randyrossi/vicii-kawari

Commodore 64 VIC-II 6567/6569 Replacement Project

vicii-kawari's Issues

Glitches on Higher Level (1992) demo by Lower Level

reported by machete on discord

"In a demo I notice some glitches you can try Higher Level [1992] by Lower Level. You will see what I mean during the intro of the demo and then later on on a scroll scene. I was running under PAL mode and tried both oscillator modes, but made no difference."

https://discord.com/channels/934158426714550282/934158427834441730/1018545490956124253

HDMI cable causing phantom power back to Kawari (large)

As you can tell by the reports, I finally had a chance to sit down and test some.

I've got 2 micro hdmi to hdmi cables (6' generic) that I bought at different times for pi4 and another project.

One works fine with the kawari, the other does the following.

After the first boot, when I turn off the 64, LED1 on the kawari is faintly lit.
Turn on the 64 after this doesn't boot, until I either unplug and then plug the hdmi cable back in, or power cycle the monitor.

This causes the led to completely go out, and then the 64 boots normally.
The led doesn't light up until after the first boot, so monitor seems to wait until after it has a valid signal to provide voltage back down the hdmi cable.

Link232-Wifi/Swiftlink Dot Clock.

Testing today with a Link232-Wifi Cart and a internal cart, they seem to work fine even when the board is running
at a different non pll clock, so Pal or NTSC generated from the Kawari or motherboard for NTSC and Kawari for PAL still seems to work fine.

I've downloaded around 10 d64s with no errors changing between NTSC and PAL,, mb clock and Kawari clock.

C64 Reloaded MK2

Tried the small board with my MK2 and it boots but the screen has text characters jumping all over. Is there a specific jumper setting or some update to the MK2 I need to make? I can include pics of the screen and my MK2 if needed.

Thank you,
Doug.

minor nit re blank lines surrounding vsync

Kawari version 1.5 (mini)

Some nit pickings regarding the vertical blanking/vertical sync generation.

The VIC-II does this, more or less:

• normal display
• one blank line (raster 13 NTSC, raster 300 PAL)
• three vertical equalization lines (six half-lines) (14-16 NTSC, 301-303 PAL)
• three vertical synchronization lines (17-19 NTSC, 304-306 PAL)
• three vertical equalization lines (20-22 NTS, 307-309 PAL)
• one blank line (23 NTSC, 310 PAL)
• normal display

The Kawari appears to skip the second blank line.
Also the blank line that it does generate has color burst for some reason.
Finally the last vertical equalization line (22 NTSC, 309 PAL) also has a color burst, which is also not present on a real VIC-II. (And probably illegal according to PAL/NTSC standards, but VIC-II does not adhere to these anyway. :) )

Scope captures (NTSC, PAL is similar)

kawari raster 14

6567R8 raster 14

kawari raster 23

6567R8 raster 23

VIC-II KAWARI on c0pperdragon's RGB Vid Mod: does not work

Hello,

Recently I've managed to get my hands on a few of c0pperdragon's RGB Vid Mods. C0pperdragon's RGB vid mod sniffs the signals off of the VIC-II-Pins, in short, and renders the received data to an image - which is quite snazzy if I may be so bold to say. The one and only caveat is, that VIC-II KAWARI and the RGB Vid Mod aren't compatible enough for the RGB Vid Mod to read workable Data.

So, with an off-the-shelf-VIC-II, the RGB Vid Mod works quite nice and seamless. With a KAWARI, I get the blue border and over large parts of the screen blocky, flickering colors. On the sixtyclone based on assy 250466 as well as the one based on assy 250469 rev B it displayed the boxy, blocky distortion. In addition, it displayed parts of the basic boot up text (and the blinking cursor) in all the wrong colors with flickering and dancing colors.

Test performed with small Kawari as well as large Kawari with the latest DVI Firmware. (1.17 IIRC). On sixtyclone 250466 I've installed the vanilla PLA from 1986 to eliminate timing issues probably inherent to modern PLA solutions.

Image below shows the working config with a vanilla VIC-II. Works as expected.

This image shows the config resulting in a display weird and flickering.

Below please check out the board I've performed this test on. The thing works - buildt it with my own hands and performed both dead test and diagnosis with harness.

What - apart from simply not configuring a c64 this way - can we do? I do own both a stash of KAWARIs and a few C64 boards equipped with c0pperdragon's RGB vid mod. I can read VHDL well enough but I'm not experienced enough with it to troubleshoot that problem. Would be quite fine if KAWARI and c0pperdragon's solution could work together so I can build C64 with multiple connectivity options.

Thanks a bunch for even reading this lengthy post.

Random no starts in 250466 Motherboard.

I've got a Kawari-Large board, and the first machine I tried was a 250466 board.
The board only boots randomly, but is rock solid with it's original vic II.

NTSC model, 8701 clock chip, using internal or external clock made no difference.
When it does boot, it works fine, failure mode is just a blank screen on power up.

Working fine on a 250407 and 250425 boards.

HDMI noise/glitches when analog cable isn't connected.

Kawari large board, on 250425 MB.

There are random sparkles on the hdmi output, when HDMI is the only output connected.
When both analog and HDMI connected, the HDMI is clean.

To test, power on and set background color to black.
Removing the svideo plug from the switcher brings back the glitches, inserting it makes the glitches go away.

Is the PCB project also available in a/the repo?

I can't seem to find it. Would be cool to try and build and install this. I'm in for making some 3d-demo (using the new MUL) and maybe a slideshow with some nice pictures. I already developed a nice route to convert pictures to the virtual platform Chip-16 which would suit perfectly using this new 16 color 320x200 mode. Is there a VICE build that has a Kawari option in it? That would be very useful.

Trion T20 BGA256 Query

Hi! I have a query on the Trion BGA if you don’t mind. As you are driving the DVI signals directly, what kind of maximum dot clock have you been able to achieve like this? And are you going through something like the PTN3366 to convert from ac coupled LVDS to CML? And have you also tried using the 5:1 gearing on the LVDS serialiser to give you just 2x dot clock in terms of actual output clocking?

I’m about to try this with the T20 for a small single board computer project and am just curious as to your experience! I’ve driven DVI directly with just ac coupled LVDS successfully before, so the implementation side of things I already have proven, I’m curious more on the specifics of the T20. I’m a big fan of Trion chips, but they are certainly not ideal for trying to drive DVI.

Simulation cannot be run due to missing files.

Simulation directory is referring to:

"our modified VICE-3.4 code to shadow it's vic. See vicii-vice-3.4 repo".

The repo is missing.

VIC II-kawari vs.Turbo Chameleon 64 incompatibility

The Turbo Chameleon 64 is a popular peripheral for the C64. Is there any technical possibility that in the future (e.g. trough next firmware developement) it will be possible to use vicii-kawari MOC and TC64 together?
Or in this case, due to the hardware concept, this cannot be expected?
I'm asking because youtube video #7 mentions progress in compatibility with SaRuMan but TC64 is no longer mentioned at all..
Thank you!
PS: VIC II-kawari is a GREAT JOB! ;-)

[FR] Support for external RGBtoHDMI upscaler

What do you think about a very reduced variant of the Kawari (nearly POV) that has just one cheap additional output possibility besides the luma/chroma ?
This output signal would be a simple 75 ohm terminated video signal that could encode the 16 C64 colors in the necessary resolution using luma only. This properitary signal could then be easily interpreted by an external RGBtoHDMI to generate perfect HDMI from it.

Re-purposing the RF out jack, this signal could be brought of the the case without drilling holes and by just cutting a single wire and maybe attaching a clip-lead to the RF jack.

IanSB already modified the RGBtoHDMI software to support such a signal, and I built a proof-of-concept setup and this looks really pretty easy.
Have a look at our discussion here: hoglet67/RGBtoHDMI#258

Novaterm 80 col mode

I don't think I completely understand the workflow to get 80 col mode working on Novaterm 9.6c. The readme says to "just rename kawari.ml as 80col.kawari and save it to the Novaterm 9.6c disk." There are a few issues I ran into when trying to do this:

1. There is no file in the repo called "kawari.ml" There is a "kawari.src" file with machine language in it.
2. I tried renaming the kawari.src file to 80col.kawari and adding it to the novaterm96.d64 image using Dirmaster 3.1.5 on Windows. But there is not enough free space on the disk image to add it. I tried deleting a few files related to the emulated 80 col mode to make space.
3. When I run Novaterm now and attempt to load "kaw" as an 80 column mode I fer a syntax error leading me to believe I am on a bit of a goose chase.

Is there an easier way? Is there a d64 with this already installed somewhere out there?

Orignal & clone REU fail testing even with NTSC motherboard clock.

First let me say this is a great project/product and it definitely looks amazing on my (formerly) 6567R56A machine. Thanks!

I have a VICII-KAWARI Trion Mini in a 250407. It has firmware 1.16. I set it for motherboard clock on NTSC. A 1541 Ultimate 2+L acting as an REU seems to work fine. Neither an original REU nor a clone using an original REC work. They both appear to pass testing for the first bank and then immediately fail on the 2nd bank.

These REU units test good in other C64 / C64C machines. And I believe I have used them both in this same machine prior to adding the Kawari. I can certainly confirm that at some point by swapping back.

Anyway, I see the REU is listed as "untested" but thought to work with motherboard clock. It appears to almost work but isn't.
Is there anything diagnostics wise that I can collect or timing adjustments etc that I can make that might help?

Kawari-Large VGA Output - NTSC Colors are way off.

Wired up a RGB header to VGA connector today, and PAL looks great, but NTSC has no blue.

Here's images of color bars, same cable used for both, just changing to either a pal or ntsc vic mode.

https://imgur.com/a/yyPkJ2I

Temperature and video signal dropping out

It's warm these days, and for the first time I had a longer session on my machine (assembled for once), maybe an hour into the session, the TV started dropping the signal, it'd catch the signal for a frame or two, then drop it, it'd repeat like that, like something drifting..
I pulled the case apart and took off the keyboard, and gently pressed on the kawari, it was hot, not VIC2-leaves-permanent-burn-scars hot, but hot, blinking stopped immediately hereafter and didn't return.

What are the acceptable package temperature for the kawari ? I wonder if that's what caused the issue. ? Have you done any thermal testing ?

Update compatibility list - REU needs dot clock.

The REU (1750,1764/1700 and clones use the dot clock signal for dram control signals.

https://rr.pokefinder.org/rrwiki/images/9/90/1750_1764_Service_Schematics.pdf

See page 4.

So needs the motherboard derived clock to work.
Good thing to add under the Hardware Compatibility matrix.

Timing issues on 250466 board

Using a kung fu flash and the oneload 64 v4 collection, the games ghostbustets and fix it felix freeze completely before going in game in pal and ntsc mode on a 250466 board......

The same cartridge and game file work fine when the same kawari mini is inserted into a 250407 stock board.

The freezing efdect can be seen in...... https://youtu.be/RnM1jLROvhc

Lee

Sam's Journey (NTSC) experiencing many graphics issues

While I have not played it with the original chip I started playing Sam's Journey on my C64 with the Kawari (1.5 version) and it has enough graphics issues as to be unplayable.

Does anybody else have this experience or is it just me?