More C64/C128 Video Output Options!

[Music] hi it's Jan Vita and as you probably know I am a huge fan of the Commodore 64 computer and derivatives like Commodore 128 and over time I accumulated quite a few little add-ons and modern refined ways to output video from the Commodore 64 I made a video about making my own s-video cable that I shared on YouTube and also made a video about the new or still upcoming component mod and I also made a video about the clear video which is just a refined version of the classical luma fix that gets rid of the stripes the vertical jail bars that are introduced by the Vic to graphics chip in the Commodore 64 yeah I'm just going to go ahead and introduce some ways of connecting the Commodore 64 to monitors of all kinds and I'm going to start with a little PCB that IDO Arana sent me quite a while back actually shot the footage you're about to see when I shot the footage for the clear video 64 video clear video 64 video yeah that's why it's probably going to look a tiny bit different but that's the RF out board that he sent me I'm just going to put in the footage now before we get into looking at things let me quickly point out that this video was kindly sponsored by a PCB way who are an awesome manufacturer of prototype PCBs and also larger scale projects of all kinds so if you want to have your PCB design manufactured I strongly recommend checking them out they have really good service and really reasonable prices I got another c64 video output related delivery from E to Arana who runs the site around a net that you probably are aware of if you are retro computer tinkerer it sells a lot of nice accessories for computers basically and he sent me in this so here's what this is it's the replacement for the Commodore 64 RF modulator that gives me the composite RCA jack and like little funnel plug audio out which is pretty handy to quickly connect this to modern stuff like that we could connect a little speaker or something this is an extension board that extends this four main boards that have the long hard you later version and you can use it like this or the short modulator version and actually thought about just putting it into this case and leave the clear 64 video in there as well but that's not going to work because this is interfering with the outputs and it has quite some circuitry on its own some capacitors and stuff and I don't want to risk messing up the signal from the clear video thing so I'm just using another c64 I have a couple actually so you probably know this one's kind of my test c64 not recapped no no nothing it's just a stock c64 it works fine I don't think it has a sit ship at the moment but that can be replaced with something I guess so for some reason I'm having really a hard time to capture the video out from this one but yeah it just looks like a normal old brethren c64 with an old Vic to ship some color bleed and stuff like that not that many vertical stripes j-bars so yeah this is the s-video or luma chroma output it actually doesn't look bad let's see what it does if I remove the RF modulator and replace it with a DOS little PCB [Music] there we go and as you can see this has the long version so we are going to need a little extension so first same procedure just using my disordering station to remove the RF modulator all together so wonder if I love to Danny paths no no pets lifted yay so here's the description on our on Annette dotnet actually our F out a RF modulator replacement board for c64 this part is a complete replacement for the RF modulator of DC 60 order lots of composite output and audio it's also designed to work with long and short RF module footprint yes extended or for motherboard with big one installation you will need to measure the voltage between the pin 1 and pin 8 on the c64 board if you had 50 cm 1 then you can solder all the four pins the right pin row if you get 12 volt or nine volt you need to remove the pin 1 from the pin relief only 3 and then connect 5 volts source to the connector on top of those four pins check the images ok you will need to measure between pin 1 and pin 8 on the c64 but let's do that obviously we are going to connect the power for this and there's our pin 1 and there's our pin 8 volts DC turn on the commodore 64 and measure 1 and 8 and we have 12 volts DC can't see it of course because of rent in front of it so that we are 12 volts DC okay i need to remove pin 1 from the pin row that means this pin here to remove that altogether just gonna bite it so there we go removed it just clipped the plastic part and a toe left this unsoldered so i can clip this easily I'm going to solder this in myself so we need to connect the 5 volt source to the connector on top of those 4 pits so there's our little extra extra power connecter +5 and ground shouldn't be a problem and it also says D if you got 5 Falls then you can connect it if you got 9 volts then you need to use the extra power for 5 volts yeah so first of all of course no matter what we have to solder the extension board on so this fits in this larger Breton case in order to line this up with the case actually put the port into the case no I think it should just fit if you push it all the way down and then it takes over the openings from the RF modulator which actually has an RCA jack that's just for the RF signal for the antenna signal TV antenna signal and it has the little switch to switch the TV channel and that's taken over by this as for the 5 volts and ground stuff to switch on the EC 64 there should be 5 volts here which they are are and a ground here probably that is really ground yep that's grown okay so we can just connect the two little spots here there [Music] there this should do the trick I guess so I actually made some refinements after putting this RF outboard by e2 in put a bit of Kapton tape below the context in the middle so that it doesn't short out with the board just kind of a protective measure otherwise we had to reposition it slightly because the connectors didn't quite line up now it's just fitting in perfectly and let me show you the output quality so I don't it's pretty difficult to see but the picture quality is way crisper then with the old RF modulator in place and that's actually normal because the older RF modulators introduced quite a bit of fuzziness into the picture if you haven't done so I recommend checking out Adrian black's video on the the issues he did a reverse engineering effort of the classic RF modulators and also came up with a fix where you can just bypass the RF modulator with very simple modifications and you get a way better picture all puts you just can't use the RF modulator anymore so this mod by adel makes it easy to congest connect a nice RCA cable to just hook up any modern-day or slightly modern-day monitor that has an RCA composite input to the c64 which is a very nice feature indeed and the old output still works for for everything you need to connect there so that is just fed through there and you get the same output just in a slightly higher quality especially for the older port revisions where the RF modulator was kind of crap you get a way crisper picture by just removing it and replacing it with a replacement circuit like this there a couple of different replacement circuits on the market and there's also Adrian's method that I mentioned where you just cut some components and have a bypassed RF modulator basically so this is a nifty thing I'm going to link everything below in the description where to buy this and also Adrienne's video in case you just want to watch your RF modulator kind of a different approach that utilizes the original AV out of the commodore 64 is this contraption here which was designed by sven peterson actually and it is a little piece B in here the enclosure actually comes from cote de marchi on twitter i have no idea how your name is pronounced i'm sorry if i just butchered it i'm going to link his twitter account in the description and also the github where's when put this on for everybody to make your own you could use PCB way to have these PCBs produced of course the girl falls and everything you need for producing them are available on the github yeah this basically is just a little break out this takes the original kind of weird din socket this plugs into the back and then you have the nowadays more common connections with the composite it also has stereo audio capabilities in case you have second sit with one of the sit doubler PCBs or anything like that or a modern replacement sit that has stereo output you can jump her this to have stereo this is no mono so both RCA jacks are going to have the same signal and you also have the chroma there's a little if you remember my video where I made an s-video cable I just sold it on a little resistor in the chroma line this actually has this resistor built in and you can turn it off and turn by just unplugging this little jumper here so that's really nice really handy for quickly connecting a c64 with your regular cables without having the need to to produce your own cable or buy an expensive aftermarket cable it also has the audio in which is I've never seen it used really but thus it actually has an audio in it you can apply the filters to the audio in that you feed in there so yeah very nice device let's quickly plug this in and test it so yeah this just goes into the AV jack and you can just plug in I'm just plugging in the compositor because I haven't already set up here the quality should be the same as with the little the other RCA check basically yeah there we go it's basically the same signal just taken from another point on the mainboard here so yeah this is very handy if you don't want to mess around with the special cables the commodore 64 needs i'm also going to link everything you need to get one and maybe buy one i'm not sure if they are on sale at the moment but i'm going to find out and put a link in the description if you want one or if you want to make one of those so and here is another one that just came in from edo and that's for a whole different computers you can probably make out in the background here it's a Commodore 128 which has if you push down this button here it has an 80 columns mode actually and that is achieved by using a different graphics chip kind of like from the business line of Commodore was developed for business computers really originally so it is kind of a workaround and it's not really suitable to be used with the a composite output and s-video or luma chroma output that this normally has in 40 columns mode so they used a different connector which is this RGB ia connector and RGB I is a format that you basically can only use with old monitors in that support the input is basically CGA and you can only use that on specialized monitors unless you have some extra hardware and that's what this is this is basically an adapter that comes with enhance nice keyring or on a net this is website it's going to be linked in below and this plugs into the common 128 and the output is VGA so this will probably only work with multi sync VGA monitors because it's just a very simple conversion circuit on there but it's still going to be an RGB signal that VGA upscales can handle and I'm just going to try it briefly on my video a monster and then go with my OS SC upscaler that should be able to handle the signal let's see of course also got this in okay so the Commodore is set to 80 columns mode now should be and it should be connected to this regular monitor and see what it does it can handle this signal actually probably not wrong video modes yeah it can't handle the video mode so I'm just going to have to use an upscale surprise so now I have my OS se upscaler connected that should be able to handle the signal actually let's switch the Commodore on so here's my OS se and it's got a lock on the VGA a signal that is 15 kilohertz signal that most modern monitors won't be able to interpret correctly so you need an older multi sync montt or maybe some newer ones can do that too but most cons as you've seen mine can't I'm going to link a website below in the description where you can see some non-working monitors that you are going to be able to find for rather cheap money on eBay usually yeah they have to support 15 kilo it's think we actually got a picture let me show you yes it is what we get actually works should have color yay we have color we have color - and my enter is still broken so I'm using the numpad enter there's going to be another video about fixing the key part in this Commodore 128 get a bit of flicker but I guess that's okay I think that might be my wonky cabling what's going on here so yeah that seems to work just fine so this is actually really handy to have because I didn't have the possibility to connect this to a modern-day display in color actually I have a couple of monitors that can do RGB I so I could have connected this directly to an old-school monster but this of course a lot any of you especially if you want to do like screen recordings from the Commodore 128 and stuff like that that's really cool actually nice so the only issue I have with this is that you would have to use another kind of connector here to directly connected because this one if you remove these screws which we have to do in order to plug it into the common 128 these are usually screw holding down the shielding here as well so it would have to add some smaller screws here so it would still fit the common 128 or you would have to use an actual nineteen db9 cable so that would be another way of doing it but I think it's quite a nice quad nice thing actually to plug it directly into yeah that's the only criticism about this I have really otherwise it seems to work really fine yeah let me end this with a huge thank you to everybody who supported me over the past couple of weeks actually lost my job due to corona so now I'm going full-time YouTube at the moment there hope to be able to make a living of this so yeah check out my new library channel that I have linked in the description as well libraries like a new platform for videos it's like lb ry a new platform for videos that has kind of a decentralized approach which I find pretty interesting and yeah it's not quite all running smoothly because it's a new platform that you are going to find all the YouTube videos on there as well from now on my whole back catalogue is synced there as well so if you want to watch my stuff on another platform check out library and also I introduced channel memberships which are basically going to be the same as my patreon stuff so if you join it here on the membership page which you can buy a clicking little button below this video if you're not into patreon and still want to give me some support you can check that out and become a channel number and there's going to be the same tears and perks as for the patreon supporters so thank you all very much hope to see you again on this channel sometime I'm Ian Vita thanks for watching see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Jan Beta

Views: 42,164

Keywords: Jan Beta, Commodore, C64, C128, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Video, AV, Audio Video, Mod, output, VIC II, VIC-II, Chip, Cable, s-video, composite, component, RGBi, CGA, VGA, adapter, connector, DIN, D-SUB, 9-pin, modern, monitor, tv, display, picture, A/V, RFOUT, Edu Arana, KutilDomaci, Marty, Sven Petersen, Retrocomputing, Retrogaming, RetroMod, Computer, Vintage, Modification, PCB, Soldering, Desoldering, Review, Inspection, PCBWay, iRGB, RGB

Id: IbX_1DDRmgU

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020