Gen-2 / Phase-2 / X16C plans

[orangeman96]

Cartridge (akin to 8-bit game console) and SD Card slots, I believe.

[BruceRMcF]

svenvandevelde wrote:
> Will the gen2 have 4 extention ports like the gen1?

It says it up in the OP -- one expansion slot, effectively identical to Gen 1 expansion slot 0, as the cartridge port.

IOW, if someone put a Gen1 expansion card in a cartridge case, that'd make it a Gen2 expansion cartridge. And if someone doesn't mind having a bare card stick into their cartridge port, they could use pretty much any Gen1 expansion card.

[TomXP411]

Will the gen2 have 4 extention ports like the gen1?

No. It will have one slot. Since G2 is meant to be a game console, that one slot will primarily be a cartridge port, although it could host any type of expansion card.

[Wavicle]

I have dev boards that I've designed arriving tomorrow which I plan to use to determine the viability of using the SiI9022ACNU "HDMI transmitter" IC to give VERA the capability of outputting TMDS signals in this commonly seen port style, which is definitely not HDMI but coincidentally happens to be compatible with it. The IC itself is in a shipment of parts that is inexplicably still in a Chinese warehouse, where it has been since the 18th, but just today transitioned to "ready to ship" status. I may not be able to populate the boards until next week and expect for it to take a good week or two to validate the IC as usable or not. If it all works out, this IC and a few passives are all that will be needed.

Before anybody asks: it probably *will not* insert pillar bars on 16:9 televisions, so if your TV doesn't have the option to switch to a 4:3 aspect ratio, the resulting X16 display will be stretched.

[TomXP411]

Before anybody asks: it probably *will not* insert pillar bars on 16:9 televisions, so if your TV doesn't have the option to switch to a 4:3 aspect ratio, the resulting X16 display will be stretched.

To expand on this: 480P (640x480 or 720x480) can be either widescreen or 4:3, but it's up to the TV to decide. When you look at a DVD box, they will say "anamorphic widescreen" when the movie has widescreen content. That's the same resolution as a 4:3 picture, but stretched horizontally. So anamorphic widescreen stretches a 480P signal horizontally, and you as a user have to decide, for each TV channel and program, whether to use 4:3 mode or 16:9 mode to show the correct image.

In other words, TV hardware (and, by extension, computer monitors) does not have a way to flag an image as widescreen or 4:3, so there's no way to tell your monitor to pillarbox 480P content without upscaling the resolution to a widescreen mode, such as 720P or 1080P. And this chip is not a scaler.

(edit:)
However... there is an "unsupported' screen mode that might work. 848x480 is very close, and it can be generated with a 33.75Mhz clock. If added, this would likely have to be an "experimental" feature, and one that users would use at their own risk.

The downside to this mode (as Wavicle pointed out to me in Discord) is that when you push the clock up like that, you also affect all the other stuff in the FPGA. This means the frequencies are wrong for the PSG, and a few other problems. So it doesn't sound like this is really viable, at the moment. We'd need a bigger FPGA that can handle multiple clocks. Or something.

In the meantime, TVs generally have a "zoom", "aspect", or "picture size" button. These all do the same thing: let you choose the picture mode that best fits your content, including running your computer in widescreen or 4:3 mode.

[orangeman96]

It's never been easier than it is today for a consumer to incorporate an upscaler that fits their particular situation/needs. (I have multiple legacy video formats that I upscale to my UHD TV, in different ways, which seems to be the "norm" nowadays.)

I'd keep pressing with the current design, leaving it to the purchaser to determine exactly how they want to display, given their particular situation/needs.

[TomXP411]

It's never been easier than it is today for a consumer to incorporate an upscaler that fits their particular situation/needs. (I have multiple legacy video formats that I upscale to my UHD TV, in different ways, which seems to be the "norm" nowadays.)

I'd keep pressing with the current design, leaving it to the purchaser to determine exactly how they want to display, given their particular situation/needs.

Truth. Scalers are not only easy to get, but they're cheap now, too. You can find a bunch decommissioned Extron and other stuff on EBay, and the retro community has gone nuts building things to get 8-bit computers and consoles into your modern Tv.

[BruceRMcF]

It bears keeping in mind the "stable development platform" aspect of the original Commander X16 vision, as well as the fact that the Gen2 box is supposed to be "cost reduced".

Now, having a "largely HDMI compatible" "IMDH" video output that requires the TV to be set to pillarbox mode in the Gen2 is fine with me, as long as there is also the original VGA output.

But there's an intrinsic conflict involved with scaling on board, since it is clear that some will want the cheapest solution that gets the job done, even at the expense of a couple of frame of lag, and some will want the lowest lag output possible. I figure that this conflict argues for not pursuing a built-in scaler.

Given that the VGA signal goes through a DAC, so a scaler that can get access to the digital inputs to the VGA may be able to do a better job, one approach is to have a block pin header that brings out the digital inputs to the DAC, and allow those that want to plug a scaler in to make the addition themselves.

[Java Cake Games]

TomXP411 wrote:
> To expand on this: 480P (640x480 or 720x480) can be either widescreen or
> 4:3, but it's up to the TV to decide.

640x480 is a 4:3 format only, in the HDMI specification. 720x480p is either, though, yeah (4:3 in video format 2; 16:9 in video format 3).

I have a foggy recollection my kitchen TV disables the aspect ratio options for PC resolutions (so no stretching or cropping even if you want that), but I'd have to check this. I hope most sets will let the user pick, as most (maybe all, for now) X16 software is designed for 4:3, yet it has widescreen potential - I especially like screen mode 1 in 16:9, as the text is just too skinny in 4:3.

(why is BBCode off in this board?)

[TomXP411]

(why is BBCode off in this board?)

BBCode is not off... did you check the "Disable BBCode" box when you posted your message?