New TV + original NES = black screen flicker

[bluto 4912]

Got a new toshiba led 4k 1080 LED and hooked my 30 yr old NES up only to find the screen blacks out very frequently, but it works fine on my 6 yr old plasma. 

Is it the 60hz? 4K? 1080? LED? that's causing it? IE I plan on returning it but need to know what I should get instead to make it work (game room)

[elfenix 34221]

https://www.retrorgb.com/hidefnes.html

 

edit: that's just a review, the kit is here:
https://www.game-tech.us/

Edited February 18, 2019 by elfenix

[HornsOverIthaca 2333]

I installed the Hi-Def NES mod a few months ago.  Looks amazing. 

You could also get something like an Analogue Nt Mini.  Those are very stylish and work well.

[bluto 4912]

It's not the appearance/sharpness it just blacks out like the tv cant handle it... and that mod costs about as much as the tv

Edited February 20, 2019 by bluto

[elfenix 34221]

55 minutes ago, bluto said:

It's not the appearance/sharpness it just blacks out like the tv cant handle it... and that mod costs about as much as the tv

iirc the NES uses a bunch of holes in the NTSC standard to render certain things.  since those aren't "book" and since ATSC TVs only emulate NTSC, it may just be that the things the NES is doing break the NTSC emulation at times. 

but i'm just pulling that completely out of my ass.

[HornsOverIthaca 2333]

Something about that explanation sounds familiar though.

[Rimbo 25908]

On 2/19/2019 at 11:02 PM, elfenix said:

iirc the NES uses a bunch of holes in the NTSC standard to render certain things.  since those aren't "book" and since ATSC TVs only emulate NTSC, it may just be that the things the NES is doing break the NTSC emulation at times. 

but i'm just pulling that completely out of my ass.

The original CGA adapter for the IBM PC did similar things. Early PC games, like the initial release of Starflight, used hacks in the CGA adapter to get it to display a much greater selection of colors -- and more at one time -- than it was designed to be capable of. However, every other IBM graphics adapter since doesn't support this function natively, so e.g. I had to type in a hack to get Starflight to work, and EA eventually released a new version for it.

Ironically, DosBox can now emulate those hacked CGA modes, which is super cool.

This is one reason I'm glad I got the VGA adapter for my Dreamcast while one was still available. And why I have an old analog-capable TV in storage, just in case.

[Rimbo 25908]

Relevant Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors

[bluto 4912]

Damn interesting stuff. Going to return the tv this weekend and try another with dif specs

[HornsOverIthaca 2333]

On 2/21/2019 at 7:08 PM, Rimbo said:

The original CGA adapter for the IBM PC did similar things. Early PC games, like the initial release of Starflight, used hacks in the CGA adapter to get it to display a much greater selection of colors -- and more at one time -- than it was designed to be capable of. However, every other IBM graphics adapter since doesn't support this function natively, so e.g. I had to type in a hack to get Starflight to work, and EA eventually released a new version for it.

Ironically, DosBox can now emulate those hacked CGA modes, which is super cool.

This is one reason I'm glad I got the VGA adapter for my Dreamcast while one was still available. And why I have an old analog-capable TV in storage, just in case.

Here's a video from one of my favorite youtubers about CGA graphics.

 

 

[elfenix 34221]

"laptop"

[Rimbo 25908]

On 2/24/2019 at 7:47 AM, HornsOverIthaca said:

Here's a video from one of my favorite youtubers about CGA graphics.

 

 

If this video tweaks you in all the right ways, check out how Apple II graphics worked.

It was absolutely brilliant for its era. This video covers the very elementary basics: One byte was used to control 7 pixels in a row. If two pixels next to each other were both turned on or both off, you'd get white or black; if you turned on either one bit or the other, you'd get one of two colors. The first bit determined which pair of colors you'd get: Either magenta/green, or orange/blue. This is why the screen width is a multiple of 7 -- either 280 pixels wide in monochrome, or 140 in color.

And the way it worked was similar to the way the multicolor CGA graphics hack worked: It hacked the composite signal and the way the electron beam in the CRT scanned horizontally. If you looked carefully, you could actually see that the pixels shifted in space when you switched between palettes. Hardcore nerdity on how the NTSC composite signal and "colorburst" worked.

Now, If you were really smart about this, you could actually do 560 pixels across in monochrome -- on any Apple II, even the 1977 model. And this is what they did to eventually enable "double hi-res" mode on the //e and //c computers later on; these computers came with a memory expansion and 80-column mode with some extra wiring and circuitry that turned that 560-pixel-wide monochrome mode into something official and some timing changes to allow for the same 16 colors of low-res mode to show up in the 140-pixels-wide mode. Nerd out on this weirdness here. This is a 9-parter that actually shows you how to program it...

 

[Rimbo 25908]

And this seems like as good a time as any to share Trixter's amazing shit done with an original CGA IBM PC:

 

And of course... FMV on an IBM PC 5150 (plus CGA, plus Sound Blaster Pro):

 

And then 7 years later he pulled off this shit (PC XT this time, basically the original PC + a hard disk)

 

Edited February 25, 2019 by Rimbo