crayon King. My last Mod was 4 years ago from Retrofix and I was disappointed with the results. So I stuck to stock rebuilds for the majority of the time.

 

With all the different posts and thread comments I have been reading the last couple of months, I am using the latest RGB Mod from Crayon King, and it is  the best recommended for picture quality results. I would like to only offer the RGB 8 Pin DIN output for future Mods, using existing opening for the RF RCA Jack. My current customer wants both Composite and RGB, so a little more work and case modification.

 

The Hz output was explained in a recent post "testing the AY-3-8915". I found it interesting. It is about 14.4Khz which is why most OSSC's have a 15Khz input requirement.

 

I will post my results when finished in a couple of weeks. I can't find a video on this Mod Kit, but with some explanations from Crayon King & <CrossBow>, I am excited to finish figuring it all out. The visual results will be the most exciting! I plan to keep the Black case half attached, I will just have to make a notch for wiring coming from other side of LB, and for the outputs where the RF empty case will be used for the composite and the RGB output.

[+BBWW]

I need to get one of my Sears RGB'd. I just know I no longer have the patience to do it myself. LOL

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

10 hours ago, BBWW said:

I need to get one of my Sears RGB'd. I just know I no longer have the patience to do it myself. LOL

 

Seems to be the most popular model I receive in for work. I can't disagree, it is nice having removable controllers and an Intellivision that looks like an Intellivision but also looks different enough to really stand out from the rest.

 

[walldog1]

In a different topic thread, I mentioned my disappointment in the fact that I could have got a really good condition Sears for $77 but I didn't know they are worth more until just after the auction?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

1 hour ago, walldog1 said:

In a different topic thread, I mentioned my disappointment in the fact that I could have got a really good condition Sears for $77 but I didn't know they are worth more until just after the auction?

Mine I picked up for a crazy cheap price about 20 years ago for $2 at the local thrift store. It did have the controllers but it didn't work. So I ended up swapping the mainboard with another standard 2609 model that had been given to me within days of picking this up. It wasn't until this summer that I finally put an actual Sears mainboard set into my Sears version making it an actual full Sears version of the system again. It is the ugly duckling of my consoles it is my daily driver Intellivision as well. Probably my favorite looking one is the darker and more woodgrain look of the Tandyvision.

 

But to get back on topic, at this time Crayon's RGB boards are the best overall solution having installed a few of them now. Even if my clients don't want the RGB and only want composite or s-video, I'm going to be using Crayon's boards because for the current value, it is the best solution currently.