On Tuesday (01/29/2013 at 09:02PM +0000), Tony Duell wrote: Yes... although I've seen another reference that says it runs at 56KHz. That could be wrong. I've not yet found the statement in the VT240 docs that says what the terminal actually sources... Hmm... yes. You guys are spoiled with this SCART thing :-) SCART has separate sync? RGBHV? Not hard to build a sync separator I suppose. I'm thinking a guy could make a major project out of this and use three high speed A/D ahead of some ARM based board that could acquire the video, scale and convert to taste and then output on HDMI. Should be able to handle lots of legacy analog formats that way. On the other hand, I thought an existing something would be easier to find maybe in the video game restoration world or other places where RGB video was king. OK. Thanks for the good advice. The VR241 that I acquired will need lots of cleaning before it ever gets powered on. It looks like it has gone to the bottom of the sea and back but I know that's not the case. I think it was used in an auto parts or repair shop and it is one grimey piece currently. However, I have just confirmed that two VT240 work with nice clean video on another monitor so that is good news and very much worth the price ($0) :-) Chris -- Chris Elmquist

On Tuesday (01/29/2013 at 10:35PM -0500), Dave McGuire wrote: Yes-- as I guess was confirmed by the reasonable image on a Sony studio monitor. The image was a little too wide and a little too tall for the Sony though... which has no controls to reduce height and width but it did sync just fine. Indeed. Especially impressed that it's got a T11 in it in addition to the 8085 that helps with the video. These two will need a good scrubbing but electrically, so far, so good. I've got more than a dozen LK201 keyboards from this lot too... which will also need, ah, scrubbing and delousing. The fate of the 10 or more terminals that should go with the keyboards gives one pause-- but we can't save them all I guess... Chris -- Chris Elmquist

On Wednesday (01/30/2013 at 01:38AM -0200), Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: Some nice Intersil parts (a little more modern) exist today too. eg, http://www.intersil.com/en/products/audiovideo/video-ics/video-sync-separat… Any hints as to where this exists? A home project or commercially available? I'd like to hear more... Chris -- Chris Elmquist

On Wednesday (01/30/2013 at 11:28AM -0500), David Riley wrote: oh... excellent. I'd pay $150 for such a thing as long as it converts to a standard that will be around for a while-- such as DVI/HDMI. It would be fine if it puts a letter box around the legacy image too-- all the way around-- and doesn't up convert so that one pixel from the legacy turns into say, five on the modern display. I'm not a big fan of blooming the image. I'm after as crisp of a image on the new display as we had with the original tube when it was operating correctly. The only thing I was brainstorming about when a CPU is involved is that you could also fork the video into something like VNC protocol and send it over a network for remote display. Chris -- Chris Elmquist

On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:30 PM, Chris Elmquist <chrise at pobox.com> wrote: Having a user-programmable FPGA means you can do whatever you want (as long as you can program an FPGA, which has been a somewhat contentious topic around here). I'd certainly be looking to at least support pixel doubling as well as the type of interpolation one usually sees on LCD computer monitors as a stock feature; I know at least I'd prefer doubling over interpolation, but lots of people have an aversion to "jaggies". Then again, I grew up playing lots of pixel-doubled games when I was growing up. What a lot of the nicer console emulators support as far as upconversion is a simplified attempt to mimc the blooming on cheap color TVs of the '80s, was kind of important). I'd like to be able to do something like that, too. Given the option, I'd like to put USB and Firewire on it as well, which would generally need a CPU to at least set up a framebuffer. Any reasonable design would require a CPU for housekeeping purposes, at least; no reason it can't be directing traffic out to USB/Firewire/Ethernet as well. So far, between the FPGA, a small microcontroller, HDMI encoder and a semi-beefy quad ADC (video people: 12 bits at max 65 MHz ought to be enough for a lot of applications, right?), an audio ADC and associated buffering, the parts come to about $110 in quantity 10. That doesn't factor in the PCB (which won't be cheap at those quantities) or the assembly (most of which could be done by hand), but it gives a reasonable picture. It also doesn't factor in the connectors, but those generally aren't expensive. I've a lot on my plate, though. I'd need more spare cycles before I handle this, and I still want to get more done on my swiss-army-knife QBUS board before I commit to any more projects. But if anyone wants to help with either of those... - Dave

I can assure youy that the VR241, as used o nthe PROs, Rainbow, VT240, etc runs at (US) TV rates. The VT240 box -- at least the one I've just looked at -- has 2 video output connecotrs. One is a DA15 plug, with a pinout similar ot the PRO/Rainbow. I believe you can conenct a VR201 or VR241 there. The other is a BNC and presumably outputs composite monochrome video. I've never seen a printset for th VT240 (it wasn't on bitsavers last time I looked), and I've not traced out schematics of mine yet. But the video section looks very similar ot a Rainbow colour video board -- a 7220, RAM, a couple of PALS (maybe even the same as those in the 'BOW0, resistors fo the DACs, etc. One minor suprise when you look around the VT240 board is that there's a T11 in there. No, it's composite sync. The SCRT connecotr has composite (colour) video input and output pins and R,G,B inputs (on a TV set). If you use the RGB inputs, you use the composite video input as a composite sync pin. THere is, of course, a common nd cheap ARM-based board with an HDMI output. Pity the video processor is almost totally uncodumented. As I said, SCART (presumably includign the RGB signals) to HDMI interfaces are not unheard-of over here. -tony

On Thursday (01/31/2013 at 04:40PM -0500), John Wilson wrote: yes-- and there were other documents on bitsavers even last weekend when I went looking for them, http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/terminal/vt240/ EK-VT240-RM-002_VT240_Programmer_Reference_Manual_Oct84.pdf 13-May-2008 17:33 14M EK-VT240-TM-001_VT240_Technical_Manual_Aug84.pdf 05-Jul-2012 03:59 7.3M VT240_Schematic_Jun83.pdf 05-Jul-2012 03:59 4.4M Good stuff. Thanks guys. Chris -- Chris Elmquist