Bob

Coin Retro’s Datapath Vision Tutorial

Coin Retro just posted a tutorial on how to use the Datapath E1S to capture retro gaming consoles.  This is something I plan on covering in-depth sometime in the future, but Coin Retro’s video is definitely good enough to get people started. A short description why a tutorial is needed:

The Datapath Vision E1 and E2(s) cards were designed for video walls and commercial applications, not retro-gaming.  As a result, there’s a lot of weirdness when trying to capture direct 240p signals and some custom tweaking needs to be done.  Luckily, we’ve had some help from DarkAries, who’s created his own software to access the Vision card and has even started a wiki to archive some of the more odd tweaks:  http://r3.fyi

If you’re using the Vision software itself, there’s separate issues, such as sometimes needing to hit apply then cancel for changes to be saved (seriously!?), as well as always needing to set the software to “8-8-8” mode before capturing screenshots.

Adding even more confusion is that while component video will work directly into the card (via an adapter), direct 240p RGB sometimes has issues.  This is being worked out now, but my guess is TTL-level csync is required in most cases.

Now you see why we need a tutorial?:

 

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