Megadrive video timings

For anything related to VDP (plane, color, sprite, tiles)

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HardWareMan
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Post by HardWareMan » Thu Jan 07, 2010 4:14 pm

Eke wrote:
No. On TV all gradients is good noticeable. Just matrix of the camera is overexposure and the black steps is disappear.
Hum, I'm not speaking about the black steps but the last light grey/white steps.

Also, on your oscilloscope capture, it clearly shows that the last four steps are "wider" than other steps. On the emulator, all steps have the same "width". Strange.
Yeah. I notice that too: not symmetric ladder. Why? Take a look at Gens! it's very strange...
Image
Eke wrote:Now, if you can sample MCLK, maybe you can do some of the video signal measures with a game using H32 mode and horizontal interrupt. Or use EDCLK as a reference (pixel clock is only output through some undocumented VDP register bits).
What game use H32 mode? Or give me demo, wich do that.

Eke
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Post by Eke » Thu Jan 07, 2010 6:15 pm

Yeah. I notice that too: not symmetric ladder. Why? Take a look at Gens! it's very strange...
I think the upper left is mixing shadow with normal then highlight with normal using pixel special codes to get a 16 (not 17) color gradient. However, it seems it does not work on real hardware as expected and highlight mode is not set for colors 0-7. Sourcecode would be useful here :wink:

Also note that the maximal palette is quite limited:
- colors 0,1,2,3 in normal mode are the same as colors 0,2,4,6 in shadow mode.
- colors 4,5,6,7 in normal mode are the same as colors 1,3,5,7 in highlight mode.
- color 7 in shadow mode is the same as color 0 in highlight mode.

The weirdest thing is still color levels are not linear but rather "compressed" in the middle. Very surprising.
What game use H32 mode? Or give me demo, wich do that.
You will also need a game or demo that uses Horizontal Interrupt, I will try to find one or make myself (the trickiest part I faced is how to display text in my ROM, can't find any good example of font embedding/displaying with sourcecode)

tomaitheous
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Post by tomaitheous » Fri Jan 08, 2010 1:58 am

Nice, nice :D Thank you very much.

I overlaid the images of the full range (S and H) and the normal range...
Image

In case anyone is interested. So, looks like Gen/GS has S/H/N mode wrong then. This also leads to me to stick with my original speculation; that the VDP doesn't have an internal 12bit DAC (with only S/H effecting the inbetween bits) - but rather it looks like the normal 8 steps are effected afterwards in analog.


Also, what are the steps in voltage in those charts? And in reference, how does the brightest white compare to say other RGB outputs (like vga, or amiga, etc)? I would like to get a reference as to how close 0xEEE is relative to 24bit 0xFFFFFF.

TmEE co.(TM)
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Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Fri Jan 08, 2010 6:18 am

Here's the source of my test thingy :
http://www.hot.ee/tmeeco3/SHLTEST.7z
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
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Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

HardWareMan
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Post by HardWareMan » Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:22 am

tomaitheous wrote:Also, what are the steps in voltage in those charts? And in reference, how does the brightest white compare to say other RGB outputs (like vga, or amiga, etc)? I would like to get a reference as to how close 0xEEE is relative to 24bit 0xFFFFFF.
You have Ultrascope. When you open waveform, you can turn on cursors. They will show you voltage. Then, you must make measurements and get delta from black level. If we assume black level as 0% and white level as 100%, you can calculate percentage of every color level and lay it on byte of computer's truecolor depth. Understand?

Eke
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Post by Eke » Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:01 am

Eke wrote:
Yeah. I notice that too: not symmetric ladder. Why? Take a look at Gens! it's very strange...
I think the upper left is mixing shadow with normal then highlight with normal using pixel special codes to get a 16 (not 17) color gradient. However, it seems it does not work on real hardware as expected and highlight mode is not set for colors 0-7. Sourcecode would be useful here :wink:
ok, I figured out, the color codes used in the test program (upper left window) have the same intensity in highlight and normal mode, that's why you don't see differences on real hardware.

The reason is that emulators (Kega as well but it got colors better than Gens) are wrong about colors in highlight mode. They probably add 8 to the 3-bits value like genesis plus did, the result is that colors go out of range (8-15 in the below table) and does not match normal colors as they should, which, as showed by the signal outputs, is wrong (highlight min & max values are resp. equal to shadow & normal max values).

If I use this instead:
/* normal mode : xxx0 (0-14) */
/* shadow mode : 0xxx (0-7) */
/* highlight mode: 1xxx - 1 (7-14) */
/* */
/* with xxx0 = original 4-bits CRAM value */
i got correct results:

Image


Another interesting thing is that Charles mentionned in his docs that the overscan area was always displayed at shadow intensity when the STE bits was set, however it does not seem to be the case here (top and bottom borders are shown at normal intensity). Maybe it's something particular to PAL ?

TmEE co.(TM)
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Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:14 am

I have never seen overscan in shadow, neither in 50 or 60Hz...

there is very slight difference in highlight on the bars on real HW, kinda like Gens is doing, but less noticable...

EDIT: I added one change to the test : http://www.hot.ee/tmeeco3/SHLTEST2.rar

I'll upload photos as soon as fileden cooperates.
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Eke
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Post by Eke » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:52 pm

HardWareMan wrote:
tomaitheous wrote:Also, what are the steps in voltage in those charts? And in reference, how does the brightest white compare to say other RGB outputs (like vga, or amiga, etc)? I would like to get a reference as to how close 0xEEE is relative to 24bit 0xFFFFFF.
You have Ultrascope. When you open waveform, you can turn on cursors. They will show you voltage. Then, you must make measurements and get delta from black level. If we assume black level as 0% and white level as 100%, you can calculate percentage of every color level and lay it on byte of computer's truecolor depth. Understand?
I measured this (in V):

Code: Select all

 Shadow   Highli    Normal 
-------- -------- ---------   
(0) 0.0             0.0 (0)
(1) 0.5            
(2) 0.9             0.9 (1)
(3) 1.3 
(4) 1.6             1.6 (2)
(5) 1.9 
(6) 2.2             2.2 (3)
(7) 2.4   (0) 2.4
          (1) 2.7   2.7 (4)
          (2) 2.9
          (3) 3.2   3.2 (5)
          (4) 3.5
          (5) 3.8   3.8 (6)
          (6) 4.2
          (7) 4.7   4.7 (7)
It seems quite symetrical steps to me, considering signal noise..

I'm also wondering, could we assume that pure white would be at +5V (considering AGC and AVC are some kind of reference signals) ?

tomaitheous
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Post by tomaitheous » Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:51 pm

Eke: thanks, that's what I was looking for. So max white is 4.7v.

If we did assume max white for RGB was 5v, then that would put max white as ~239 if scaled to 24bit values. That seems to fit the steps by 34 setup for scaling.

TmEE co.(TM)
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Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:18 pm

Here's small example of the slight differences in the highlight :
RGB:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... arsRGB.jpg
S-video (using TV's sharpness setting to enhance the effect a bit) :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... erence.jpg

And a photo of the newer SHL test results :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... result.jpg

and from a PC LCD :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... romLCD.jpg
with one of these :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... Dsetup.jpg
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
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Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

notaz
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Post by notaz » Sat Jan 09, 2010 1:13 pm

It's not really visible after it passes through compo(site/shite) conversion:

Image

Eke
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Post by Eke » Sat Jan 09, 2010 2:51 pm


Here's small example of the slight differences in the highlight :
RGB:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... arsRGB.jpg
S-video (using TV's sharpness setting to enhance the effect a bit) :
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... erence.jpg
The thing is that on the signal recording (directly from VDP output, right ?), there isn't any noticeable differences in the voltage level. There is indeed some voltage drop or jump which result in a tiny separation between bars (some time darker, some time lighter) that gives the impression color changes but they are the same. The tiny voltage variation is probably due to the VDP internally switching between highlight & normal.
HardWareMan wrote:Now I have an oscilloscope too. I'd made some records of EDCLK singnal. Take a look:
Image
Image
Image
You can take full record here (use UltraScope for viewing).
Now, it's look like EDCLK more complex, than we think. So, what do you think?
I looked into this and it indeed seems that there are 60 EDCLK at MCLK/5 during a line, like Jorge Nuno measured but that these clocks are "interrupted" by MCLK/4 clocks, like this:

15 cycles @MCLK/5
2 cycles @MCLK/4
15 cycles @MCLK/5
2 cycles @MCLK/4
15 cycles @MCLK/5
2 cycles @MCLK/4
15 cycles @MCLK/5


It seems that HSYNC signal is what triggers the changes in EDCLK frequency, with some latency though.

The total is still 840 EDCLKS (420 pixels) with 780 @MCLK/4 and 60@MCLK/5 (total is 3420 MCLCKS).

HardWareMan
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Post by HardWareMan » Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:10 pm

I think this dots are caused by EDCLK. Just thoughs...
Image

TmEE co.(TM)
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Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:29 pm

2 missing ones in every 64 pixel "zone".....

the dots are VDP CRAM writes there, each pixel being in color the color getting into written CRAM... in that case, things are transferred via DMA, each dot represents one "access slot".
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Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

HardWareMan
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Post by HardWareMan » Mon Jan 11, 2010 4:49 am

I made record of control bus signals of VRAM (SE0, SC, RAS1, CAS1, WE0, OE1) in last scanline interval of gradient ladder of TmEE SHLTEST. But, Ultrascope allows show only 2 signals, and we need to show 7. Maybe, I can load it as RAW sound data in multitrack sound editor? Any thoughs?

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