Scandoubler recommendations

[srg86]

Hi

I'm getting an A1200 soon and all I have are SVGA monitors. There is a guy selling an "AMIVGA" thing but a past thread on this forum said it was rubbish.

Anyway what scan doubler would you all recommend?

thanks

srg

[srg86]

I've heard that they can get really hot.

srg

[srg86]

WOW those scanmagic's are expensive! ~£90!

hmm It'll have to wait

srg

[srg86]

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/1043/small/1_1291.jpg

Surly there's a better place to put it than under the hard drive, is that the only place for those hot chips??

srg

[srg86]

But couldn't the main PCB be moved a bit firther to the right, out of the way of the hard drive? The wires look like they'll reach.

srg

[srg86]

IC, does the RF shielding need removal or modification (is that shield really needed?) and does the hard drive fit neatly over it.

Also, any way of cooling it if necessary?

thanks
srg

P.S I just don't like the idea of ruining the machine (if the thing gets too hot), call it nerves. :-(

[srg86]

Jiffy wrote:
I also have an internal DCE scandoubler/flickerfixer in my 1200, complete with a 4 GB 2.5" harddisk. It's a bit of a hack to fit the harddrive as the normal cradle does not fit anymore after you place the flickerfixer: the legs are to short and holes of the cradle don't match the harddisk's either. On top of that, I had to remove the upper shielding. Apart from that, the whole setup functions reliably and doesn't suffer from overheating.

The image is very crisp on my 15" Compaq screen, taking in mind that is 'only' a 50 Hz signal ofcourse. I haven't noticed any side effects from removing the shielding of my A1200.

BTW, although it has been mentioned before in this thread: it is _not_ possible to fit the scandoubler somewhere else in your 1200 as it has to be placed directly on top of Alice.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the unit. The flickerfixer itself easily snaps in, replacing the harddrive is not hard either (I am _not_ a hardwarehacker), cutting, slicing and soldering is not necessary and you only have to remove the shielding.

50Hz hmmm.

On my PC, I see flicker at 85Hz refresh rate on plain white. This is enough to cause me eye strain. I run my PC monitor at 100Hz.

I do have one 1989 VGA 14" VGA monitor that afaik is single sync (it has black border arround the outside of the screen so the picture doesn't fill it). at 60Hz I don't see flicker, strange.

Could this cause me problems with scandoubled Amigas on PC monitors.

srg

P.S I don't have this flicker problem in TFT's of course (although I have none of those appart from ny laptop).

[srg86]

Jiffy wrote:
I also have an internal DCE scandoubler/flickerfixer in my 1200, complete with a 4 GB 2.5" harddisk. It's a bit of a hack to fit the harddrive as the normal cradle does not fit anymore after you place the flickerfixer: the legs are to short and holes of the cradle don't match the harddisk's either. On top of that, I had to remove the upper shielding. Apart from that, the whole setup functions reliably and doesn't suffer from overheating.

The image is very crisp on my 15" Compaq screen, taking in mind that is 'only' a 50 Hz signal ofcourse. I haven't noticed any side effects from removing the shielding of my A1200.

BTW, although it has been mentioned before in this thread: it is _not_ possible to fit the scandoubler somewhere else in your 1200 as it has to be placed directly on top of Alice.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the unit. The flickerfixer itself easily snaps in, replacing the harddrive is not hard either (I am _not_ a hardwarehacker), cutting, slicing and soldering is not necessary and you only have to remove the shielding.

Also, those of you with it fitted it in Desktop A1200s, I was wondering where you put the VGA connector. Have you made a hole for it above the other ports, or possibly left it dangling on it's lead outside the case. I was also wondering about that little plate on the left hand side of this image (it would be beneith the floppy drive), would the lead reach to mount the vga connector in that? Looking at A1200 motherboard pics, it would seem that it's unused.

thanks very much
srg

[srg86]

That would be great if possible, I really want to use a scan doubler as I don't want to use blurry TVs or have knackered 1084s or 1438s as it's cluttered with PC monitors as it is.

srg

[srg86]

With carefull measuring and a good modeling knife I would have thought placing it into the plasic cap could be possible (don't have a hot glue gun). Is the plastic quite thick though?

Anyway, pictures of the passive heatsync and new hard drive location would be great.

BTW are these totally nesseccary?

Anyway, if games look blurry, why not just play them on a TV (that may be what I'll do). It'll be interesting to see workbench in devastatingly sharp pictures  :-)

Anyway, just think how sharp LCDs are!!  :-o

Oh another thing, will the normal Amiga RGB port still work properly, even with a vga monitor connected to the can doubler at the same time.

srg

P.S. I'm not much of a modder.

[srg86]

Hyperspeed wrote:
First things's first - An Amiga outputs 15Khz horizontal frequency to be compatible with a TV.

A scandoubler willdouble 15Khz to make 30Khz. PCs use 31Khz.

This means you will have to get a `Multisync' monitor or one with good range of frequency such as an NEC or Philips.

One with digital memories for different screenmodes would be very handy, maybe 10x different `channel's so you can play games that don't make use of overscan.

Another thing you need to remember is that if you have anything but an A1200 you can't use an internal scandoubler. How do you think a CD32 gets by? I reccomend everyone get an external Scandoubler WITH integrated flicker-fixer so that it can be easily swapped between Amigas.

I also reccomend you switch to NTSC as my external EZ-VGA Plus (From Eyetech) gives me faint vertical lines in 50Hz mode and it's quite flickery and dark compared to NTSC @ 60Hz. I got the impression too that 50Hz was giving me some sort of 8-bit colour limit as opposed to HAM8's 19-bit (?)...
 
My unit does get hot, particularly in the summer but it should survive most extremes of heat. Putting a fan on is optional but a good idea Doppie.

:-)

You can use an Amiga without a scandoubler/FF if you put the Multisync-Productivity driver in Devs/Monitors/ and since it doesn't use video signals like native modes you get a small, crisper mouse pointer. Albeit at the expense of ChipRAM slowdown.

One other thing to remember is that an external Scandoubler/FlickerFixer will hog the 23-pin video port so you may not be able to use a genlock. An internal one would provide it's own extra port.

hmm

PAL = 15.6KHz * 2 = 31.2KHz
NTSC = 15.75KHz * 2 = 31.5KHz

Also my monitors will go as low as 30KHz so it's not too much of a problem.

The scanmagic/flickermagic T will work with A1200 and A4000. As the only Amigas I'd ever want to get are the A1200, A3000 and A4000 this should also not be too much of a prob (the A3000 has built in scandoubling as well as flicker fixing right?).

I also reccomend you switch to NTSC as my external EZ-VGA Plus (From Eyetech) gives me faint vertical lines in 50Hz mode and it's quite flickery and dark compared to NTSC @ 60Hz. I got the impression too that 50Hz was giving me some sort of 8-bit colour limit as opposed to HAM8's 19-bit (?)...

I think this is similar to k-disk's argument for not using external flicker fixers.

Anyway I'll keep what you said in mind  :-)

@Doppie1200
Another possibly idea is to drill a small discrete hole in the case next and in the bent part of the PCI bracket, then use a small nut and bolt, in theory to sould be harly noticable.

srg

[srg86]

On paper, both my 17" and my 15" SVGA monitors will sync down to 30KHz and 50Hz, we'll see what s*d's law has to say about it.

I also have a VGA monitor from Dec 1989 although I doubt that'll work.

BTW, I never understood the term overscan.

srg

[srg86]

I can see the pictures now and their very professional looking, infact if I didn't know better, I'd think they all looked like that out of the factory.

Anyway, now I know that the scandoubler will fit under the tinware, I will probably just fit it, replace the tinware and leave the hard drive where it is, unless the heat causes any stability troubles. (Has anyone had any stability trobles because of heat of this thing?

srg

[srg86]

IC

The modifacations to move the hard drive - did all you do was add new holes in the tinware (as well as the caddy legs), nothin g on the motherboard?

srg

[srg86]

Right, I've got my Amiga and my dad and I have fitted the internal scandoubler in a similar fashion to Doppie1200. First of all PAL modes are completely fine. I can't test the different screen modes yet because the prefs didn't work on the existing hard disk installation which was almost trashed anyway. I can't reinstall workbench because the disks are foobar'ed and won't even boot. Other disk are the same untill formatting. I've ordered another set of disks to use but if I have troubles with these then the drive could be out of calibration (need new drive).

Anyway, through the scan doubler, in a workbench screen (booted from HDIntall disk) I'm finding that Whites are slighly off, they have a slight yellowish tinge to them. Could this be because of the reduced colour pallette, is it because of the relative darkness of shadow mask monitors? Or is there something I've done wrong?

srg