MCE Blaster: Pi Pico based MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA adapter (Part 1)

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We are presenting how vintage computer video works and how we can build a Raspberry Pi Pico based MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA adapter.
EGA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhance...
CGA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_G...
MDA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mon...
MCE Blaster Part 2: • MCE Blaster MDA,CGA,EG...
The Rasteri's (@TheRasteri) adapter:
- • EGA/VGA Graphics Deep ...
Necroware's (@necro_ware) mce-adapter:
- • Investigating Hercules...
- • Updates of my MCE-Adap...
Resources:
15KHz modern monitors: 15khz.wikidot.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VG...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
Adapters: www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/mda_...
Video modes: minuszerodegrees.net/video/bi...
R-2R DAC: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resisto...
GBS-Control Mod: ramapcsx2.github.io/gbs-control/
Music:
- Simulation Terminated from Quest V Reorchestrated and Remixed
- Academy Hallways from Quest V Reorchestrated and Remixed
- Battle Cruiser from Quest V Reorchestrated and Remixed
- Stalker from the Duke Duke Dance Party Album
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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1 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 47

@alisontelford9339 Месяц назад

Hello! This is brilliant. I built Necroware's MCE adapter after seeing his video and was thinking "if only this were incorporated into a complete solution".... YAY!! Looking forward very much to your progress on this - already looks pretty impressive! Thank you for doing this work.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Thanks!

@adriansdigitalbasement Месяц назад

Cool project! You may struggle with timing because every old EGA card seems to have slightly different pixel clock rates. There was no exact standard and when creating profiles for the RGB2HDMI project I often had to tweak things slightly from EGA to EGA card. Same for MDA vs Hercules cards .... Also slightly different even from text to graphics mode. It's akin to the auto timing stuff VGA LCD monitors have to employ as VGA cards all vary slightly as well.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yeah getting it to sample the input perfectly will probably be an issue. I am actually synchronizing sampling per line so as long as it's not too off I may be able to get rid of the sampling artifacts. But yeah I definitely need to do more testing. Thanks for the feedback :)

@einsteinx2 Месяц назад

And the RP2040 PIO strikes again! I love seeing all the cool things people do with these chips!

@retrotechinsanity Месяц назад

Awesome project! Would love something like this for the VDC output on the C128.

@waytostoned Месяц назад

This is awesome! Been in the market for this very thing, and was hoping for something based off a pi pico or zero as I have a few hanging around. TYVM!

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yeah, the Picos are perfect for this kind of stuff!

@BeniD82 Месяц назад

That is impressive work, looking forward to your progress!

@thecorruptedbit5585 Месяц назад

The Pi Pico has been a game-changer for signals processing and emulation projects like this one. And it's so cheap, too!

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yeah it removes the need for additional hardware logic in many cases.

@techdistractions Месяц назад

Excellent video, thank you for a perfect explanation!

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it :)

@stamasd8500 Месяц назад

Very nice, can't wait for the problems to be fixed.

@Vanessaira-Retro Месяц назад

Another great video and project.

@GadgetUK164 Месяц назад

Great project - it's coming along very nicely =D

@harvaldi Месяц назад

Great work. I wish You success with solving those issues.

@megasizer5119 23 дня назад

ty kermit.

@Chriva Месяц назад

Calibrating sample point on a moving target must be a real nightmare? Making the rp2040 process pixels at insane speed is fairly simple with chained DMA and strategic assembler code but that part... I'm having a headache just thinking about what you have to deal with. Extremely impressive! :)

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Getting the sampling right is the trickiest part, but I think I can improve upon the current version quite a bit. Not sure if we can get it to work perfectly though. Yeah DMAs are an option, but we also need to do some computation with the input data for skipping the black borders, identifying the mode and adjusting the borders etc. But yes, it is definitely worth considering.

@laudennn Месяц назад

sweeeeeeeeeet! great vid, thanks!!

@TheRus13 Месяц назад

Конвертер по производительности быстрее чем сам компьютер и видеокарта :)

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Haha yeah :D

@luca6819 Месяц назад

Great job! I'm trying to find time to test and repair some old hardware, and this would come handy. Used to have an EGA monitor but at some point was thrown away because was just some old stuff taking dust; I told to not do that 😭

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Oh no, poor EGA monitor!

@JendaLinda Месяц назад

Would it be possible to transcode MDA/CGA/EGA directly to DVI? VGA is still quite flaky on LCD screens and capture devices. Would be nice to have the output in a modern-ish digital standard. I'm also wondering if it would be possible to repolace RAMDAC on a VGA card with DVI encoder.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yes, I think it should be possible, I will give it a try.

@knghtbrd Месяц назад

Very nice! The Pico is almost (but not quite) fast enough that it could actually be turned into an EGA card-with some help it probably could-but how many Tandys, Commodore 128s, and other PCs will this serve? Quite a few, I suspect! And it's going to cost less than any project involving its larger brother if you can resolve the last couple of issues. I'm excited for this project!

@az09letters92 Месяц назад

Maybe you could use two (or even more?) Picos and see if you could share the load between them. One could handle the ISA slot and forward data to the next one.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yeah implementing a simple video card for a slow machine should be doable.

@rasz Месяц назад

Before playing the video I got excited you resolved sampling frequency phase problems, but alas. You will need additional PLL clock with finetuning, like $2 Si5351A to feed base frequency into pico instead of its standard crystal. ps: there is also pico-rgb2hdmi project if you fancy adding hdmi/dvi output.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

I think the sampling issue is because I haven't actually set the sample timings correctly. But you may be right, I will need to do some additional testing. Ah, thanks for the pointer! If this one works well, that would be the next logical step.

@kenabi Месяц назад

how long until we get a full on card solution that replaces the mda/cga/ega video cards entirely to output vga native, but the software sees the older formats on a case by case basis? i can't imagine its going to be much longer.

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yeah it shouldn't be impossible to do both the interfacing with the ISA bus and driving the display, at least for an 8-bit card. The only issue is that the Pico is almost not fast enough. A newer slightly faster version of the Pico would just make it a lot easier.

@AncapDude Месяц назад

Wouldn't it be easier to convert it to some modern digital signal instead of analogue?

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

Yes, I think it should be possible to generate a digital signal.

@Megatog615 Месяц назад

would it be possible to convert MDA/CGA/EGA to DisplayPort instead?

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

As long as it does not use more than one core it should be possible. I think there is some project out there that drives a display port with a Pico. Funny enough the hardest part is not driving the display, but rather getting the input from MDA/CGA/EGA :)

@AtreidaeChibiko Месяц назад

That Duke music during the testing l.. chef kiss

@sonicbro6446 Месяц назад

I don't want to be disrespectful but your voice reminds me a bit of professor Von Schlemmer from Adventures of Sonic the hedgehog, the video is good though

@xero110 Месяц назад

I'm far from an expert, but how about a Pi Zero?

@scrap_computing Месяц назад

The Pi Zero has a much faster main CPU but it is lacking the programmable PIO state machines of the Pico. These state machines run deterministically and give you cycle-accurate timings, which is required for sampling the input and generating the output that drives the VGA. For example, you can ask the PIO to generate a signal that is high for X nanoseconds and low for Y nanoseconds, and it will produce a perfect signal. As far as I know this can't be done with either the main ARM core of the Pico or the ARM cores of the Pi Zero, or any other faster Pis.

@xero110 Месяц назад

@@scrap_computing Yeah, my guess would've been timing since you didn't use it, but thanks for the explanation.

@adriansdigitalbasement Месяц назад

The RGB2HDMI project handles this with an external CPLD to perfectly synchronize and digitize the input signal, then you have all the power of the Pi Zero framebuffer to handle scaling and every custom digital video format imaginable. It's one of the most phenomenal solutions around for retro display and has no downsides outside of requiring a Pi Zero, SD card and the CPL hat (so costs more.)

@Jackpkmn Месяц назад

Can we stop this madness of shoving a computer powerful enough to emulate the computer into another computer to act as a peripheral?

@einsteinx2 Месяц назад

Haha it is a bit ridiculous when you stop and think about it, but these chips open up so many possibilities for retro computers and game consoles how could we possibly stop?! 😅