Just built my Adafruit kit... Having video problems

[Animal]

I just got done building my Uzebox Starter Kit. The board is "Uzebox V1.2" and the SD card has GameLoader 0.4.4 on it.

When I connect it to my Sony Bravia HDTV with composite (RCA), it works properly but it has dot crawl. The kit came with all the pieces for the luma trap, but it doesn't seem to be working, I guess. This TV puts a split-second delay in the signal no matter what I hook up to it, making any game that requires quick reflexes a big exercise in frustration anyway, so I decided to try another screen...

I have a nice little Toshiba SD-P2700 portable DVD player with an external input for composite video. It works great when I hook up my Sega Saturn or Genesis CDX, but it seems to have a problem with my Uzebox's sync signal. The picture is offset to the left and flies around at high speed in the vertical direction. I also tried borrowing the Saturn's S-Video-to-Composite converter just to cover all my bases - no improvement.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I want to get past this and start having some real fun (I.E. programming)!

[uze6666]

The Uzebox uses non standard 524 lines Ntsc signals. It's the same as used by older consoles like the NES, Snes and Genesis.

It works fine on most TVs, even recent ones but some will stubbornly refuse to work. There's not much we can do. If it displayed on your Bravia, then all is wired correctly. For the dot crawl you can perhaps double check your Luma trap for cold solders. But in any cases, modern lcd TV always shows some. If you have a svideo input, use it to greatly improve the image.

As for the portable DVD player, I had a Sony that would just reject the sync and display nothing. Another player just could not lock on the sync. Plugging my NES would yield the exact same thing.

[Animal]

Thanks - It may not have been the answer I was hoping for, but it got me pointed in the right direction! I dug out my last resort: An ancient Power Mac 7100/80AV which just happens to have an S-Video input. Not ideal, but at least it works! Thanks a lot for the help!

IMG_20140706_084106_704.jpg (111.02 KiB) Viewed 5502 times

[uze6666]

Hey, If it works!

[uze6666]

Btw, in case you feel serious about it, sometimes, you can get a Commodore 1701 or 1702 monitor on ebay for next to nothing. The image quality really is awesome and you can feed it svideo. Works great with my nes, snes and genesis too.

[Animal]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to start keeping my eyes peeled for one of those. It would be nice to have something a little less... Rube-Goldberg-ey.