Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[Atarian Computing]

@agranlund, here is my washed out color issue. Would you know anything that would affect this?

Nope, not sure. What card and driver is this?

I guess I had somewhat of the opposite issue with the image looking good (as far as I can tell) on the monitor but very washed out in screenshots taken by the framegrabber, to a degree very similar as you posted.
Randomly changing OBS settings somehow made it look the same as on the monitor but I don't know what setting it was

Interesting. For me it happened with both the ET4000AX and GD5434. I could've sworn that one time with the Mach64 the colors were spot on.

I decided to check further and found a cheap-ass VGA->HDMI converter, and sure enough, the colours seemed fine, albeit a tiny bit on the bright side. This tells me that the VGA output is fine from the card, and it's just that my monitors are not handling it properly or something.

This particular VGA->HDMI can't handle the BIOS resolutions and has some ghosting, so I might try to find a better one. What are you using and would you recommend it?

[luciodra]

Nope, not sure. What card and driver is this?

I guess I had somewhat of the opposite issue with the image looking good (as far as I can tell) on the monitor but very washed out in screenshots taken by the framegrabber, to a degree very similar as you posted.
Randomly changing OBS settings somehow made it look the same as on the monitor but I don't know what setting it was

Interesting. For me it happened with both the ET4000AX and GD5434. I could've sworn that one time with the Mach64 the colors were spot on.

I decided to check further and found a cheap-ass VGA->HDMI converter, and sure enough, the colours seemed fine, albeit a tiny bit on the bright side. This tells me that the VGA output is fine from the card, and it's just that my monitors are not handling it properly or something.

This particular VGA->HDMI can't handle the BIOS resolutions and has some ghosting, so I might try to find a better one. What are you using and would you recommend it?

The discussion on VGA-HDMI adapters is very interesting. I was convinced that my video card had problems, with artifacts present especially when starting the PC, then I tried another adapter that I had and now everything is perfect. I didn't think it could depend on this.

[agranlund]

This particular VGA->HDMI can't handle the BIOS resolutions and has some ghosting, so I might try to find a better one. What are you using and would you recommend it?

Yeah getting a VGA->HDMI adapter that handles all older PC resolutions properly or at all feels like a can of worms.
My best tip would maybe be retro youtubers presenting their capture solutions, and the comment sections of those videos.

My monitor has a VGA input so I'm using that.
It's an older ProArt model and I'd like to say the colours are accurate but it was a long time since it was calibrated and used for photo editing so who knows

[agranlund]

I was cleaning up and cable managing my Raven build and ended up starting sketching on this guy:

The 44pin header lines up with the one on the motherboard and the idea is that you connect them with a short cable.
With this, I can easily support decoding additional master+slave pairs which are exposed on the IDE headers.

Screenshot 2026-01-10 at 21.20.32.png (439.52 KiB) Viewed 738 times

Haven't fully made up my mind what else goes onto it yet but most likely at least an RTL8019AS so I can get rid of the ethernet card and come out even on amount of ISA slots used.

[Atarian Computing]

I was cleaning up and cable managing my Raven build and ended up starting sketching on this guy:

The 44pin header lines up with the one on the motherboard and the idea is that you connect them with a short cable.
With this, I can easily support decoding additional master+slave pairs which are exposed on the IDE headers.

Screenshot 2026-01-10 at 21.20.32.png

Haven't fully made up my mind what else goes onto it yet but most likely at least an RTL8019AS so I can get rid of the ethernet card and come out even on amount of ISA slots used.

Ooh, nice! If it's not super difficult, this would be perfect for a ROM-port

[LarryL]

I was cleaning up and cable managing my Raven build and ended up starting sketching on this guy:

The 44pin header lines up with the one on the motherboard and the idea is that you connect them with a short cable.
With this, I can easily support decoding additional master+slave pairs which are exposed on the IDE headers.

Screenshot 2026-01-10 at 21.20.32.png

Haven't fully made up my mind what else goes onto it yet but most likely at least an RTL8019AS so I can get rid of the ethernet card and come out even on amount of ISA slots used.

Wow, cool…
Does that mean, more than one (two?) IDE interface, i.e. up to 4 IDE drives?

[Atarian Computing]

I was cleaning up and cable managing my Raven build and ended up starting sketching on this guy:

The 44pin header lines up with the one on the motherboard and the idea is that you connect them with a short cable.
With this, I can easily support decoding additional master+slave pairs which are exposed on the IDE headers.

Screenshot 2026-01-10 at 21.20.32.png

Haven't fully made up my mind what else goes onto it yet but most likely at least an RTL8019AS so I can get rid of the ethernet card and come out even on amount of ISA slots used.

Wow, cool…
Does that mean, more than one (two?) IDE interface, i.e. up to 4 IDE drives?

No, if I understood correctly, the gray one plugs to the motherboard giving you two IDE ports on the ISA card, master and slave. Although "additional master+slave pairs" does sound like extra two...

[luciodra]

I was cleaning up and cable managing my Raven build and ended up starting sketching on this guy:

The 44pin header lines up with the one on the motherboard and the idea is that you connect them with a short cable.
With this, I can easily support decoding additional master+slave pairs which are exposed on the IDE headers.

Screenshot 2026-01-10 at 21.20.32.png

Haven't fully made up my mind what else goes onto it yet but most likely at least an RTL8019AS so I can get rid of the ethernet card and come out even on amount of ISA slots used.

[agranlund]

Wow, cool…
Does that mean, more than one (two?) IDE interface, i.e. up to 4 IDE drives?

Yep it can easily decode and support multiple ports, and each port can have one master + one slave as usual.
I haven't fully committed to the layout yet but I do know I want a CF socket right on the card itself, so that's a master on one port.

The two headers would mean up to 4 devices on top of that. That's surely overkill and I've been thinking perhaps reduce it to one.
But then I keep reminding myself that master/slave could be a bit of a lottery even back in the days on PC and it was a thing to avoid hooking stuff up as slave unless as a last resort.

I don't remember it being as bad as this article though
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-dual-drive-ide-hell/

I'm sure it got a lot better over time. Today I assume the situation is worse again with all the cheap no-brand stuff.

[LarryL]

Wow, cool…
Does that mean, more than one (two?) IDE interface, i.e. up to 4 IDE drives?

Yep it can easily decode and support multiple ports, and each port can have one master + one slave as usual.
I haven't fully committed to the layout yet but I do know I want a CF socket right on the card itself, so that's a master on one port.

The two headers would mean up to 4 devices on top of that. That's surely overkill and I've been thinking perhaps reduce it to one.
But then I keep reminding myself that master/slave could be a bit of a lottery even back in the days on PC and it was a thing to avoid hooking stuff up as slave unless as a last resort.

I don't remember it being as bad as this article though
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-dual-drive-ide-hell/

I'm sure it got a lot better over time. Today I assume the situation is worse again with all the cheap no-brand stuff.

Excellent idea - the more, the better
And I think having at least one standard 40p port makes things easier for e.g. CD/DVD drives