[HN Gopher] The Hall SC-VGA-2 Video Processor, the Atari ST and ...
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The Hall SC-VGA-2 Video Processor, the Atari ST and NeXTSTEP
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-11-29 22:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
| johnklos wrote:
| Oooh! I wonder if I can find one of those. I'd love a way to see
| _all_ of the Amiga screenmodes on a single display :)
| classichasclass wrote:
| I don't think it can scandouble - my A4000T with a Picasso RTG
| card uses the onboard doubler. But if the video mode is at
| least 60Hz, odds are this thing would probably support it.
| snvzz wrote:
| Look into the OSSC Pro.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| I'm surprised they dismissed the OSSC [1] so easily. It's not
| "just" for game consoles and arcade equipment. It has a VGA port
| on it for a reason!
|
| Admittedly I haven't used it for anything nearly as "esoteric" as
| some of the gear Cameron has I'd be surprised if he encountered
| any issues. Though being open source I'd suspect if he did he
| could simply fix them himself in the OSSC's firmware if needed!
|
| An OSSC will happily upscale any weird resolution/framerate you
| feed it to something modern HDMI devices can "understand". I use
| an "EVGA XR1 Lite" [2] to take the OSSC's HDMI output and feed it
| in over UVC to my laptop with USB-C. Works flawlessly and is
| _dirt cheap_
|
| If Cameron wants a bit more of an "all-in-one" solution, myself
| and other retro tech youtubers like Tech Tangents, RetroRGB and
| others use old Datapath RGB E1S cards [3]. This thing is
| basically just a DVI port glued to an FPGA. It doesn't care about
| "resolution" or "refresh rate" it just DMA's raw pixel data right
| into RAM and lets what ever application you point at it decipher
| it. Personally I think they're pretty awful (comparatively) to
| the above option. The driver is a binary blob (so it probably
| won't work on Cameron's POWER machine) and it crashes _a lot_
| both under Windows and Linux. Though it seems more agreeable
| under Windows for changing resolution and other settings via OBS
|
| [1] https://www.retrorgb.com/ossc.html
|
| [2] https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=141-U1-CB20-LR
|
| [3] https://www.datapathltd.com/datapath-products/video-
| capture-...
| classichasclass wrote:
| (author) Hey, thanks. I'm still sceptical about the OSSC for
| this application. It doesn't seem to _downsample_ from _higher_
| refresh rates, which is specifically what I picked up the Hall
| converter for (at least as far as I could tell from the wiki at
| https://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php?title=OSSC_Pro ).
| https://stoneagegamer.com/ossc-pro-open-source-scan-converte...
| just says "Common PC resolutions up to 1600x1200". The cost of
| a OSSC Pro unit makes me hesitant to try this out. If you're
| sure it can do it, though, I'll get my pennies together to give
| it a shot.
| snvzz wrote:
| With the OSSC, you'd have pixel perfect sampling.
|
| Rather than the mess (see wavy pattern on TOS background)
| that you have now.
|
| I use mine with Amiga (OCS, ECS, AGA), VGA and a Wii.
|
| OSSC Pro is costly, in good part due to cost of FPGA and
| other components used, but the simpler OSSC is typically
| under $100.
|
| OSSC Pro is able to buffer full frames, deinterlace and have
| different input and output timings, whereas OSSC operates
| with only a couple of lines of video data, thus is less
| flexible, but sufficient for most uses, with excellent low
| latency.
| classichasclass wrote:
| I've seen reports of success with the ST, but that's a
| 640x400 display at most (the lower resolutions run at lower
| rates anyway, which the OSSC seems to handle well). But
| what about higher resolutions or refresh rates? The issue
| with the HP was resampling a 1024x768 70/75Hz signal to
| 60Hz.
| snvzz wrote:
| The OSSC can sample even 1080p input signals.
|
| If you need wildly different timings for the output,
| you'll want the Pro, which unfortunately isn't cheap.
|
| As for "will it capture this weird mode?" general
| question, it will. It does have tremendous sampling
| flexibility. IMHO the main selling point of the OSSC.
| neonz80 wrote:
| I've been using the OSSC to upscale a 50 Hz RGB signal
| (SCART) to 1024x1024 (256 lines duplicated 4x). Both my
| HDMI capture cards happily accept that resolution with
| the right software.
|
| I haven't tried the OSSC Pro, but the Retrotink 4k should
| probably also work fine and is really easy to use. A bit
| on the expensive side though...
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| I haven't played with the "Pro" model (I think that's mostly
| for 4K upscale?) But I use the 'regular' OSSC to work with
| DOS and some PPC era Xserves and it absolutely handles them
| without a hitch
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