NesDev designs a console

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lidnariq
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by lidnariq »

I'm not.

Look at how much difficulty the people who have gotten into making just all-new-parts nixie tubes have. CRTs are all that complexity, plus needing leaded glass (which is simply unlawful in the EU) and toxic chemicals (the phosphors) and the complexity of building a functional aperture grille.

Building a mechanically scanned laser raster display will be cheaper.
tepples
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by tepples »

lidnariq wrote:leaded glass (which is simply unlawful in the EU)
When did that come into effect? Last I checked, the counterpart to RoHS in the (U.S.) State of California exempted leaded glass in CRTs because the EU RoHS exempted leaded glass in CRTs.
EXAMPLE: The EU RoHS Directive exempts lead in cathode ray tubes (CRTs). If a particular CRT television contains lead in the glass of the CRT above the 0.1% maximum concentration value (MCV) for lead, and if the lead in the CRT glass is the only substance that exceeds the MCV, both the EU and California would allow the sale of that television.
lidnariq
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by lidnariq »

You're right. I'm not certain how I'd gotten that impression.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by FrankenGraphics »

RoHS compliance or not, maybe a new CRT is impractical given its special parts.

I think these general criteria would make sense, for starters:
-Be able to build from off the shelf components to a high degree.
-Everything outside the PSU box should be operable at non-fatal voltage levels
-May be offered as a final product, DIY kit, bare PCB + BOM. One hobbyist may commision another who's more confident with a soldering iron to populate a board and/or assemble the whole thing.

So the challenge then becomes coming up with a non-crt screen that:
-renders correctly as far as the eyeball is concerned
-without delays or interleaves
-will work with a light gun

Then, perhaps:
-More or less modular approach:
--External PSU
--External sound
--You pick which "shield"/"hat" suits your need the best for a reciever/decoder; and perhaps a sound module or remote control reciever if you want that. Third parties may offer their own designs or you can stripboard one yourself.

Pins may be an initial extra hardware cost, but you gain the freedom of adding in whatever you want and may omit the rest. RF, composite, scart...
psycopathicteen
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by psycopathicteen »

I don't think you need to worry that much about a CRT because most HDTVs support composite and component anyway. Plus you can just make it HDMI in the first place. The question is to either use HDMI timing and convert it to composite/component, or vice versa.
93143
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by 93143 »

psycopathicteen wrote:I don't think you need to worry that much about a CRT because most HDTVs support composite and component anyway.
Not well enough. They'll upconvert (and deinterlace, even if it's supposed to be 240p) but the image quality is terrible, and more importantly the lag is really really bad.

Last Christmas holiday, I played a game of Mario Golf with my brother, my sister, and my brother's wife. I was the only one who picked a non-straight shooter (Mario, because he has one of the longest drives). This screwed me when my mom decided to take a nap in the next room and we had to move upstairs and plug the N64 into an HDTV. I couldn't hit the fairway to save my life; the timing was off by at least a tenth of the swing bar. My brother ended up beating me with Plum.

If we'd been playing Duck Hunt we'd have had to quit.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Not to mention vertical scroll-staggering and strobe effect problems.
Pokun
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by Pokun »

Not forgetting the lack of light gun and light pen compatibility.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by rainwarrior »

Sumez wrote:I'm absolutely certain we will see new production runs of CRT monitors in the future - targeting collectors, fans of retro electronics, retro arcades, etc.

They will most likely be very good quality, but also extremely expensive due to a lack of mass production. Just like how new dot matrix displays are more expensive nowadays than a much higher resolution full color LCD screen.
There are companies still making CRTs but most of them are actually of very low quality. Between that, and the current availability and relatively low price of good quality used CRTs, I can't imagine someone being able to make a good business out of artisanal CRTs in the next decade at least.

You see the same thing with other niche electronics, like floppy disks: they're still being made and the quality levels are horrible.
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TOUKO
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by TOUKO »

Sumez wrote:Although the love for the PC Engine is typically strong, the user base is naturally a lot more limited than the NES which is one of the most famous video game systems ever, and in the recent years it has been regaining a very strong presence based on nostalgia as well.
I love the PC Engine myself, but I'm more interested in making a game that other people would have a genuine interest in as well. Also, the limitations of the NES is a part of what draws me to it.

I've seen some Kickstarter projects of games with a proposed PCE release though:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sa ... 6-pc-steam
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sa ... video-game
Yes in general you want to code for your childhood's system,and it's normal, but it's strange that not even one guy here tried to do it . :(

Those kickstarter projects was started by some pcenginefx folks .
Pokun
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by Pokun »

Well we are a number of people on the forum that have coded for the PC Engine. I've read through the dev docs but I still don't fully understand how everything works to the point that I would be able to make a game (I'm not sure how to do a main loop considering vblank etc). I've made simple programs that detects hardware, displays text and played around with the PSG sound channels though.

Lots of homebrew are made using HuC (CC65 still isn't up for it), but Chris Covell started making a great beginner guide for people that wanna start out with PC Engine assembly.
Last edited by Pokun on Sun Nov 26, 2017 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Bregalad wrote:
tokumaru wrote: Why would anyone target CRT displays in 2017? Sure we keep them around for the old stuff, but it's only a matter of time until it becomes impossible to find a working CRT.
By this reasoning, it's only a matter of time until it becomes impossible to find any working digital device or anyhting that uses electricity to function...
:lol:
93143 wrote:Not well enough. They'll upconvert (and deinterlace, even if it's supposed to be 240p) but the image quality is terrible, and more importantly the lag is really really bad.
This times a million. Although the quality and lag vary considerably (the TV in my living room has a whole quarter second of lag, while the TV in the living room at my friend's house has almost no lag), you're just much better off with a CRT.

It looks ridiculous, but this is actually the setup I have in my room. (Notice the non pissed-on SNES. :lol: ) Unfortunately, my N64 and Genesis are at my father's house, and the Switch is such a POS that it can't pick up the WiFi from my room.
Two TVs.png
rainwarrior wrote:There are companies still making CRTs but most of them are actually of very low quality. Between that, and the current availability and relatively low price of good quality used CRTs, I can't imagine someone being able to make a good business out of artisanal CRTs in the next decade at least.
Would it just make more sense at this point to make an OLED TV with an actually good analog to digital converter if you were to target the "retro" market? From my understanding, CRTs have had digital TVs beat for the longest time in that they can display both pure black and pure white next to each other, but now that OLED is a thing, digital TVs can do the same.
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TmEE
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by TmEE »

I'm slowly working on something along the lines of an universal CRT driver board, to get most out of existing tubes and allow them to be used with moden inputs etc.... All the larger screens have decent enough dot pitch to show 1280x960 with not a whole lot of loss, and you can feed them higher resolutions and it would still look usable, free subpixel scaling helps a bit lol. I'm still learning about the power supply side of things and I have not yet tested how far can non monitor deflection coils be pushed, but the rest is mostly figured out and will need prototype to be actually built. I will not be making any futher fuzz about it until there's actually something working going on.
...But my motivations will run really low once OLED stuff is affordable (and there isn't any retarded image processing things going on with their inputs but hopes are low on that regard though). One can only hope a monitor doesn't have any unnecessary things in it though, but for now, monitors cost even more than the TVs do... In theory it would be possible to scan an OLED panel like a CRT, getting light gun/pen compatibility and whatnot, but that requires the electronics in the panel to allow updating individual pixels rather than entire rows or columns, i.e passive matrix style rather than active matrix similar to how plasma screens work (which are now no longer manufactured).
Another future project is pretty much an universal digital panel driver, to fix up the image processing aspect, but it won't happen anytime soon either lol.
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Bregalad
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by Bregalad »

Although the quality and lag vary considerably (the TV in my living room has a whole quarter second of lag, while the TV in the living room at my friend's house has almost no lag), you're just much better off with a CRT.
You should probably enable some "gaming mode" in order to reduce input lag, all modern TVs have this. You should also enable some kind of bluring filter to make image from old consoles acceptable, as they contain high-frequenties which are supposed to be filtered out by the TV. (In NES's case this is due to color bust being made of square waves instead of sine waves I think).
It looks ridiculous, but this is actually the setup I have in my room. (Notice the non pissed-on SNES. :lol: )
You have an american SNES. Japanese Super Famicoms and european SNES tend to look like piss colour.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: NesDev designs a console

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Bregalad wrote:all modern TVs have this.
The one in my living room actually doesn't, and it's from 2015. :|
Bregalad wrote:You should also enable some kind of bluring filter to make image from old consoles acceptable
The problem is that it blurs it too much. It looks noticeably sharper on my CRT, which I prefer. Not to mention it's only 30fps instead of 60fps.
Bregalad wrote:You have an american SNES. Japanese Super Famicoms and european SNES tend to look like piss colour.
There are lots of yellow American SNESs as well:

Image
I have no idea why it seems to affect some and not others.
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