Indivision V2 and ACA500Plus to be available for Xmas

[turrican9]

So my Indivision ECS V2 arrived a few days ago. So far it looks very nice. Has a very advanced tweaking utility. Takes quite some time to understand how to use it, just like with the AGA MK2 I spend alot of time tinkering around with it.

It has quite a few profiles that comes with it. Including one 50Hz Vsync profile for 1280x1024/640x512 which looks quite nice on my BenQ BL 702A. This profile will not show the overscan area and certain parts of the screen will be cut out, like with pinball dreams the highscore on top of the screen will be cut in half.

However, I have failed in making a good 720x576 with vsync 50Hz yet. This will take into account the overscan area and make it work like the first Indivision ECS, showing the Amiga properly with overscan and everything.

I hope Indivision will update the profiles in the next version of the utility to give us 50Hz profiles which shows the overscan area in games correctly.

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by turrican9

So my Indivision ECS V2 arrived a few days ago. So far it looks very nice. Has a very advanced tweaking utility. Takes quite some time to understand how to use it, just like with the AGA MK2 I spend alot of time tinkering around with it.

It has quite a few profiles that comes with it. Including one 50Hz Vsync profile for 1280x1024/640x512 which looks quite nice on my BenQ BL 702A. This profile will not show the overscan area and certain parts of the screen will be cut out, like with pinball dreams the highscore on top of the screen will be cut in half.

However, I have failed in making a good 720x567 with vsync 50Hz yet. This will take into account the overscan area and make it work like the first Indivision ECS, showing the Amiga properly with overscan and everything.

I hope Indivision will update the profiles in the next version of the utility to give us 50Hz profiles which shows the overscan area in games correctly.

Do you think it is better overall or perhaps a worthwhile upgrade compared to old ECS version? I was hoping the software utility would at least be more user friendly be now it looks like it is just as complicated to understand?

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Do you think it is better overall or perhaps a worthwhile upgrade compared to old ECS version? I was hoping the software utility would at least be more user friendly be now it looks like it is just as complicated to understand?

Unless Indivision provides a fully working 50Hz profile that gives a nice picture with overscan (like Indivision ECS V1) then I would say no, for me it would not be a big upgrade. Unless I can manage to make this profile myself, with time. So far I have not managed to make a good usable one that can match the Indi ECS V1 standard 720x576 profile.

However, this new V2 has more possibilities with regards to settings. Also, the 1280x1024 50Hz (60Hz one gives full screen) vsync profile gives almost full screen and looks really good because it runs 640x512 which is exactly half of 1280x1024 the pixels looks good. But as said, this is not a resolution that supports overscan. In resolutions that supports the correct overscan (like with ECS V1 or if you connect to RGB) the workbench should never be fullscreen. It needs space for software that uses the overscan area.

The profiles that come with it are definetely much better than what came with the AGA MK2. But just as with the AGA MK2 the utility that comes with the ECS V2 is not easy to understand. Took me quite some time to get the hang of it. But if you are happy with the profiles that comes with it then they are easy to just select and apply.

If a nice working 720x576 50Hz profile comes out with future software release then I would say it would be an upgrade for me.

[turrican9]

almost looks like the AGA MK2 and this new ECS V2 is geared at people wanting full screen and showing the workbench as nice as possible. And just as with the AGA MK2 there are alot of profiles for higher workbench resolutions. Non of these profiles will use the overscan area making alot of games not show correctly.

The AGA MK1 and ECS V1 was geared towards showing the Amiga correctly. Using the correct resolution and getting the correct overscan for games and stuff.

I hope the software for ECS V2 will get some more profiles which will show the Amiga picture correctly. At least it has Vsync. btw, the scanlines do not look very nice when using the 1280x1024 (640x512) vsync profile. They look uneven and when vertical scrolling in games like pinball dreams or Hybris the scanlines look like a layer that scrolls on top of the game.

Scanlines on ECS V1 looks much better with it's correct 50Hz mode.

[Philyon]

Got my new Aca500+ and I've got some troubles with it (or not...) :
After about ~20min of playing with different whdload games, I have some freeze with green screen, guru-errors, auto-reset, and other screen issues. Force to make a hard reset and the problem is not solve anytimes, the screen issues or the green screen appears too. So my 500 is very unstable. Sometimes it will work fine after the hard reset and other not. I Don't know if it's a memory, chip or another problem. My a500 board is 8a.1 (rebadged 500 with 512k ram).

[turrican9]

I found the main problem for me when trying to make any sort of profile with the overscan area, or even without the overscan area and 50Hz on the ECS V2 in combination with the BenQ BL 702A monitor. Every time I get below the standard 60 to 72Hz refresh rates my BL 702A selects unwanted resolutions. So with the 1280x1024 vsync profile that comes with the ECS V2 it selects 1920x1080. I still get a picture but I get a black bar on the bottom of the screen and the scanlines do not look good.

Same with other types of resoultions like 800x600. As soon as I get close to 50Hz (or put vsync on) my screen selects other resolutions than 800x600 and instead gives me these strange and unwanted resolutions which do not look good. The standard 60 or 72Hz is no problem. The screen selects the correct resolutions for these.

I'm hoping for an update so I can at least get the nice 50Hz picture I got with the ECS V1.

[Tyball]

I've got the ecs v2 and I've had the aca500plus for a while now. Also with 8.1a Rev. I've experienced some issues with the aca500plus but mainly when running higher speeds. It's quite stable most of the time. I've never had the indivision v1 so I'm very confused about the setup utility. Also, sad to hear about the scanlines not being so good. That's the main reason I got the ecs v2 because I was already very satisfied with the output on the BenQ bl702.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Philyon

Got my new Aca500+ and I've got some troubles with it (or not...) :
After about ~20min of playing with different whdload games, I have some freeze with green screen, guru-errors, auto-reset, and other screen issues. Force to make a hard reset and the problem is not solve anytimes, the screen issues or the green screen appears too. So my 500 is very unstable. Sometimes it will work fine after the hard reset and other not. I Don't know if it's a memory, chip or another problem. My a500 board is 8a.1 (rebadged 500 with 512k ram).

Could very well be a power supply problem.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by Tyball

I've got the ecs v2 and I've had the aca500plus for a while now. Also with 8.1a Rev. I've experienced some issues with the aca500plus but mainly when running higher speeds. It's quite stable most of the time. I've never had the indivision v1 so I'm very confused about the setup utility. Also, sad to hear about the scanlines not being so good. That's the main reason I got the ecs v2 because I was already very satisfied with the output on the BenQ bl702.

Another thing I noticed is that every time I make a 50Hz overscan profile the pixel clock on the BL702A does nothing to finetune the picture. A good way to see when it's not tuned is to look at the blue WHDLoad window that comes up when loading a game. It should have a perfect pattern and not lines going through it. This also means that the scrolling at 50Hz will not be perfect.

Pixelclock finetuning works when connecting the BL702A directly to RGB and also when using the 50Hz profile with the Indivision ECS V1.

Pattern and scrolling works correctly with the 1280x1024 (640x512) vsync profile that comes with the ECS 2 but again, with this profile the BL702A auto selects 1920x1080 resolution which makes the scanlines look wrong. Also, since it's based on 640x512 it gets no overscan. The scanlines look okay with the 1280x1024 60Hz profile, where the BL702A switches to 1280x1024.

Main reason I too got the ECS V2 was to get the same nice picture I already had with the BL702A connected directly to RGB but with scanlines. In fact my ECS V1s almost already did this, but they have a bug that causes it to forget the 50Hz setting on almost every coldboot. Which was annoying.

In it's current state I am not very happy with the ECS 2 and might go back to the ECS V1 or just use RGB and hope new firmware comes out.

[Philyon]

I need to testing more but curiously I have no problem since I'm runing at the 28mhz speed. No bug after one hour of playing time.

[turrican9]

It seems like I was wrong in my earlier statements. The ECS V2 is extremely advanced. I have been testing like crazy. Today I had another breakthrough where I found that in the VGA settings I didn't need both horizontal and vertical values to be full resolution but instead I could put the vertical resolution at half then go to indivision mode and keep the vertical at same value and put the horizontal at half the value. All this while finetuning the pixel clock while checking what resolution my BenQ BL 702A switches to. I just had success at making the monitor switch to 720x576 with Vsync 50Hz and making it fill most of the screen, with overscan and have perfect vertical and horizontal patterns. I had various other modes successful at 50Hz.

There are so many possibilities with this ECS V2 and I have been spending alot of time on it. Finally starting to get some good results here. This is starting to get fun. I'm starting to love this device more and more.

The more I learn to master this scandoubler the more it becomes clear to me that this is probably the best scandoubler released by Jens. By far.

[spudje]

Awesome, let's hope the new AGA indivision will offer these possibilities as well. What we only need then is a proper detailed tutorial, which so far I haven't seen for the current AGA versions.

[wiz12]

I'm also hoping the new Indivison AGA will be an improvement over the current model. Hopefully the configuration tool will be easier to use.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by turrican9

It seems like I was wrong in my earlier statements. The ECS V2 is extremely advanced. I have been testing like crazy. Today I had another breakthrough where I found that in the VGA settings I didn't need both horizontal and vertical values to be full resolution but instead I could put the vertical resolution at half then go to indivision mode and keep the vertical at same value and put the horizontal at half the value. All this while finetuning the pixel clock while checking what resolution my BenQ BL 702A switches to. I just had success at making the monitor switch to 720x576 with Vsync 50Hz and making it fill most of the screen, with overscan and have perfect vertical and horizontal patterns. I had various other modes successful at 50Hz.

The Indivision AGA Mrk2 was the same deal, it took everyone months of experimentation to finally configure a fullscreen 50Hz mode. Jens makes great hardware but always seems to struggle on the software side (drivers and utilities).

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

The Indivision AGA Mrk2 was the same deal, it took everyone months of experimentation to finally configure a fullscreen 50Hz mode. Jens makes great hardware but always seems to struggle on the software side (drivers and utilities).

yeah. I already have the AGA MK2 and I spent a ton of time tweaking it to the monitor I use for my A1200. AGA MK2 is missing Vsync but in the end I managed to tweak it to almost smooth 50Hz scrolling. Also full overscan.

I am still tweaking on the ECS V2. Still not completely happy.

[jdryyz]

Glad to hear you have made some advances with the software. I'm still not sure where to begin with mine yet but I've been sidetracked with getting my OS in order.

[turrican9]

So far I found a few issues with the Indi ECS V2. When making any profile which allows the overscan area the picture is always shifted to the right with no possibility of extending the right side overscan area. Also, 720x576 50Hz has alot of noise in the picture. This is of course at 31KHz. I know the ECS V1 have quite a bit of noise in the picture in this mode as well. When my BenQ BL 702As and BL 912 are connected directly to RGB at 15KHz there is no noise.

[turrican9]

Best so far on my BenQ BL 702A is VGA profile at 1472x1060, 50.23xxHz (will check the exact value if needed), Vysnc on. Indivision profile at 736x530 and scanlines at 25%. This switches the resolution to 1920x1080 according to the monitor itself. Don't know how that works as this screen has a native resolution of 1280x1024. So how it can go beyond this I don't understand?

Anyway, the above mentioned setup fills most of the screen but leaves just enough overscan area for most games. The picture is very stable with very little to no noise. Scanlines look good enough at 25% but anything past this will look strange as the scanlines are not perfect at this resolution. However, 25% looks good. Scrolling is perfect and pattern is almost perfect other than some very faint vertical bars which is barely visible.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

The Indivision AGA Mrk2 was the same deal, it took everyone months of experimentation to finally configure a fullscreen 50Hz mode. Jens makes great hardware but always seems to struggle on the software side (drivers and utilities).

Please help. I gave up ages ago.

My requirements: Full Amiga overscan visible in PAL progressive/laced modes. 1:1 vertical frequency with no stutters/tearing. The AGA mk1 gave me this with no effort at all, so far I have not been able to figure out how to calculate the timings to achieve this with the mk2.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Philyon

I need to testing more but curiously I have no problem since I'm runing at the 28mhz speed. No bug after one hour of playing time.

I think mine only is stable fully at 14mhz (orginal batch)