Crafty+Mech wrote:To keep this project simple in scope, my focus is 15k modes with a maximum horizontal resolution (including overscan) of 512 pixels.
Sorry to be late to the party, but do you have any plans of increasing this resolution? There are plenty of arcade (ST-V, ummm... Rampage, Popeye...) games, let alone console games that have horizontal resolutions of 640, 720 + overscan, which would be poorly downsampled at the lower setting your project handles.
In your testing, haven't you come across aliased graphics or background warping in 320-pixel res. games (for example) that scroll the screen one pixel at a time?
This project is a line doubler rather than an upscaler, so the horizontal resolution is simply doubled. So for instance a 320 wide input becomes 640 wide on the output. Because the scale factor is always 2:1, there will be no scrolling artifacts as a result of the conversion.
The scope of the project is 15k RGB input, so higher resolutions like 640 or 720 will not work at all. The pixel clock speed would not be sufficient to keep up with the data. I would need to completely upgrade the design, and enable multiple output resolutions to add support for 640+.
I'm willing to see how the GameCube's GBP looks with 480i-240p and then maybe exchange it for a one with 480i support when it comes around if I'm dissatisfied with how it looks and can't get NGC Component cables. Could you also maybe tell me if I could just get the early release and get a COMPONENT-CGA transcoder separately? I know I've asked you before, it's just an kind of urgent question.
man, what are you trying to achieve ? Your plans are like drilling through a 20 inch wall just to get through, when there's an open door right next to it.... There's a good chance that the Retron 5 will be better than a Cube with GB player anyway and if not, you're still better off by just getting a VGA cable for your Cube, add a MiniSLG or SLG3000 and be done with it. Working with 480i is *always* a bad idea when you have the possibility of getting native 480p - period.
Fudoh wrote:man, what are you trying to achieve ? Your plans are like drilling through a 20 inch wall just to get through, when there's an open door right next to it.... There's a good chance that the Retron 5 will be better than a Cube with GB player anyway and if not, you're still better off by just getting a VGA cable for your Cube, add a MiniSLG or SLG3000 and be done with it. Working with 480i is *always* a bad idea when you have the possibility of getting native 480p - period.
I'd agree with this at basically all times, except one. If you're splitting the 480i signal and sticking it into a real 15khz monitor, then... OK I guess. if not, get 480p and be done with it.
Fudoh wrote:you're right of course, but given that we're talking about a line doubler here in this thread, I guess native 480i on CRT wasn't his intention.
Absolutely. Although that is one of my intentions for this box. Should be fine for what I want though.
Fudoh wrote:man, what are you trying to achieve ? Your plans are like drilling through a 20 inch wall just to get through, when there's an open door right next to it.... There's a good chance that the Retron 5 will be better than a Cube with GB player anyway and if not, you're still better off by just getting a VGA cable for your Cube, add a MiniSLG or SLG3000 and be done with it. Working with 480i is *always* a bad idea when you have the possibility of getting native 480p - period.
Just merely seeing how it looks hooked up to the RetroPix is something that won't cost me at all, as I was going to get it anyway for little 240p upscaling, but I guess I could watch the prices of the Component cable for the GameBoy Player (as I went through a lot of trouble to get it working originally) and just adding a scanline generator to it seems like a lovely simple idea.
One thing though, I'm using a PAL GBP disc, and while you can probably force it with Swiss to 576p or 480p, will it still look lesser than the NTSC equivalent like the interlaced does?
Fudoh wrote:Good luck finding a VGA input that accepts 576p50.
Loewe 4:3 CRTs with the Q2400 chassis and VGA card installed can definitely do it. I pick up my 32" in a few days, and managed to snag probably the last VGA card for sale a few months back, so keep an eye out for any of these babies in the wild.
I can't wait to buy your line doubler Crafty+Mech - and I can't bring myself to spend $500 on an XRGB-3 in 2014...
My stupid question of the year, does it support classic games that switch between 240p and 480i on the fly?
As for on the fly switching, if I do add 480i support it will be a dip switch configured mode, rather than the auto-detect needed for the situation you describe.
Some games switch rapidly for special effects. In some scenes, they immediately go from 240p, to 480i, then back to 240p. Here's a real quick example: Chrono Trigger does this during some of its special effects (ie; the scene where Lavos comes out of the ground, and starts raining down fire and brimstone on the world. On the XRGB-3, this scene causes the XRGB-3 to loose its signal for 3 seconds, whereas on a CRT, there is no loss of signal.
Sorry to go OT, but I'm really curious about this on-the-fly switching that some games took advantage of. Assuming there is no change to Crafty+Mech's board - would it be feasible for an external board to pass through the 15kHz RGB signal to the RetroPix, and if it detects one of these 240p-480i-240p switches it could send a signal to the board to switch mode for that frame? I guess that would require a 1 frame buffer?
I'm mostly just curious if it's possible - but it could be a fun project in itself! Sorry to go OT, really looking forward to this either way!
niall wrote:Sorry to go OT, but I'm really curious about this on-the-fly switching that some games took advantage of. Assuming there is no change to Crafty+Mech's board - would it be feasible for an external board to pass through the 15kHz RGB signal to the RetroPix, and if it detects one of these 240p-480i-240p switches it could send a signal to the board to switch mode for that frame? I guess that would require a 1 frame buffer?
I'm mostly just curious if it's possible - but it could be a fun project in itself! Sorry to go OT, really looking forward to this either way!
Hm, that's a curious idea. Splitting the input signal so that some logic separate from the upscaler can detect the switch and signal the upscaler to change modes, even if a frame late...
Also I wonder CRTs and games did it for the full frame, or if they started drawing 480i lines part of the way through the 240p frame...? I'll dig out Chrono Trigger this weekend and see if I can witness it first hand. I managed to pick up an as-new almost-unused KV-2900 29" Trinitron from the late 80s, but I'm more looking forward to feeding my 32" Loewe with 50/60Hz capable VGA input (bypassing all of Loewe's atrocious 100Hz processing)
Crafty+Mech wrote:in addition to the standard 6 pin header (RGBs, RGBhv). I'm also planning on providing a 15pin dsub (VGA style connector) for input as well. So between those three connectors, that should pretty much cover getting input into the board from various RGB sources.
Will the DSUB take RGBS or only the 6 pin header? I noticed the Extrons can take RGBS over DSUB but I haven't found a standard pin-out anywhere. Or can someone recommend an RGBS to RGBHV converter, preferably homebrew from the community here?
The DSUB will take RGBs as well, you'll just need to hook the composite sync link up to the H pin (same way that RGBs would be hooked up to the 6pin header).
There is no target date at the moment. Users of my mini SLG know that I highly value quality and compatibility, so the work continues at a slower pace. There are still issues I am not satisfied with, and I recently moved the design to a CPLD implementation to cut down on the board size and number of logic chips.
Generally the prototype I have running works great for some sources, and not at all for others. There is also the issue of color depth (16 vs. 24bit). There are random issues that only pop up sometimes. The design is at its core simple, but the variety of 15k signals makes the architecture more complicated.
The BitBlitz won't meet everyone's needs, and I've decided I'm ok with that. My focus is a board that is a) easy to support, b) has a good range of compatibility, and c) be inexpensive to manufacture and therefor sell at a reasonable cost (i.e not hundreds of dollars).
I'll update this thread again when I am nearing release with the specifics of the board, and a compatibility list where it is known to work very well. I'll be honest I'm not much of a long term planner, I prefer to hit the ground running and evolve over time with multiple releases.
Crafty+Mech wrote:There is no target date at the moment. Users of my mini SLG know that I highly value quality and compatibility, so the work continues at a slower pace. There are still issues I am not satisfied with, and I recently moved the design to a CPLD implementation to cut down on the board size and number of logic chips.
Generally the prototype I have running works great for some sources, and not at all for others. There is also the issue of color depth (16 vs. 24bit). There are random issues that only pop up sometimes. The design is at its core simple, but the variety of 15k signals makes the architecture more complicated.
The BitBlitz won't meet everyone's needs, and I've decided I'm ok with that. My focus is a board that is a) easy to support, b) has a good range of compatibility, and c) be inexpensive to manufacture and therefor sell at a reasonable cost (i.e not hundreds of dollars).
I'll update this thread again when I am nearing release with the specifics of the board, and a compatibility list where it is known to work very well. I'll be honest I'm not much of a long term planner, I prefer to hit the ground running and evolve over time with multiple releases.
Thanks for everyone's interest!
As long as it works with PS1, and maybe PS2 & Wii 240p if YUV support drops.
In my case , I will wait patiently. As much as I'd like it to be released, I know these projects can take more time than originally planned. So, for me, "it will be finished when it is finished". I would like a simple 15khz RGB to VGA linedoubler, as compatible as possible, with zero or near zero lag. I have the MiniSLG, a nice piece, so I will wait for CraftyMech's specs on the BitBlitz to see how this turn out.
cjug wrote:In my case , I will wait patiently. As much as I'd like it to be released, I know these projects can take more time than originally planned. So, for me, "it will be finished when it is finished". I would like a simple 15khz RGB to VGA linedoubler, as compatible as possible, with zero or near zero lag. I have the MiniSLG, a nice piece, so I will wait for CraftyMech's specs on the BitBlitz to see how this turn out.
Sorry for going off-topic, but I figured you would have an idea if this is feasible: is it possible to have an in-line device take a given input (say, 1280x720), then output it at a given output resolution (1366x768) unaltered except with black space around the edges, so that 1:1 pixel mapping can be achieved on a display that cannot provide it? Would doing so introduce any lag?
