Has anyone in the Sprinter team considered giving the option of having NTSC compatible sync modes for video? I'm sure with a PLD this would not be difficult to enable. It would make video a lot easier for us USA customers if you had the option. TV's don't have SCART here, just Y/C "S/VIDEO" connectors (and composite of course), and RGB monitors here do not display sync rates below 60Hz either.

Just curious as I haven't assembled my Sprinter yet (just arrived today).



"Did you ever feel everone else are tuxedos and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"

After a little thinking myself, I agreed with the Sprinter team in NOT supporting this or that sync and/or color system.
Not doing so would yield them to the same arena computers like C= Amiga did: You just had to buy this or that modulator, and Amigas (AFAIK, please correct me if I'm wrong) came in boxes that read (in the case of a friend of mine, here in Argentina) "PAL/NTSC VERSION". Now THAT sucks! What if I wanted SECAM video for ANY reason? You would have to buy it in France!

If you just get the signals and build (or get somehow) a modulator for YOUR own area, everyone will be happy. In my country, we have PAL-N wich is different from your NTSC-M in both sync and color standard. What would you in PetersPlus feet do to accomodate all the standards?

In my case, I just dusted off a MC1377 chip based modulator I bought for my PC (ISA at that time), and succeeded on installing it on the Sprinter. Now THAT'S versatile! I tried to get the schematic off it and you can find it in the downloads area (sorry for the coils, though), and it has a NTSC/PAL jumper. Note that, for NTSC, you'll have to change the chroma crystal to a 3.579545 MHz. Luck.


Marcelo.
----------------------------------
Speccy rules, its staff is Sprinter.

Sorry, but we can not agree. Sparky is right. We, developers of Sprinter, should create a maximum comfortable computer. For all customers, from any country.
But you are right too, there are a lot of TV signals standards. Support of all TV standards is too hard technical task. It needs much time. But TV Set is not a best variant of computer monitor. Therefore we hope that finished VGA convertor will be the best solution. It is our main task today. We continue this work.

---
PETERS PLUS LTD

Hello Alex!
I have seen your post about Sprinter's output to NTSC screen.
If you want to adapt RGB output to VGA, there are in commerce some devices that do it.
I have found also this russian web site:
http://sterr.narod.ru/tv/tv1.htm I don't understand russian language so I hope that this web site can help you.
If you are only interested in NTSC output there are also:
http://www.preromanbritain.com/gwem/martbean/ataridiy/conv.htm
or
http://products.analog.com/products/info.asp?product=AD724

Alex:
I said what I said because I believed you intended to use TV sets as video monitors for Sprinter. I did not say I agreed with that...

If you plan to "upgrade" video output to use a standard VGA monitor, then the modulation issue goes down the toilet with my full approval. TV standards suck simply because they're intended for the 1940's "state of the art" technology (can you imagine a 1940/1950 TV with 36kHz horizontal sync?).

So, if you can give me a way to connect a VGA monitor to my Sprinter, I will definitely do. WAY better than TV sets with low to mid resolution CRTs.

Thanks

Marcelo.
----------------------------------
Speccy rules, its staff is Sprinter.

"There are a lot of decafeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing"...

One thing you have regreted to think about is that the Sprinter is marketed world wide. What a lot of people have neglected to also realize is that the 50Hz refresh frequency, irregardless if it's for TV or even VGA, is completely incompatible with any TV or monitor in the entire North and South Amercian continents. Nobody has ever manufactured a display device to use 50Hz as its refresh frequency.

Also, now a little education in video. A modulator is not going to do anything to change the video coming out of the Sprinter. All a modulator does is put the video signal on an RF carrier. When it's demodulated it is the same video that went into the modulator.

Also, that MC1377 circuit will still not work if the incoming video is still using PAL sync rates. Perhaps if the TV were old enough and had a manual vertical and horizontal hold control a decent black and white picture might be achieved with that circuit. The colorburst is a multiple of the sync frequencies, even if the source clock was with the new crystal. That crystal is there to synchronize the incoming signal with the newly generated chroma signal, which isn;'t possible with the misaligned sync frequencies coming in from the Sprinter.

Adding external circuits to the Sprinter isn't the solution. In fact none of them will have a positive effect, including a VGA converter, as the sync frequencies are still the problem, and nothing here responds to a 50Hz sync, only 60Hz and above.

What is actually a better solution to this is to give the Sprinter the ability to generate a 60Hz compatible set of sync frequencies. This is actually not a difficult thing to do seeing as the Sprinter has a PLD. Simply reprogramming the PLD with the new timing is all that is needed and that's all. Once that is done, using that MC1377 circuit will now work as desired. It would also allow those with RGB monitors to view the Sprinter's video as well.

What would ultimately be the best way to do it is to have VGA sync frequencies for all available resolutions so everyone could view them on an ordinary monitor they may already be using with their PC. Yes, PAL, SECAM, and NTSC sync modes could be an option for absolute Spectrum compatibility or even viewing on a TV, but also giving the same resolution modes (plus more) in the VGA or even SVGA sync range is do-able in PLD software.

Heck, MSX compatibility is also do-able seeing as the MC6845 and MC6847 cores are open source now.

The Sprinter team has done a marvelous job with what they have done, but even they admit improvements can be made. They also know that increasing their market involves increasing the ability of that market to use their product, and not by expressing any sort of "regional arrogance".

The design concept of Sprinter has so much potential of being able to be or even "emulate" many different flavors of Z80 systems of the 80's simply because of its PLD. Why not also have Timex/Sinclair capability as well as Spectrum? What's wrong with MSX capability and even CP/M? Heck, emulating the gameboy and some Sega systems seem like a great idea to me. No, they all can't be installed immediately, but they are not impossible for the Sprinter.

"Did you ever feel everone else are tuxedos and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"

Speaking of Amiga... Nobody's gotten around to testing if an amiga scandoubler (with modified sync signal, i think) works? It wouldn't be the cheapest solution, but certainly the most available one that i know of. The british company Eyetech at www.eyetech.co.uk seems to be selling an interesting external scandoubler for amiga called EZ-VGA-MK2. Their information is a bit fuzzy on the matter though. It is a pity that my amiga scandoubler is an internal model. =(

All a scan doubler will do is give a horizonal rate compatible with VGA, however, the vertical sync will still be 50Hz. 50Hz VGA or even SVGA monitors are not available in the America's. The only RGB monitors with the slightest capability of showing 50Hz refresh rates are the old non-digital types with a manual vertical hold control, and only if its adjustment allowed you to go that low.

Most modern monitors do not go less than 60Hz here. My NEC does 55Hz as its minimum, but since monitors are auto-sync they cannot be forced to view the lower 50Hz rates.

So, TV to VGA (scan doublers) converters will NOT work simply because they do not convert the vertical frequency at all.

Why not just simply give the option of choosing a desired video standard via a PLD update? Fixing the cause not the symptoms seem to be a better approach.

Rich

"Did you ever feel everone else are tuxedos and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"

Funny.. you sure about that? I've never heard of any such problems using amigas and scandoublers. Most monitors won't do 16khz horizontal sync, but the vsync should be okay as far as i know. Always assumed it was anyway. =)

I've now had some people run tests on their monitors too. All seem to handle 50hz quite well. There shouldn't be a difference between PAL and NTSC monitors these days. Perhaps it's just your monitor behaving badly?

Keep in mind WHERE you purchased your monitor.

Now, think about the word "scandoubler" that means "scan line doubler" which means doubling the horizontal frequency and showing each scan line twice at twice the clock rate. This is essentially easy to do with a simple DSP and a small amount of memory in a "scandoubler". Increasing the vertical frequency involves much more sophisticated techniques and much more memory and speed to accomplish this as extra whole frames of display must be displayed where none are generated from the source. Also, typically the number of scan lines can change when the frames per second changes.

With all of that said, no, the scan doublers will only allow viewing on VGA monitors with a low 50Hz refresh ability. Now "listen" carefully, nothing in the North or South American regions have ever been manufactured to display 50Hz video. The only devices that can be "fooled" into displaying such video are the older manually adjusted VGA displays or perhaps the 12 to 15 year old monitors the Amiga or Atari ST used. Those monitors are no longer being manufactured nor sold here in this half of the world.

Incidentally, scan line doublers here only work with 60Hz refresh rates...SURPRISE!

Due to the ease of acquiring newer equipment at very low prices (at least in California) you would be hard pressed to find even "used" equipment shops selling anything older than five years. I'd challenge anyone to be able to find 8 bit ISA PC device sold in the USA anywhere.

Now with all of that explaining behind me. Here comes the main point. This is 2002, and all of the monitors sold in this side of the world do not go lower than VGA standard (60Hz min) for computer monitors, or NTSC standard for composite security monitors or TV monitors. All of these devices now days have automatic sync and are not adjustable to "fool" into displaying a non-standard (for this region) refresh rate. They just turn off. This means, Sony, Nec, Mitsubishi, Samsung, GEM, etc. all have this limitation here. It doesn't matter if they have models in Europe that have this ability. Here, they don't. They have region specific software internal to their design.

Good grief, is this fact so hard to believe, when there has never been a video device here that has ever shown 50Hz based video? All, whether it be TV or computer have always been 60Hz or more. One must also consider that maybe just maybe the FCC might not like the idea of a video display being sold here with PAL capability.

I'm not going to try and hunt down a monitor in some junk shop just so I can display 50Hz video. I'd prefer to just select "PAL" on my TV capture card on my PC. Say what?! If I have that, then why raise this issue? Well, displaying regionally compatible video is best handled in the Sprinter's PLD and not by having to "Mickey Mouse" old crap just to get a decent display out of it (which I have to do just to be able to plug it in my capture card). The Sprinter is a NEW computer and thus should work on equipment no older than at least 5 years.

All i'm saying is that i've tested my monitors (all of them with "automatic sync") and i've had people test it for me on their monitors. These are not 5-10 year old pieces. American or european doesn't seem to matter. They all work. As to the matter of FCC regulations, i think that's probably not an issue because there are plenty of old monitors like some models of the commodore 1084 capable of 50hz sold in America.

Okay, perhaps Sparky's monitor doesn't handle it, but before deciding one way or the other i think people should just try it themselves. Try a program like PowerStrip to see if your monitor can handle it.

If anything, new "american" monitors should be more compatible with "european" ones than they used to be, because they're the same hardware! Many new monitors have a 230v/110v switch on the back, making them totally independent of the region they happen to be in.

NTSC scandoublers might not handle 50hz though, but that has nothing to do with the monitors but rather the design of the scandoubler device for reading american video signals.

I might be wrong about all this, but i've checked this out and there doesn't seem to be a problem in most cases.

I have used 50 Hz video modes on several American VGA monitors without any problems. The problem with syncing at 50 Hz is as common in Europe as it is in the US -- it's a problem with certain monitors, that's all. Most do it without complaining though.

BTW? does anyone have scandoubler or modulator for sale? I can pay thru WU.

It's quite hard to find a second-hand scandoubler, especially an external one, as lots of Amiga owners are looking for one... and consequently the price asked is often close to the price for a new one. There are many shops in Europe that sell scandoublers for 100-120 Euros...

Do you realize how old a Commodore 1084 monitor is??

I'm not interested in an older monitor, haven't you been reading anything? Why spend further money on something that can simply be solved in software? That's the point, nothing more, no "Mickey Mousing" necessary, no grandiose schemes required, no going to the junk shop hoping to find a relic from the 80's. In other words, use the capability for which the Sprinter is touted as its major feature, reprogramming the PLD on the fly.

Is that simple concept so hard to understand? The Sprinter team understood it on the first message and made an acceptable reply. What is wrong with everyone else here? What's even funnier is people that do not live in the America's nor have equipment specifically sold here are suddenly experts on them. Just because the same model works and does what it does in Europe is no gaurantee it will do the same in the Americas. Has anyone ever heard of a ROM? You know even if something is manufactured with the same circuitry, does not guarantee it is running with the same software. I can tell you right now that they don't. Heck, even the power frequency is 60Hz at 110 volts compared to 50Hz 220 volts of Europe. Now some may think all that is required is a switch and all is well. Well these people haven't seen a ghost frame roll from mismatched mains frequencies on a monitor running in a region for which it was not designed now have they?

Older VGA monitors are able to show 50Hz only because when VGA came out auto-sync monitors had not yet become the main stream. These monitors had manual sync controls and could be down adjusted for 50Hz if you were lucky. The same goes for the old Atari and Commodore monitors of the day (the 80's).

Now let me let my Europian friends in on a little secret about California. It is the hub of many things high-tech and most people have their Macs and PCs. I challenge anyone to find an old Atari or Commodore monitor sold anywhere here. It's unheard of. Why? It's not profitable. The old and nostalgic has been long since thrown out or sold to someone in Arkansas. The "used", "surplus", or "junk" shops don't even carry things that old. This is where you say "a Spectrum" and people say "a what?". I haven't seen an Atari, Commodore, Timex, Coleco, etc. machine in a junk shop since 1993. Old VGA monitors fall under this category. Do you know what recycling companies do with old computer equipment here? They sell them to China. So, all of these types of monitors you are all so kind and friendly to recommend have been sitting in China for the last ten years.

Old computers and equipment just don't have the staying power like they do in Europe. This is the land where most don't own a car for more than two years, let alone a computer.

Now, please learn a bit about video signals and how they work and relate to each other. This will help greatly in such conversations in the future. PAL video is 50HYz vertical with 15KHz horizontal (approx). NTSC is 60Hz vertical with 17.5KHz horizontal (approx). PAL has more scan lines than NTSC. PAL has a different color encoding scheme than NTSC. There's much more to video than frame rates. There's much more to TV to VGA converters than scan lines. There's much more to RGB video than the vertical sync frequency. The vertical needs to be a divisor of the horizontal, etc. Let's say a monitor in the USA can handle 50Hz vertical. This still does not guarantee it can handle 15KHz horizontal. There's more than one variable here.

Let me also let you in on another secret, not all monitors for every region are made in the same factory. Sony makes American displays in Mexico and not Japan. Monitors are not manufactured equally.

Class dismissed.

"Did you ever feel everone else are tuxedos and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"

If you're going to keep that bad attitude of yours, you should probably work on getting the facts straight.

First and foremost you're throwing PAL and NTSC around without even understanding that these are *video* standards and don't mean squat when you're discussing RGB. Repeat after me: video != RGB. They define things like horizontal and vertical scan rate (just like RGB) but also things like colour and sound carrier frequencies. As for the v/h frequencies, they are

15.734 kHz / 59.94 Hz for NTSC M
15.625 kHz / 50 Hz for PAL B/I/D/N

A monitor that supports either horizontal frequency can most likely support the other, as it'd be within the error margin. The major difference is in the vertical frequency and the colour coding.

But for RGB the problem these days is finding a monitor that accepts a 15 kHz signal -- I'm not aware of any mainstream consumer product that does that today. You find it in professional video monitors (commonly $800 and up), in projectors ($1500 or thereabouts for a "cheap" one), and the odd LCD display. 15 kHz RGB is usually undocumented though, and only available as a side effect from the monitor having S-Video, Composite, or RF input. I consider myself quite lucky to own a Nokia 417TV VGA monitor that accepts 15 kHz RGB.

Your comment about "the vertical needs to be a divisor of the horizontal, etc" is also an interesting one. The vertical frequency is derived from the horizontal frequency: hfreq = vfreq / numlines. 15625 / 312.5 = 50, 15734 / 262.5 = 59.94. Not that it really matters though, as a multisync monitor (like all monitors sold in the last 10 years) can accept any frequency within the vertical and horizontal range.


But to go back to the issue here, your claim that American monitors don't support 50 Hz, that's just plain wrong. There is no standard. VGA monitors don't care in the least about video resolutions. 31 kHz and 35 kHz at 60 Hz are the only resulutions you can be sure that it supports, as those are the standard frequencies for BIOS screens, DOS, and Windows safe mode. 50 Hz is never guaranteed to work, whether you buy your monitor in the US, Europe, Asia, or wherever. However, it seems to work on most monitors. It's worked on the monitors I've tried it on in the US, and the ones my friends have tried it on. As simple as that. If 50 Hz is not available it's usually just because the video card driver doesn't list it. A utility such as PowerStrip (or PowerDesk for Matrox users) can usually solve that problem.

Bad attitude only results when nobody bothers to read the original question. My only issue was people offering "hammers, glue, silicone sealant, a finger, sticks, etc." to stop up a "bottle" when all that was needed was a "cork". Sorry for the alegory, but that was what the point of the last message was. No, it wasn't video standards. No, it wasn't my monitor can see more than your monitor. No, it wasn't any such thing. It was a flabbergasted individual that was dumbfounded at the rediculous "solutions" to a very simple and easy question asked. Do you care to go and read it?

Spending outrageous amounts of cash to find a:

1> Far too overpriced TV-VGA converter (which cannot be had here for a PAL source). A TV-VGA converter is only going to accept S-VIDEO or composite here and thus the RGB must be converted to compose first for it to succeed in the conversion anyway.

2> Old 7-15 year old monitor that MIGHT take RGB as input with such a low horizontal scan rate, let alone the vertical rate. The Atari SC1224 and the Commodore equivalent for the Amiga were the only analog RGB monitors I recall with this capability. Nevertheless, finding one is a moot issue and far to ridiculous for a $170 computer and the loss of workspace.

3> Some no longer made Commodore, Atari, or other composite computer monitors capable of those frequencies for at least a composite display using a MC1337 based RGB to composite converter. Waste of time and money.

4> And most rediculously... A replacement brand new monitor that just MAY have the right horizontal and vertical auto-sync range.

These "solutions" are absurd for a $170 computer that is touted with a "TV" output. The only intelligent answer I got was from the Sprinter team themselves. They answered the question intelligently, friendly, and most importantly, with an understanding of what I was originally saying/asking.

These other "solutions" to the "symptoms" of the issue and not the cause were based on ignorance or at least a lack of reading what the original question really was.

To humor you, I have done some more research of my own and there is not a PC monitor sold here in the USA that has a horizontal frequency range lower than 31KHz and the lowest vertical rate I have been able to find is 55Hz. I have checked many of the popular brands out. Why don't they? Because VGA and SVGA do NOT have horizontal specs lower than 31KHz and vertical specs lower than 55Hz (the 1024x768 interlaced mode). Since these new monitors are digitally managed for their sync locks, all they will do is turn off when the limits of their range are exceeded. Also, frying a flyback transformer to "check it anyway" isn't my idea of fun either. As you admitted to being "lucky" to have a monitor capable of such low horizontal rates, is an indication to me that you do grasp the point of the exercise as well, while understandably defensive of the crowd.

The suggestions given, while I understand as friendly in their intent (except for one), were like a doctor giving open heart surgery for hiccups. Once again, the solution isn't buying more equipment, raiding junk shops, nor etching and drilling a new converter PC board. The solution is merely to have the capability programmed into the Sprinter's PLD to generate the timing necessary for equipment made within the last seven years and compatible in all areas of the country now.

I am sure you will agree that the display timing for the RGB output of the Sprinter is only compatible (today, not 10-15 years ago) with PAL monitors/TV's with a SCART input. Frankly, I'm not giving up my 22 inch NEC for a 14 inch POS found under a pile of motherboards somewhere just to see non-standard (in America) video display when I know the Sprinter PLD can generate a display compatible for today's monitor standards here, with just a simple program. No gadgets, no gizmos, no soldering, no "Mickey Mousing", nothing, but plugging it in.

Speaking of that, if the Sprinter did have the ability to display NTSC compatible video (once again, a software change here), then a simple MC1337 circuit could be used for NTSC TV's. This brings us back full circle again. It doesn't matter if the video is composite, Y/C, or RGB coming out. It's not going to work on modern NTSC TV's and modern (mainstream) PC monitors. Your's, by the way, has "TV" in its model number for a reason.

I hope that explains things for you, and why I may have seen a bit sharp towards the end. Also, next time, when being brave and expressing "chivalry", try not to hide behind anonymity. It makes the argument less believable.

Oh, I forgot one more thing. VGA is a "standard". XGA is a "standard", SVGA is a "standard", PAL is a "standard", SECAM is a "standard", and NTSC is a "standard", and all have their various standards defined by the government agencies and private entities for which they were created. Their standards are specified quite clearly as to all signals and their frequencies involved, including the resolutions of which they represent. Just because a company may be "lax" in following those standards does not make them any less of a standard. PAL-RGB is a standard known most commonly as the signal going into the SCART connection of a Europian television. There is no such similar standard for a NTSC compatible display device here. Live with it. Accept it. Believe it.

Oh by the way, I'll paraphrase (a lot) my original question: "Is the Sprinter ever going to have a video output compatible with NTSC displays?" The answer was, "We are working on it." End of discussion.

Rich

"Did you ever feel the world was a tuxedo, and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"