Santa's come early... A new scandoubler from Individual Computers

[mfilos]

Originally Posted by Charlie

@mfilos: Very nice!

Quick question:
It looks like your rather nice A1200 is still in it's desktop case...
...how on earth did you get it back together again once you'd added the socket-risers for your FastATA?

Having done the same thing there just wasn't sufficient room to get the keyboard back down...
...so I went & got a PowerFlyer Express

Tbh I haven't even closed the upper case yet but I'm in the proccess of cutting a piece of the metal keyboard back in order for the lower Kickstart to be able to fit (Putting insulation inside keyboard ofc). It really requires a little bit of hackery for the keyboard to sit down as intended but is very doable. I will submit full pr0n photos after the whole hackery (for Zetr0's sake also lol) but just submited these pics since the topic was relevant

Cheers

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by gklinger

Mine arrived this morning too. Took about 30 seconds to install and I was up and running. The picture seems like it could be a little sharper though. I'll have to update mine and get HighGFX installed and see what's what. It might also be the LCD I tested it on. I've got to try it on 21" flat screen CRT. I suspect that will provide a nicer picture and stop the woman whinging about my swiping her monitor.

hmm sounds like its the LCD..Im using an old 17" svga crt and its flawless

Originally Posted by gklinger

@klx300r
Did the government shaft you for PST + GST + duty? They robbed me of $85 on the declared value of $400. Crap weasels.

sorry to hear that Golan I was lucky this time and didnt have to pay 1 cent on duty/taxes....but ive been burned in the past also...

[illy5603]

Finally got mine today after missing the postman yesterday. Got it installed with no problem, not too much force required for mine. Made it through the flash update ok!

Exciting use for us in NTSC land. If I remember to boot the system in PAL mode with the mouse and leave the indivision defaulted to PAL mode it will play pal games perfectly. I must have also lucked out because my Dell LCD is also a TV and handles 50hz correctly for a tear free gaming experience. I tried the scan line emulation and it looks completely wrong on my monitor, but I bet it looks ok on a CRT. On the LCD it looks like it is coming over in waves, every inch or so it looks different instead of nice even scan lines. No biggie, I don't really like them anyway.

Very very happy with the product. Now I just need to get the RF shield back on.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by illy5603

Exciting use for us in NTSC land. If I remember to boot the system in PAL mode with the mouse and leave the indivision defaulted to PAL mode it will play pal games perfectly. I must have also lucked out because my Dell LCD is also a TV and handles 50hz correctly for a tear free gaming experience. I tried the scan line emulation and it looks completely wrong on my monitor, but I bet it looks ok on a CRT.

Very very happy with the product. Now I just need to get the RF shield back on.

It even works ok with my DELL 19" widescreen LCD which is not also a TV (ie it's 50hz compatible). WB would look a bit funny though unless I used the new 'widescreen' HighGFX driver

Don't worry about the silly RF shield, waste of time trying to put it back on.

[pbareges]

Hi there. Received mine today, installed was quick and easy (i pushed it on lisa as much as i could and it really is stuck there now!). The image at 60hz is crystal clear on my samsung 940mw samsung. It really is higher quality than my previous benchmark which was xrgb2 box.. So i must first thank you very much individual comp, amigakit and all the other ones involved...still i have 2 minor issues i must solve before they really get annoying:
-my screen fails to sync randomly i think (i get a black picture for 1s). It really cannot be linked to anything (floppy or hd activity) and it can happen 3 times within 10s and then does not happen for 5mn. What makes me think that it may not be my screen pb is that it happens at every v refresh from 50hz to 75hz and in any resolution, whereas i do not get any problem with xrgb with the exact same lcd screen.. I also tries to play with hsync vsynv polarity but it did not improve anything..do you have any clue what it may be or had any similar report (i at least saw one on a french website..)?
-also i found that when resetting sometimes indivision does not get enough time to init (no indivision startup screen and.save settings not applied)..it seems to happen when pressing shortly on the 3 keys combination..when pressing longer it works fine.. I was wonderong if it may be related to my 3.0 roms as i heard that 3.1 give more time to hd to init at reboot. It annoys me because i have a lot of script that perform software reboots to launch games and indivision almost always fail to apply my settings and give me defaults instead..i guess that you may think of a way to solve this on next firmware...

Thanks anyway for this great piece of hardware!!!

EDIT: Just had a look at samsung manual and found a table with suggested card settings (Hfreq/Vfreq/Pixel clock/H&V polarity) for resolutions..on 640x480 i get 4 options : MAC, IBM, VESA1 and VESA2...i will try each one of these to see if it improves my stability

[illy5603]

@NovaCoder - Mine is also widescreen but fortunately has a "4:3" mode which keeps the aspect ratio correct. I do have the black bars on each side but I am ok with that, better than stretched text and graphics. There are widescreen modes for use with picasso96 and winuae, I wonder if it would be too big a deal to create one for widescreen modes?

[pbareges]

can any of you please confirm that when resetting quickly (key pushed shortly), indivision does not apply saved settings but default ones ?....thanks!

[Ratte]

a1k is online again !!

follow this link to the latest (alpha/beta/gamma) flashupdate.
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=198389

HD720 (1280x720) widescreen (16:9) support added !!!
(HD720 is part of the HighGFX40.6 aminet-package)

have phun


@pbareges:
i dont think, that your problem is normal ...
it sounds like some electrical contact problem.
(we are talking about 10-15 year old "dusty" computer parts)
remove your indivison and clean all lisa-contacts.
this could help ...
(sorry, but i only own a a4k with compserv flifi)

[Toni Wilen]

Mine arrived today (+yet another ACard, I can finally finish my A1200 IDE-SCSI-CF-Blizzard SCSI configuration), some notes after quick testing:

I can confirm ghosting with some VGA cables. Switched to another and no more ghosting. Weird issue..
Config tool is a bit unintuitive

[DDNI]

Toni where are you buying the acards from?

[Charlie]

Thanks Ratte

[illy5603]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Thanks Ratte

I had no idea there was a widescreen driver, that is wonderful! Thanks for the heads up!

[wizard66]

I just ordered and payed for one from Amigakit.
Hope It will get here soon can't wait

[pbareges]

Originally Posted by Ratte

a1k is online again !!

follow this link to the latest (alpha/beta/gamma) flashupdate.
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=198389

HD720 (1280x720) widescreen (16:9) support added !!!
(HD720 is part of the HighGFX40.6 aminet-package)

have phun


@pbareges:
i dont think, that your problem is normal ...
it sounds like some electrical contact problem.
(we are talking about 10-15 year old "dusty" computer parts)
remove your indivison and clean all lisa-contacts.
this could help ...
(sorry, but i only own a a4k with compserv flifi)

thanks a lot for your help but cleaning lisa did not help...i'm really curious : did anyone try to save scanline settings for instance and performed a soft reboot (ie really quick and soft pressure upon ctrl+a+a combination) with 3.0 roms (or even 3.1 roms) to check if scanlines are still there after reboot ...

as i said performing a longer pressure on reboot keys combination seems to let enough time to indivision for initialisation and logo appears and saved settings are applied but when performing a quick soft reboot, saved settings are only applied when i launch config tool (just launching it without making any change applies my settings..) and indivision logo is not displayed... thanks to let me know even if you do not have this issue thk you

[illy5603]

@pbareges: I think I am having the same issue. Let me give you some background. I installed mine yesterday but left the case off while I was testing it. Everything worked great all day and this morning I posted a raving review in this thread about how happy I was.

So today I made a mount for the DSUB 9 adapter using an old VGA card backing plate, re-assembled my system and booted up. I noticed that my graphics were flickering all over the place so I took it apart and re seated the board. Same thing when I booted a second time. It looked a lot like the "Warmup Flicker" I was getting when running in multiscan productivity on my multscan monitor with the RGB/VGA adapter. So I waited about 20 minutes and came back into the office and sure enough the flicker was gone. So rebooted with the keyboard and bam, no video signal. Turn it off for a minute and sure enough the video signal is back. Now when I try and reboot with the keyboard to select PAL video mode (holding the mouse buttons down) it lets me do that but after selecting it and telling it to boot, I get no video signal. Turn the Amiga off for a minute and back on and there is signal...

So aside from the keyboard reboot, maybe try changing your display mode from PAL to NTSC or vice versa if you are in North America and see if it loses signal after reboot. Mine does. I don't remember it doing this yesterday so it very well could be that it is not seated correctly today. I have re-seated it about 20 times and nothing is making any difference.

Hopefully somebody else has some ideas.

[illy5603]

Update, I just re-seated it for a 21st time and the problem seems to be gone now. BUT I have still have to put the case back together at which time I fear it will likely return when I flip it over to put the screws back in. Even though a lot of people have this working ok, the "is it seated correctly, is it not seated correctly" problem is kind of a disappointment. If the thing is going to pop off because of temperature changes or slight jostling of a table, it is going to be hell to live with.

[pbareges]

thanks illy for your insights! a quick update on my front:

- black screen random interruptions : as suspected i tried it on a CRT and it works great so i guess my LCD fails to sync properly to the signal and even if the image is clear sharp most of the time, it lacks some frames some times which is very annoying..i tried to match some recommended screen settings from owners manual (hfreq/vfreq/polarity sets for a given resolution) but it seems that the imposed pixel clock (which is the only thing i cannot set from config tool) is far above what is suggested in the manual (ie 57Mhz vs 25-30 range for these kinds of resolution)..anyone can help me about these tech details as i do not know anything about this ? may we hope for the ability to set lower pixel clocks in next firmwares?

- indivision fails to apply saved settings and display indivision logo on reset sometimes...the CRT did not change anything to this, still happens on a regular basis...as i said simply running the config tool solves this issue without any need to change or do anything : as the config window is displayed, my settings are applied instantaneously! so i guess it would be nice to get an exec that simply applies saved settings and returns, so i could run it in my startup files and solve my issues..

thanks in advance for your support,

philippe.

[gklinger]

I finally got my 1200 hooked up to a 21" flat Trinitron CRT and the picture is AMAZING! I'm so happy.

I feel like I got way more than a flicker fixer/scan doubler because I'm now running at a resolution that was previously unusable. It's like I got a new video card. What an amazing piece of kit. I can't wait to try out the wide screen mode on my LCD.

[Ratte]

It seems to be, that someone on AMIGA.ORG has found a solution for the "fitting-problem".
http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/v...=47227&forum=8

btw.
cant wait to see the first photo from a widescreen lcd running hd720.

(coding was done on my a4k with compserv-flickerfixer and 17" aoc 4:3 tube)
:P

[illy5603]

@pbarages: Do note that you have to tell the indivision config util to use "User Settings" for display timing instead of "default settings" if you want it to boot with your settings. With that said. I changed the settings numerous times to radically different settings and my Dell reports the same scan frequencies each time I reboot and like you, I can never seem to find a pixel clock setting that works correctly and auto-detect settings look like crap as well on both of my Dell LCD's. My ancient multiscan CRT works perfectly with no pixel clock issues and no ghosting whatsoever, but it is a CRT and I was hoping to get rid of it. The best I can figure is that my settings changes simply aren't taking even though I am hitting save and telling it to use user configuration.

For all of you wondering what all the fuss is about, pixel clock issues show up as ghosted letters or lines spaced apart every few millimeters. It is REALLY evident on the WHDLOAD "please register" screen. On my CRT it is a nice consistent blue pattern, on my LCD is looks like it has vertical waves of dark and light blue color going through it. I have a hard time believing that there aren't more people with pixel clock issues on lcd monitors out there.

I haven't tried sanding the board down but I might have to...

I should also note that this issue only shows up in HighGFX 1024X768. All native Amiga screen modes (read that as to say "When I play games") work perfectly fine...