Project: HDMI/DVI out for STFM

[Smonson]

Woohoo! Thanks man. I love it when a plan comes together!

[rubber_jonnie]

Woohoo! Thanks man. I love it when a plan comes together!

It's a sweet job!!

[exxos]

Woohoo! Thanks man. I love it when a plan comes together!

It's a sweet job!!

Welcome to the club

[Icky]

My adapter is hooked up, and boy is it sweet

I can't begin to tell you just how sharp the picture is, the clarity is superb, this adaptor truly brings the STFM video output into the 21st century!!

Once my DVI to HDMI adapter arrives, I'll post some pictures of hookups to my TV.

Great job!

Yes great job Smonson on this project and RJ on getting it up and running. It is a sight to be seen. Pictures don't do it justice.

Incidentally I swapped to Hi Res using a VGA adapter that was still plugged in, but not connected, and simply flicked the switch!

Yes I found that one out. You have to use the existing monitor cables to switch from Low/Med to Hi-Res or craft a switch.

I had discussed a while back with Smonson around this area if some sort of software or TOS patch could enable the Low, Med and Hi-Res buttons in the Set Preferences so that we could swap seamlessly from one to the other with this adaptor. This was a space that, well at least I do not have too much knowledge on.

I wonder if this could be possible for an ST with a board like this great HDMI/DVI adaptor? What would be the mechanics around it.

[exxos]

The main question is, if you power up in color mode, plug in the mono cable, cold reset, does it start up in mono ?

I'm not 100% sure, but I know I asked about all this some years ago. AFAIK, the ST needed to power up into mono because of setting up the VDI stuff and the ST did not detect or reset the VDI without powering down first.. if thats the case, then its likely impossible to add high-res into the desktop menu.

If however, mono is detected without powering down, it could be enabled in the desktop menu for mono, but it would likely still have to reset the machine to reset the VDI to mono mode.

[rubber_jonnie]

The main question is, if you power up in color mode, plug in the mono cable, cold reset, does it start up in mono ?

I'm not 100% sure, but I know I asked about all this some years ago. AFAIK, the ST needed to power up into mono because of setting up the VDI stuff and the ST did not detect or reset the VDI without powering down first.. if thats the case, then its likely impossible to add high-res into the desktop menu.

If however, mono is detected without powering down, it could be enabled in the desktop menu for mono, but it would likely still have to reset the machine to reset the VDI to mono mode.

If I power up in colour mode and plug in the mono cable, or a vga adapter with the switch set to mono mode, it automatically resets and switches to mono. If I cold reset it, it will stay in mono because the mono cable/vga adapter is still plugged in and telling the machine to go into mono. If I remove the mono cable or vga adapter it resets and flicks back to colour mode.

I suspect that you would need a way of emulating the mono detection on pin 4 of the video socket before you could enable it in the menu, but since that is a physical connection of pin 4 to ground, and ultimately pin 17 of the MFP68901, I can't see how it would be possible in TOS or in some sort of software package, though someone with more knowledge will prbably be able to correct me on this.

One thing I noticed this morning though, which is a bit troubling, is screen blanking and corruption. I didn't have a keyboard connected in the earlier pics, but I did this morning, and as I moved the mouse from "File" to "View" the screen went black for a second or two, and in mono the screen became corrupted (Vertical lines, will get pics later), and on moving the mouse subsequently recovered. In colour mode it didn't corrupt, but it did black out briefly.

Currently I don't have the vsync wire connected, so I will hook that up before I do anything else, because it might just be that simple. I'll also try all of the jumper combinations, and I can try an alternative mainboard.

I'll post more as soon as I can, but I have a family thing at lunchtime today, so it won't be until later.

[Smonson]

I think a modified TOS would be necessary because I'm sure TOS would be checking the mono-detect pin immediately after boot to determine which video parameters it should use. It'd have to be modified to figure it out some other way. I've simply wired a physical switch into my machine that grounds the pin.

Regarding the mod, vertical lines onscreen is likely to be caused by a problem in one of the datalines - you can run your finger over the pins on the front edge of the blue board while it's running to see if that influences the lines. Slightly separating the boards and then plugging them back in might fix it, as in the old faithful "reseat the chips" method.

Completely black screen could mean it's losing sync with the ST, in which case the small LEDs near the DVI connector will go out. Synchronisation only depends on DE, if vsync isn't connected (the first DE pulse after a long gap is how it detects the first line of video, and synchronises all the video timing off that). That's a bit odd if that's occurring.

[exxos]

Probably the easiest way is to just have a IO pin connected to the MONO pin and setup a register somewhere to switch it . Then just have a small PRG to set or clear that register to switch modes.

[Smonson]

Adding it to EmuTOS should be relatively straightforward, without any hardware changes. ...I say "relatively" by comparison with real TOS.

[rubber_jonnie]

Apologies, what with one thing and another over the weekend, I didn't get another look at this any further.

I will get some video of the problem and put it up, with a bit of luck later tonight.

I guess if we could have an IO pin that is programmable and could connect pin 17 of the MFP68901 to GND, then flipping rez is a thing