GBS 8200/8220 CFW Project

[NoAffinity]

NoAffinity:
You have an intermittent connection on the I2C bus. When the LED goes out, an I2C packet error occured and the devices are out of sync.
That's why a restart may fix it, but it often needs a full power cycle.
In any case, check your wiring (grounding, too!).

(The LwIP setting has nothing to do with this.)

Thank you @rama!

I had a lot of variables going on, didn't know what could be a cause - arduino update, board update, seeing new options in the Tools pull-down...

But, you pointed me in the right direction. Turns out it was the debug pin connection. I reflowed that thing at least 3 times throughout the day today. And my best guess is the small jumper that I made by extracting a pin from one of the headers provided with the esp, and soldering that to the debug pin so I'd have a larger solder point, that pin must've been a poor conductor. I ran a fresh wire and soldered the wire directly to the gbs qfp debug pin, and problem solved.

[rememberizer]

^Av-driver by vile tim is a good cost effective solution for splitting jamma rgbs and audio.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

That looks like a great product! Unfortunately I'm in the Philippines and Quarantine is in full effect. I was hoping to build a splitter myself.

[NoAffinity]

Sadly, my problem above has persisted. I was testing all last night and all morning, and I believe the issue is isolated to the 720p and 1080p profiles. I have re-wired these boards 10 ways from Tuesday. I've tried feeding 3.3V into the ESP, tapping power, ground and signals at various alternate locations, re-flowed connections too many times to be reasonable. I'm happily playing away, no problems with the output and controlling the board on any profile other than 720p or 1080p, including downscaling and pass-thru. As soon as I switch to either the 720p or the 1080p profile, I lose communication with the board, and within a few seconds, the ESP light goes off. After cycling power, since it will default to the 1080p profile from that point forward, it fails almost immediately. If I re-flash the GBS, it works again until choosing the 720p or 1080p profile. I have tried firmware versions which I have saved on my computer, with the dates that I downloaded them being: 04-28-2020, 03-14-2020, 02-29-2020, 01-29-2020.

Pictures of my bodge work can be found below. I'm really hoping I'm just doing something dumb with the connections, or overlooking something that I'm just taking for granted.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nDwkzX ... sp=sharing

:edit: here we go, I finally signed up for a image hosting site:

Spoiler

[rama]

I guess the wires are fine.
You can try adding one more (short) ground wire to the ESP board.
Also try adding ~100uF on the ESP board 3.3V line for local storage.

The behaviour of the light going out indicates a software malfunction, most typically due to lost I2C comms.

[Gollot]

What would be the main benefit of adding a clock generator?

[kitty666cats]

What would be the main benefit of adding a clock generator?

480i/240p transitions

[Gollot]

What would be the main benefit of adding a clock generator?

480i/240p transitions

Thanks for the reply, is hard to install? I haven't found much info about it.

[rama]

Ehr, the transitions should be fine either way. Maybe the routine for the clock generator is smoother though.
The main benefit is the removal of the horizontal "tear bar" that otherwise occurs at times.

[Syntax]

Finally got around to installing the external clock

I cut the clock pad in half to fit the capacitor, I freak out installing SMD floating off pads.

[NoAffinity]

Finally got around to installing the external clock

I cut the clock pad in half to fit the capacitor, I freak out installing SMD floating off pads.

Very clean setup!

Are you using regular wire for the clock gen to the tvia?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[Syntax]

Thanks, this is my dusty test bench GBS

Yes just 30AWG single strand wire. Shouldn't make a difference.

[maxtherabbit]

nice clean soldering, but muh heat dissipation

[captaineos]

I am now proud to promote the GBSControl custom firmware, that runs via Arudino to the cheap GBS8200 arcade scaler boards.

Using a custom cable and a days worth of tinkering, one can go much further in quality than the Extron. GBSControl is ultra-low latency at less than 3 measured frames of lag which means mouse movement is as smooth as CRT. The scanlines filter does an awesome job of correctly overlaying scanlines while handling the IIGS dither well.

I am not able to offer technical support as this project is fiddly and does require aptitude for following open source guides and forum posts to get right. Thankfully I have not used any special settings on the GBSControl web interface to achieve this wonderful video output.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK-fpTGQoW0

The Apple IIGS is one of the hardest to get right and I present my best case scenario, not perfection. Enthusiasts of this computer have suffered through cheap RGB SCART to HDMI converters touted as a great idea. Never again.

[NoAffinity]

nice clean soldering, but muh heat dissipation

The heat sink doesn't get much warmer with the clock board mounted on top of it than it does in free air. It's warm to the touch, but not too warm to be concerning.

[rama]

Thanks for the praises, captaineos.
I agree, the picture looks pleasing to the eye. Definitely worked out well for the old Apple

maxtherabbit:
Yeah, heat from the scaler IC isn't really a concern.
I mean, I had it running without heatsink and it was fine.

Syntax:
It's a nice install, have to say

[Syntax]

Thanks Rama. It's nice to finally be rid of the rolling horizontal tear.

If I could move the debug pin from D0 to D3 it would be neater, and I figured out an easy way to fit both boards to the bottom of the gbs.

[tiochico27]

I would like to share my "gbs-control build".







Thank you rama for the gbs-control project.

[hellbelly]

That’s extremely neat - I like it, how’s the WiFi signal?

Pete

[tiochico27]

That’s extremely neat - I like it, how’s the WiFi signal?
Pete

Thanks Pete.

WiFi are perfect, i didn't see any problems.

[West]

Hey Shmups and GBS Control users.

I've been looking for a 480i to 240p downscale solution for my Xbox360 and PS2 to connect to a Viletim 2.0 and then to Jamma on my 15khz Egret2.

Been glancing at this thread for awhile but it really got me excited when 240p downscaling came into play. Bought the hardware, installed the software and put the build together. I'm using the GBS 8200 "2017" variant with the yellow buttons (https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-contro ... 0-Variants). Hardware mods seemed smooth and got the software running on a ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA CP2102 ESP-12E board.

I went to test everything out last night and had a few issues that I was wondering if anyone else encountered.

I connected my Xbox360 to the GBS8200 through VGA, then took the output from VGA to SCART using a cable from Ebay (https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-METRES-SCART ... SwxcRW-RbB). These cables have some shifty reviews so it might be the cable is jacked.

Then I ran the VGA to SCART cable into the Viletim, and then jamma into my E2. I powered the GBS and Arduino board off the Jamma edge. Everything seems to be powered correctly and I can access the GBS control WEBGUI without problem. However when I select the 240p preset, all I get is some very shakey colored lines, mostly black really. And it's totally black with pass through selected.

Anyone try and run this type of setup in general? 480i Console to GBS for 240p downscaling then to 15khz Jamma?

Thanks for any help anyone can give. And huge props to Rama for putting this thing together.

[NoAffinity]

Vga downscaling doesnt seem to be stable. I tried xbox360 and dreamcast last weekend, same result with both. The image is there but shifted, flashing, colored lines and borders obscuring the image. Best way i can describe it...wasnt great. Tried it on a trinitron and rescaling through an ossc. Same result all around. Confident its the gbs output that just isnt right.

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[rama]

Yeah, VGA with separate sync is hard to control or scale down.
It would probably work if the H+V syncs were combined to CSync.

Syntax: You can try redefining the debug pin number to any GPIO that's free and that you prefer.
I don't remember whether I use anything hardcoded though. You'll have to try it.
If auto htotal adjust (on a preset / input change) works, it was successful.

[West]

Argh, that's a drag.

I was really hoping this would be a solid alternative to the UVC/Extron/Genius2 downscaling solutions, all of which are either expensive or hard to find. If there's any way to add this kind of functionality down the line I'm sure a number of people would be interested in using GBS Control as part of a 480i/p to 240p downscaling solution for consoles (XB360, Dreamcast, PS2, etc) to Jamma.

Nonetheless, props to you Rama and all the people in this thread who shared the knowledge and helped develop this very cool project.

[Kez]

Perhaps try it with component or convert the RGBHV to RGBS somehow. It's not that the downscaling doesn't work at all but your chosen signal is problematic.. Far from insurmountable.

[West]

Yeah, maybe just going component will sort it out. Or getting an Extron RGB module in the mix (which I was hoping not to do) but might have to.

[NoAffinity]

Perhaps try it with component or convert the RGBHV to RGBS somehow. It's not that the downscaling doesn't work at all but your chosen signal is problematic.. Far from insurmountable.

Ha, hadn't thought of that. Thinking my VGA->YPbPr transcoder might help here. Reporting back shortly.

[West]

Indeed. PS2 vga cables are rare and expensive. Maybe component is the way to go.

[NoAffinity]

Got a solution going with a bit of reconfiguration. Admittedly i did component output on my one board wired with the extra resistor. DC -> 240p. Dc vga to a vga-to-ypbpr transcoder to gbs to ypbpr output. The result was equal or worse. No weird borders or color bands or flashing but the image was very jumpy.

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[kitty666cats]

Sounds like something an Extron RGB interface could definitely sort out, I'd try turning RGBHV into RGBS and using DDSP

[kitty666cats]

If I'm feeling like putzing around and displaying PlayStation 4 in 240p on a JVC TM-H150CG, would it (for some reason) be more ideal to run a 480i RGBS image via a scan converter into the GBS versus, say, 480p output via a Portta HDMI to VGA?