The improvised microscope looks awesome. I learned soldering with a microscope years ago, and it is a true game changer. Just having the visual feedback helps keeping a much more stable hand. I'll look into this definitely.
It's a magical teenager repellant box. I just hear that all the time now, but I do remember going into TV shops in the 80s was like walking into a wall of high pitched wailing.
wait, you "hear" "it's a magical teenager repellent..." or you hear the sound? Because I'm old enough to remember the 80s, including boom boxes! My parents would often shut off the cable box with an unreliable remote, and the TV screen would be off, but I could still hear that high pitch sound of the TV. I was annoyed because my mom would always nag me about turning off the lights, but both my parents would randomly walk away from the TV when I could tell it was still on!
Great video! If I may suggest something: You can find some cheap HDMI capture dongles on Amazon and eBay, you can connect your microscope to this dongle, and run something like OBS on your machine, that way you can see a much clearer (and bigger) picture, and you can also record everything from the microscope using OBS and add it to your videos. Also, I'm pretty sure it will be much more stable ;)
For drag soldering, I use a tip like Hakko t15-bc15. The key is to use plenty of flux. I prefer a liquid flux in a pen (like a paint pen). If you do end up bridging, you can practice moving the bridge from one end of the chip to the other (or find a scrap board with a nice surface mount chip to practice on). To remove the bridge, use a clean iron with no solder and plenty of flux and you can transfer the excess solder to the iron (clean iron and repeat if necessary). If you are consistently bridging the last 2 or 3 pins, use less solder. It took me a few weeks to get good at it and I tried a few tips until I found one I liked. I had a hard time with the specialty tips with the recessed solder reservoir. Point to point soldering is fine, but as the chip lead pitch gets smaller and smaller, point to point becomes more difficult.
Hey Aaron, I've started watching FLOSS Weekly (I'm a long time follower of Security Now) which has brought me here. I'm a year or so behind the curve here and playing catch-up, so you may have already done this: you mentioned that if anyone was interested in seeing a video about your home brew Digital Microscope build, you'd maybe make said video. Yes, I think that would be very helpful. If you've already posted the build video, thank you and I'll get to it as I work my way through all of the content you've produced. What you're doing is here is so cool and I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the videos. Thank you and my best regards to you and your family.
You can remove the "order number" from your PCB when using JLCPCB - look at this link - support.jlcpcb.com/article/28-how-to-remove-order-number-from-your-pcb note that PCBWay also prints the order number, but they've put it inside the area of the CPLD. This is an easy board to solder, I would suggest getting the stencil if you were going to make more than a few as you can then use hot air or a board heater to easily do all the SMT. For decent drag soldering, you really need a direct heated tip, a large wedge, and put a little extra solder on, plenty of flux (Louis Rossmann taught me how to do it!) and it is so quick and rewarding. Wipe off the iron and swipe again and the bridges disappear. Magic 😋
At the moment, the MCA2VGA sells in various "kit", or really just incomplete projects, you can get the built in FPGA preprogrammed, left out, or even an FPGA programmer included to do your own programming or updating for €109, all together. Just FYI
Great video, saw this setup first on Jan Betas channel for Amiga, but this is a great at going through the assembly and I loved the overview of the various options. I got lost in a internet rabbit hole to see if I could get the 15kHz RGBHV signal from my +2A but apart from getting a specific monitor its a hard, and very common, problem. I think this is an awesome solution, so hoping to give it a go soon...
@@RetroHackShack this was a great table I stumbled on, you've probably seen it already 15khz.wikidot.com/ I was really hoping that someone would have made their own DIY LCD panel driver that supported 15k/50Hz but didn't find anything - I have a feeling the panels are tied to a refresh rate and they ain't those old ones!
I have a superboard II and the composite video doesn’t sync to modern lcd monitors. I have to use a crt tv. I can get it to sync barely to older lcd tvs. Wonder if the rgb2hdmi will solve this issue.
i admire your surface mount soldering technique. i may need to downsize from my 100w weller solder gun, w/ tips about 1/8" wide. please take care n stay safe.
Filtering must've worked, my kids (7 and 8) couldn't hear anything. I've tried calling the VA's tinnitus hotline.... no one ever answers, it just rings and rings....
Hey retro, I had asked you a question 5 months ago lol I was wondering if you could answer my question... could something like this be added to older fish finder that don't have hdmi or video outputs? I want to add a second screen to to the fish finder but it has no outputs..and i was wondering if we could use the outputs from the built-in monitor to create and hdmi or a video output?/ thanks doug
i tried many devices VGA to HDMI. Devices are working fine if at end is monitor or TV. Problem start if at end is capture device. Elgato 4k60PRO and 4k Avermedia Live Gamer failed with resolutions like 720x400, 320x200, 320x240 or 512x384 and end with "out of range" or "format not supported" error. Same problem also with VGA capture card Avermedia DarkCrystal HD VGA1080 C199. After two years frustration found awesome device. KRAMER VP-420. Scaler support all resolutions what i need and making usable resolution for VGA Avermedia capture card. Now i can capture or stream everything, BIOS, DOS, BOOT ... everything. Scaler is very fast, OSD menu, many nice settings. Picture is fantastic. Only one thing Kramer need high quality power supply. I had at start random "made in china" PSU and picture was bad (shimmering, interferences) so i bought PSU extra for audio video devices and picture is nice clean.
![[NEW] Crystal Clear HDMI For The Commodore 64 In 60 Seconds](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SBgo8oGFung/mqdefault.jpg)
omg this channel…
The improvised microscope looks awesome. I learned soldering with a microscope years ago, and it is a true game changer.
Just having the visual feedback helps keeping a much more stable hand.
I'll look into this definitely.
It's a magical teenager repellant box.
I just hear that all the time now, but I do remember going into TV shops in the 80s was like walking into a wall of high pitched wailing.
wait, you "hear" "it's a magical teenager repellent..." or you hear the sound? Because I'm old enough to remember the 80s, including boom boxes! My parents would often shut off the cable box with an unreliable remote, and the TV screen would be off, but I could still hear that high pitch sound of the TV. I was annoyed because my mom would always nag me about turning off the lights, but both my parents would randomly walk away from the TV when I could tell it was still on!
Great video!
If I may suggest something: You can find some cheap HDMI capture dongles on Amazon and eBay, you can connect your microscope to this dongle, and run something like OBS on your machine, that way you can see a much clearer (and bigger) picture, and you can also record everything from the microscope using OBS and add it to your videos. Also, I'm pretty sure it will be much more stable ;)
Yes. That's a great idea. I am currently saving up for a capture device. It would have also helped to capture the output in Part 2.
For drag soldering, I use a tip like Hakko t15-bc15. The key is to use plenty of flux. I prefer a liquid flux in a pen (like a paint pen). If you do end up bridging, you can practice moving the bridge from one end of the chip to the other (or find a scrap board with a nice surface mount chip to practice on). To remove the bridge, use a clean iron with no solder and plenty of flux and you can transfer the excess solder to the iron (clean iron and repeat if necessary). If you are consistently bridging the last 2 or 3 pins, use less solder. It took me a few weeks to get good at it and I tried a few tips until I found one I liked. I had a hard time with the specialty tips with the recessed solder reservoir.
Point to point soldering is fine, but as the chip lead pitch gets smaller and smaller, point to point becomes more difficult.
Hey Aaron,
I've started watching FLOSS Weekly (I'm a long time follower of Security Now) which has brought me here. I'm a year or so behind the curve here and playing catch-up, so you may have already done this: you mentioned that if anyone was interested in seeing a video about your home brew Digital Microscope build, you'd maybe make said video. Yes, I think that would be very helpful. If you've already posted the build video, thank you and I'll get to it as I work my way through all of the content you've produced.
What you're doing is here is so cool and I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the videos.
Thank you and my best regards to you and your family.
Thanks! I'll add it to the list.
Thanks for your help/interest
You can remove the "order number" from your PCB when using JLCPCB - look at this link - support.jlcpcb.com/article/28-how-to-remove-order-number-from-your-pcb note that PCBWay also prints the order number, but they've put it inside the area of the CPLD. This is an easy board to solder, I would suggest getting the stencil if you were going to make more than a few as you can then use hot air or a board heater to easily do all the SMT. For decent drag soldering, you really need a direct heated tip, a large wedge, and put a little extra solder on, plenty of flux (Louis Rossmann taught me how to do it!) and it is so quick and rewarding. Wipe off the iron and swipe again and the bridges disappear. Magic 😋
Thanks for the tips
At the moment, the MCA2VGA sells in various "kit", or really just incomplete projects, you can get the built in FPGA preprogrammed, left out, or even an FPGA programmer included to do your own programming or updating for €109, all together. Just FYI
Thanks for the update.
Awesome Tron t-shirt BTW
Great video, saw this setup first on Jan Betas channel for Amiga, but this is a great at going through the assembly and I loved the overview of the various options. I got lost in a internet rabbit hole to see if I could get the 15kHz RGBHV signal from my +2A but apart from getting a specific monitor its a hard, and very common, problem. I think this is an awesome solution, so hoping to give it a go soon...
I have also been looking for a multisync monitor that will do 15kHz, but they are hard to find these days.
@@RetroHackShack this was a great table I stumbled on, you've probably seen it already 15khz.wikidot.com/ I was really hoping that someone would have made their own DIY LCD panel driver that supported 15k/50Hz but didn't find anything - I have a feeling the panels are tied to a refresh rate and they ain't those old ones!
I've built a handful of these, work well so far.
Good to know.
I have a superboard II and the composite video doesn’t sync to modern lcd monitors. I have to use a crt tv. I can get it to sync barely to older lcd tvs. Wonder if the rgb2hdmi will solve this issue.
i admire your surface mount soldering technique. i may need to downsize from my 100w weller solder gun, w/ tips about 1/8" wide. please take care n stay safe.
Filtering must've worked, my kids (7 and 8) couldn't hear anything.
I've tried calling the VA's tinnitus hotline.... no one ever answers, it just rings and rings....
They are sold on the Stardot page you linked to periodically. Think he's out of stock at present.
could something like this be added to older fish finder that dont have hdmi or video outputs?
Hey retro, I had asked you a question 5 months ago lol I was wondering if you could answer my question... could something like this be added to older fish finder that don't have hdmi or video outputs? I want to add a second screen to to the fish finder but it has no outputs..and i was wondering if we could use the outputs from the built-in monitor to create and hdmi or a video output?/ thanks doug
Probably not
@@RetroHackShack do you know of any way of tapping the video screen to creat another output to an external scree?
Hi, in order to complete the project the cpld chip should be programmed no? then you need a programmer to do it and the code. Just to know. Thank you
The firmware that runs on the SD card will program the CPLD for you. So you don't need a separate programmer.
great. I understand now how it works. Thanks@@RetroHackShack
i just use CGA or vga to hdmi adapter there are very cheap to buy i had no troubles
Which ones do you use? All the ones I have tried are garbage.
Hi. Could you give me the link to your microscope build video, please?
I don't think I ever made that one.
i tried many devices VGA to HDMI. Devices are working fine if at end is monitor or TV. Problem start if at end is capture device. Elgato 4k60PRO and 4k Avermedia Live Gamer failed with resolutions like 720x400, 320x200, 320x240 or 512x384 and end with "out of range" or "format not supported" error. Same problem also with VGA capture card Avermedia DarkCrystal HD VGA1080 C199. After two years frustration found awesome device. KRAMER VP-420. Scaler support all resolutions what i need and making usable resolution for VGA Avermedia capture card. Now i can capture or stream everything, BIOS, DOS, BOOT ... everything. Scaler is very fast, OSD menu, many nice settings. Picture is fantastic. Only one thing Kramer need high quality power supply. I had at start random "made in china" PSU and picture was bad (shimmering, interferences) so i bought PSU extra for audio video devices and picture is nice clean.
I've never had that problem. Did you consult the support forum?
Would it be possible to split the signal before this module, to drive both a real crt and hdmi?
Yes. I think so. Unless that makes the voltages drop, but I doubt it. They are just signals after all.
Can a hdmi input be added to a modern android 23 inch tablet that had no inputs of anu kind at all
No
in my kid age, i can hear humming tv noise 20 meters away
Hi, How can i get a CPLD please?
I don't sell CPLDs individually.
@@RetroHackShack Thank you for replaying, Where do you get the CPLD's ?
we do need one for a study project.
Lately you can find them on AliExpress, but they may already be programmed so order a few just in case.
@@RetroHackShack Thank you so much !
Do your kids think you are weird for doing retro computing?