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Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 14:02
by stephen_usher
Everything's arrived and works.
I had issues with the controller pak as it showed up as "Unknown peripheral" until I cleaned the edge connector thoroughly.
I can't actually see any real difference in video quality between the HDMI adapter and composite video directly into the TV actually. :-)
I may remove the composite output bodge so as to make it look nicer, but I may not.
So, the console has:
Expansion Pak
Controller Pak
2x controllers
HDMI adapter
Summer Cart 64
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 14:49
by PhilC
That should make it a good little console Stephen.
I really should use mine more.
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 14:55
by stephen_usher
Well, one issue with the HDMI converter. When it switches to PAL60 mode the chroma is delayed by about a 10th of the screen width, so NTSC games have coloured ghosts to the right of the items that should be coloured.
At first I thought it may be ghosting due to the phono socket mod, so I removed them, but that didn't change anything.
Never mind.
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 16:23
by mrbombermillzy
stephen_usher wrote: 13 Sep 2026 21:53
Yesterday the expansion pack arrived. It works fine and gives a lot of games some extra capabilities. Some get higher resolution, some just have more bells and whistles.
That sounds interesting. What is it exactly?
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 17:37
by stephen_usher
It just doubles the memory. It's effectively just an RDRAM chip on a PCB in a case which plugs into a port on the top.
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 16 Sep 2026 16:11
by stephen_usher
Seeing as I'm planning on taking the TT to CL5 and showing off the UNIX/Linux systems I can boot I thought I'd do a quick benchmark on starting processes from a shell.
So, I created this shell script:
Code: Select all
#!/bin/sh
echo Testing speed of process creation.
echo Running /bin/echo 100 times
date
for i in \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
do
/bin/echo > /dev/null
done
date
I knew that NetBSD was slow but... time to run each command:
Atari UNIX: 0.08 seconds.
Debian Linux (Etch): 0.14 seconds.
NetBSD 10: 0.42 seconds.
No wonder it takes an absolute age for NetBSD to boot if each line in the boot shell script takes about half a second to start up!
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 16 Sep 2026 17:28
by stephen_usher
Out of interest I thought I'd try the same test under MiNT.... 0.05 seconds.
P.S. Miscalculated, should be 0.2 seconds.
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 17 Sep 2026 20:53
by stephen_usher
Seeing as CL5 is on the horizon, the Camputers Lynx 128K doesn't run games and the feeling that I need to solder something I decided to try to build the Lynx 96K PCB I have to get that working.
So, I've spent the day soldering sockets, resistors, diodes, transistors and ceramic caps. Unfortunately I ran out of 470R, 1K and 4.7K resistors so I've had to put in an order with Amazon for those.
Still, good progress. A quick power test showed that I had two of the diodes the wrong way around, helped by the thermal camera. That's fixed now and no harm done.
- IMG_5405.jpeg (261.28 KiB) Viewed 36 times
Tomorrow I can fit more decoupling caps, though I don't think that I have enough to complete but should be good enough to get going. I can also fit the header pins and electrolytic caps. I can also get on with the video RAM board.
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 17 Sep 2026 20:58
by rubber_jonnie
You've got as many projects on the go as me!!!
Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 18 Sep 2026 10:55
by HigashiJun
rubber_jonnie wrote: 17 Sep 2026 20:58
You've got as many projects on the go as me!!!
Nobody has more projects on the go than rubber_jonnie...
:lol: