exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

CoolNovelties have SCART-cables.

I also have a Medusa since a couple of days. I haven't had any time to test it yet though.

DoG wrote: 08 Jul 2022 10:36 CoolNovelties have SCART-cables.

I also have a Medusa since a couple of days. I haven't had any time to test it yet though.

You have a Falcon to test custom frequencies by any chance?

DoG wrote: 08 Jul 2022 10:36 CoolNovelties have SCART-cables.

I also have a Medusa since a couple of days. I haven't had any time to test it yet though.

Thanks for all the pointers about a SCART cable!

I received my Medusa this week and had some time to test it today, I must say so far I’ve got mixed feelings about it.

First test was with my main 600XL, usually plugged into a CRT. Using a known good SCART cable, I immediately got a picture but overall a bit blurry. I would say the picture is not as sharp as on the Philips 8833 CRT unless I activate scan lines on the Medusa.
So overall, mushy picture with the SCART cable, but it also might be due to the interpolation of my LCD (Benq EL2870).
This 600XL has a Sophia 2 with analog output but I never managed to get this to work whatever the settings I used. Still, it’s not listed as supported, I guess I’ll need to check with Lotharek and provide some information.

After the 8-bit, I had to try the ST, I took a French STE without all mandatory fixes but with the extra capacitor on the video circuit. The STE picture was a bit dim and blurry with noticeable vertical banding in low and medium resolution using SCART (I tried two different cables, same results). Normally Medusa is supposed to recognize the input signal, but it kept displaying “unknown PAL”
Moving to hi-res using Uwe’s adapter and a VGA cable gave a quite good picture, and adjusting the phase finally gave a perfect picture.

Testing a second STE, a UK version without mandatory fixes but with the extra capacitor added to the video circuit, Imgot much better results in low and med resolution. The picture is much sharper and the signal is correctly recognized by the Medusa as ST low or ST medium. The only issue I didn’t manage to fixe here is an horizontal waviness and some noise in black areas.

To finish on a positive note, I tried with a second LCD monitor, Dell P2418HZ, which I can’t get to work with OSSC and it worked pretty well with the Medusa.

All tests were performed with the latest Medusa firmware downloaded and installed this morning. Both STEs have a fully recapped PSU.

So next steps is to provide sufficient information about Sophia 2 output to Lotharek and to check my French STE’s power supply voltage.

I wonder if the French ST is set up for SECAM video rather than PAL and has slightly different timings.

No, French STs and STEs were all PAL, Medusa and OSSC always display PAL on the OSD. By the time STs were sold in France, SCART and PAL/SECAM were mandatory on all TVs, so Atari didn’t bother releasing SECAM STs. But on the other hand we didn’t get STs with modulators as the PAL signal was only guaranteed on the SCART input, not the antenna.

Quick update, after fiddling a bit with some parameters (pixel per line) on the Medusa, the horizontal waviness is gone and the picture is pretty nice.
I guess that depending on the PSU and overall video circuit condition after all these years, there is not a « one size fit all » setting for STs.

Thanks for the review :)

I did one more material about Medusa. Lots of views from the Atari MSTE/TT/Falcon system.

I got my Medusa today, its a great bit of kit. With my samsung monitor low and medium resolutions via the scart input on the Medusa look great. Using the vga input with an ST2VGA adapter plugged into the ST I great great pictures in all three resolutions. I am very happy.