I sat in front of a real 64 for 5 years hooked up to a 19" black and white TV. All of the modern bitching about the quality of the output on these machines is overblown, by a lot. It seems silly to me to put an S-Video jack on a c64 considering it puts out s-video natively. All you need is the right cable since the luma and chroma are both on the monitor port.
I remember from back then that the jail bars on my C64 got more pronounced once the CPU hit a "kill" opcode, e.g. $02 (which locked the CPU up completely). That was always the sign for me that I had to power cycle it.
Just o word of appreciation: This channel has very well made, good looking and generally great intro - something many multi-million channels cannot say about themselves.
I think that might be the very best t-shirt I've seen you wear in a video yet! I absolutely LOVE Rocky Horror, and so does my wife. We make a big event out of going out to see it in a theater on Halloween whenever we have the chance! Thanks for the informative video, too!
Is it just me that noticed that Adrian didn't plug the monitor into the Mods Output socket? I mean I thought if you're going to bypass the standard output you would plug your monitor into the Mods Output, or does the Mod do some trickery and feed it's output also to the stock standard output as well as it's own output?
@@eDoc2020 Then what purpose is there to ensure the mods output Socket is positioned perfectly for a monitor plug to plug into it? In fact why is there a Mods output socket if the original output socket now outputs the Modified signal along with the unmodified signal?
I tried the CLEARVIDEO 128 in my C128D-CR (PAL version) and was a bit disappointed. The installation was a bit complicated and the instructions were sometimes a bit not precise enough. Finding the VIAS of the VICII signals was a bit tricky and I had to beep the connections with my multimeter. The power supply connections for the modulator replacement was also a bit challenging. When everything was installed, I couldn't find anything in the description which potentiometer changes which signal. I tried for a long time to find the best setting. In the end, I wasn't very happy, as the picture wasn't that much better compared to the original modulator. Otherwise, everything was fine. The scope of delivery is very good, as coaxial cable and 3D printed parts are included. For the money plus delivery costs, the CLEARVIDEO 128 was not worth it for me personally. @Adrian: THX for the entertainment and keep on the good work.
I used to get the same kind of jail bars on my C64 back in the 80's although I always thought it was just interference from the method of hooking it up to a TV set.
You got a clearer image. Just adjust the TV'S image settings to restore the proper tint, contrast and saturation. I always tweak display settings for optimal image by input on the display device.
@@robertcioveie8113 It was a screen saver that had short humorous clips of a man trapped on a very small deserted island and his attempts to escape. I think trying to get it to work might be an impossible to win game
Use a DIN *and* an Svideo plug to align the board in the case before soldering. The DIN and Svideo plug both work, they are wired in parallel. The drive memory expansion uses the small black square board together, the small board selects the ram enable when the other devices on the bus (rom, 6522's, etc) are not enabled. ClearVideo for vic20 uses the HIGH and LOW video signals as luma and chroma.
Nice video, the frustration is so etched in your face, I thought you were going to rip the board out at one point. A question if I may, what is the name of that little animated screen with the Atari logo, Amiga animations etc? And now a bit of bad news, as a C64 user you may have heard of Jason Kelk or T.M.R. as he was known on the scene, he wrote games and demo's for his group Cosine, well he's been in hospital with severe covid for the last 14 months, he was slowly improving but then he had multi organ issue and died at the age of 49. He was a well loved member of the community and a person friend who I worked with. Sad day for the C64 scene..
@@Mclaneinc Happy to help. I had the same question some time back and ended up buying one for myself (nice little speaker and easy to use mini/"retro"-screen).
@@ChristopherScoggin They look great but so unavailable at the moment :) Trying to source from the UK to save on duty and its just out of stock everywhere...But again thank you for the info.
I always thought the Jailbars were artefact's introduced because of Digital noise on the Video O/P's the smearing I thought was due to either Timing issues between Luminance and Chrominance or leakage between the 2 signals. Seem to remember reducing the Jailbars on my Atari (in the day) by more comprehensive filtering of the power rails into the Video circuits, addition of a couple of caps of different values close to the Modulator - suspect some inductors in series would also have helped, but personally didn't do this 40 or so years ago! Kind of think you did a bit of a dis-service wrt a comprehensive review of the product without checking the actual O/P's from the board! Funny to think what would be said if we had these sorts of problems on $600+ video cards of today!!!!!
Tune original video circuit to perfection and there will be no bars at all. Also, another question- where is that fine line between original hardware experience and full digital emulation. Jail bars are part of history and original experience.
24:35 Clearvideo side on the left looks more like how I remember it bitd, brighter. Your video cable may be introducing the jail bars. Use a highly shielded cable. 'Hercules workshop' sells such a cable for Atari 8bit, unsure if it will work with the 128
A better approach might be using a comb filter to convert the composite signal to an S-video signal. They can be found in old TV sets and they are marvels of engineering. They are great at passing color properly and eliminating anything that shouldn't be part of an NTSC signal.
A soft-outline resemblance of the Chroma comes out the comb filter., but wait! there's a never-been-blended chroma signal right there at pin14 of that 6567 chip already!
In composite video, the spectrum of chroma and luma are essentially mushed together. A comb filter is an attempt at separating the two, but it can never be perfectly unambiguous, neither in PAL nor in NTSC. The best approach is to not mush the signals together in the first place, and as a sibling comment mentioned, the C64 (with or without this mod) *does* already have luma and chroma on separate pins, which achieves a picture quality that filtering composite never can achieve (even though some modern filters are pretty impressive).
What an appropriate T-shirt in the intro considering that the game 'The Rocky Horror Show' actually was one of the few games that was available in a slightly enhanced C128 version.
Hey man, love the channel. I’d love an Atari 8bit video from you! Is there anything stopping you? I think I saw some stuff get donated. Perhaps it’s not popular enough?
I bought a c128 that had this preinstalled. I had been using the din s-video connection and had the issue with the picture being brighter. After a while I started having issues with interference. Using the dedicated s-video connector give an almost perfect picture. So I think it is intended to using the new s-video port as opposed to the old vin port.
The kernal switcher was made by Jay. It only bases on my design, but it fits under the CIA instead of on the keyboard connector, like mine. And the source code of my kernal switcher does not base on your arduino pro mini design. My switcher is monitoring the keyboard activity and switches to another kernal, if RESTORE and a number is pressed simultaniously. I think, Jay‘s kernal switcher also fits under a VIC 20 VIA.
The 128 powers up with it's Z-80 CPU which finishes by disconnecting any circuits that weren't in the 64, if you choose GO64. Same circuits, same jailbars.
@@bryanminugh9680 I don't remember my 64 having jailbars though. Then again that was a LONG time ago and I used a regular TV for many years and perhaps the signal helped to hide them.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere The jailbars were always there, TV's back in the day didn't have the video bandwidth or picture resolution to show how ugly the signal really was.
If you ask me the brighter screen is making the lines blend in, rather than any improvement. Use a very bright light and it improves your eyesight. If you look through a pinhole your eyesight gets better because the convergence is smaller, and because a bright light shrinks your pupil it does the same thing. It still freaks' me out how one min I can't see, and then with a bright light I can see tiny parts.
The higher brightness and lower saturation reminds me of the PAL version, where the light and dark blue are also slightly purple. I would guess that the Clearvideo would not make much of a difference on a PAL 128.
Adrian, how much of an initial product launch cost difference do you think might have been necessary in order for Commodore to have released the C128 with a good clean output signal in the first instance? Was it the case that really the only option for anything usefully better at the time would have been a proper VIC2 revision, something presumably Commodore would not have wanted to do? Or put another way, how much did they really save by leaving the rather messy output as it was? Speculation of course, but I wonder how the image quality affected purchasing decisions at the time.
By the way, in case anyone's interested, the Vintage Computer Federation (see their UA-cam channel) just posted an interesting talk with some of the engineers who worked on VIC I and II chips, titled: "Commodore VIC I and VIC II Chips - Bil Herd, Al Charpentier, Stephen Edwards" (July 21st 2022) (Sorry I can't link directly to it; UA-cam is silly.)
Hi Adrian! Great video as usual! I'm not really in the retro computing but this problem intrigues me... Is there any place where the real reason behind the jail bars phenomena is explain deeply? Is it a Vic chip fault or something else? Thanks you!
Why is it blinking so much faster in radar rat race in clear view? the more of these I read it seems like the internal RF modulator is not shielded well and broadcasts interception.
Does anyone know what the fundamental reason for the c64 and c128 jail bars is? In particular, is it a part of the VIC-II’s generated video signals (chroma and luma)? Adrian mentions a chroma-smearing issue, which can be an issue with time-alignment or video-signal filtering. On the other hand, if the jail bars are caused by power-supply or clock-interference issues, that’s another can of worms. It seems like this issue needs some analysis using an oscilloscope or analog video analyzer (VM-700T).
It is something that happens inside the VIC-II, internal digital signals are bleeding into the video output, boards like the one in this review and the lumafix boards try to reduce the interference by inserting opposite polarity noise. They can't actually fix the underlying issue, they only mask it (and usually not that well, either), the only way to get actually get a clean signal is by... NOT using a VIC-II chip to generate the video, which means some sort of FPGA reimplementation.
I wonder… what about trying to do adjustments in a certain sequence of color order? Start with red, green, blue, then switch to cyan, magenta, yellow, then a couple shades of gray? Would that work in trying to get some balance in the color levels? One other suggestion I’d throw in to send to Jay is for those that opt not to bother with the S-video port, to include some kind of sticker that can be used to hide those ports after the installation.
You need an oscilloscope to get it perfect, dual channel. Seeing what you're changing, you can find the right operating node. Adrian found one node of many. It should appear less bright as well.
AFAIK you can downconvert S-Video to composite just by mixing the signals, but to make a 2-way converter you need a ceramic capacitor to separate the chroma signal (composite to S-Video done that way returns a terrible quality, but that's mostly because the composite signal is already low-quality).
there is a loss of information after combining two signals into one, they can't be separated without the resultant loss. A capacitor adds the signals together but the only way to have composite and svideo is with video opamps. The 75-ohm Svideo outputs can be sampled by a pair of high-impedance video opamps, then merge into composite so it doesn't affect the input source. It would probably add $10 to the price.
@@officermeowmeowfuzzyface4408 Yeah, didn't though how to keep both functions at the same time; that would add complexity. It would still be a quick fix if you only want the image improvement and don't care about the S-Video signal, I suppose. (The loss of information is what I meant by "low-quality", sorry for my terrible way to explain things.)
8:05 i thought the 8 bit Guy ended up NOT using the 65C816 and instead stayed with the 65C02 (which is still confusing to me as the 816 is a straight up upgrade over the C02 even if you ignore the upper address pins)
Pointer was hovering on the Add to bracket button on the ClearVideo128 pending the outcome, I didn't click. I've tried a Lumafix128 before and was disappointing with that too.
This board seems to be a combination of the Lumafix128 and the chroma cleanup mod. The chroma mod works well to reduce the phase shift/color bleed, while the lumafix side of things works poorly to reduce the jailbars.
All these 'lumafix' type boards do is add a bit of different noise to the signal to try and cancel out the some of the original noise. You can spend you life tweaking it so it looks better on the boot up screen but some other combination of colors will look worse. They also reduce the signal level, which you see as a more washed out image, this also reduces the intensity of the jail bars. It is really just snake oil, IMHO, but if it makes people happy to install them and tweak on pots like crazy, I'm happy for them.
I don't know what other people are doing, but from personal experience the Lumafix64 works just fine with my C64C and 42" LG TV but I also added a quality S-video cable from Retro Computer Shack into the mix. The original RF modulator is still installed. Sure, it took a bit of fiddling to get it right but the improvement in quality is definitely noticeable after installation. YMMV I guess, but I think the quality of your TV and other factors will also have an impact in the final output.
I couldn't agree more. When I upgraded to the C128 from the 64 back then I noticed the difference right away in the video quality. But it didnt bother me and it really wasn't ever a big deal in discussions or the mags back then, at least not that I can remember. I remember thinking you can see the lines but I didnt care. I am not sure why it is such a big deal these days. But yeah if you like tweaking this stuff and trying out mods, more power to you.
@@RacerX- I'm thinking it's because we went from blurry noisy relatively small CRT televisions with 240p displays to big screen high def TVs at 720/1080p and all the imperfections you didn't notice in the past now stand out more. Also you're not going to notice much on a moving scrolling screen vs a static screen. I suppose it all depends on what display and/or upscaler you're using with your retro computer (and what your preferences are, of course). My first TV was a 9 inch portable black and white jobbie and I'm just grateful for any improvement in video quality! :D
@@LeftoverBeefcake That's a good point. I am still using the same 1702 and 1084 Commodore CRTs that I used back then. They were in storage for a while but it is pretty much just how I remember it. Yeah on a TV the quality was worse then on the Monitor so it makes sense some of this stuff would be blurred out somewhat. I try to avoid using my old systems on modern LCDs and the ones I do have that are smaller in size seem to do an OK job on their own so for me I don't think I would ever bother with one of these...
I thought the jail bars were intentional. I could see it best fixed if a post processor knew the RGB values for the 16 colors and reproduced the color accordingly to the closest match
The jail bars are at the edges of the character columns, right? Does it have to do anything with that? It feels like when it's starting to draw a line there's some information missing at the beginning and with the start of each column the thing starts over. Like it takes multiple components to make up 1 pixel and the frist one misses 2 out of 3, the second one has 2 out of 3 and from the 3rd pixel it has all (kinda like a face-in effect). But when it gets to a column's first pixel it starts over. I wish I knew more on how this whole thing works...
The jail bars are the 1MHz clock bleeding through into the video output. It does align to the character cells, but that is because the VIC-II divides the 8 MHz dot clock to generate the system clock. There is also a Z80 clock being driven extremely hard and that adds to the noise. If you put the 128 in 2MHz mode, the VIC screen blanks and the jail bars become half as wide.
@@coyote_den Thanks for the explanation! Now I understand why the different chips have different jail bars on the c64, it must be a manufacturing defect. Is it possible to have that 8 MHz system clock outsorced so it doesn't cause noise inside the chip? I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud...
If you check the comments section on ANY of his videos, there are at least ten people asking this. Every time. I’m starting to think the guy should just hang a sign above it.
I've had it forever -- probably 15 years -- so I can't remember anymore! I'm a big fan of the movie and soundtrack. I was lucky to see it live at the Hollywood Bowl years ago. Everyone had props -- it was so great!
Oh no they aren’t! Surface mount capacitors and resistors come in all sorts of sizes, and which size is used typically depends on how densely the board needs to be packed. At the moment (I just checked), Digi-Key is showing sizes ranging from 0201 up to 4044.
0201 is also the smallest, it's only a footprint of 0.3x0.6mm, that us do small, you need a microscope and a soldering iron you have to watch out not to bend
Thinking it might be simpler to actually solder the pin headers on the mainboard first, then only install the PCB over when in the case, plug the cables, and solder them when it's aligned…
Most of these problems arise when people either open up their machines and discard the foil coated cardboard EMF shielding they find inside thinking that it's useless, or use sub standard cabling that acts as an Antenna in EMF-Noisy environments.
Do you think that's the case here? The jail bars are regular, they are absolutely vertical and so coincide perfectly with the VIC's columns. Any external interference would not be in sync with the video signal; even if it was nominally at a harmonic frequency it would drift, so you'd see noise instead of a regular pattern. This interference is coming from the C128 itself.
Not sure why, but when I read clear video and jail bars I thought it was something about those clear plastic tech that are used by inmates serving in jail.... :-D I guess I am watching too many tech reviews on youtube...
13:30 "far worse than any 64" well that's not good news for mine then. My 64 was quite a bit worse than that before I installed a lumafix. Something failing maybe?
The bars may be better, but the color looks washed out. The color looks so much better on the stock. Frankly, i think this thing is way more trouble than it's worth. I'm never going to sit down and program on my 64 like when I was a teenager and I was using a really crappy 19" black and white TV. I'll be playing games from 1/2 way across the room and I'll be doing so on a CRT. To me, hooking these old computers to a modern LCD screen is stupid and pointless if you have room for a CRT, which you most likely do if you have a bunch of retrocomputers.
@@DanPellegrino486 LOL or go to a friends house and hold down the commodore key on his bread bin while turning it on... "What are you doing? why are you doing that?"
why has the volume of videos suddenly become so low? Advertising has high audio volume while almost all videos have low volume. Does anyone know that? This video has low volume. I think it's youtube's fault. I use android
VIC-II already has adequate decoupling. More capacitors doesn't make any visible difference (unless of course the existing cap is bad). Jailbars are due to internal digital signals getting into the video generation circuitry.
@@Walczyk Its more complicated than that. The VIC-II has an 8MHZ pixel clock, a 1Mhz memory clock, and a 3.5mhz (NTSC!) color clock. Additionally there are digital address, data and control lines running around inside the chip. All of these can contribute to jailbars. It can stuff way more color transitions (8Mhz) than the composite signal can actually carry (3.5Mhz), which is part of the reason that composite looks so terrible, and the default font is 2 pixels wide.
Where do you get 6 hours from? It's just about a 2 hour drive down the 403 OR 401. Even Windsor is only 3.5 hours from TO. Montreal is right about a 5 hour drive...
The C-64 was designed in 1981. Nobody had RGB monitors, and there was no support for RGB in the chipset. The C-64 supported the precursor to S-video (split chroma/luma). With a supported monitor, it was a *lot* better than what everyone else had (composite video) at the time.
@@GerardPinzone You can entirely replace the VIC-II image generator chip 6567/69 with a module that runs any panel display signal format (a 2021 prototype) and extra registers for Amiga many colors and resolutions.
@@GerardPinzone Any output other than composite or s-video requires either a VIC-II FPGA replacement, or some sort of S-video/composite converter (which doesn't actually make the image any better). The VIC doesn't have RGB signals (even internally to the IC!), it generates chroma/luma. Colors are generated by varying the luma signal (for the brightness) and phase modulation of the chroma carrier. Repeat, it has no RGB to bring out with a mod kit.
The board gives you a separate signal path throught the SVideo connector, and yet you don't use it. You plug into the DIN connector, which is clearly on another signal path, and then judge the board. I think the fairest assessment is to use the board as it is intended, not how you intend it.
At first I thought that too but then it was pointed out that they are the same signals and in parallel. So the only difference would be the cable you are using. That could make a difference but I doubt it as the C128 is just noisy and there is not a lot you can do. Back in the day we just ignored it and it wasn't a big deal at all.
I don't really understand why people do these 'fixes' in the first place.They're such drastic mods and make such a small difference. If you want perfect video, use emulation and HDMI. If you want an authentic experience... live with the lovely jail bars!
When Adrian says he's going to pull back on the number of videos per week, he really meant he's cranking it up to 11. 😁❤🤣
"It's over 9?!"
Yeah, now with the extra channel his output has certainly increased!
@16:39 My favourite part of the time lapse is watching the Haribo level decrease. :o)
Did you compare the svideo vs the din, to see if they were the same?
I sat in front of a real 64 for 5 years hooked up to a 19" black and white TV.
All of the modern bitching about the quality of the output on these machines is overblown, by a lot.
It seems silly to me to put an S-Video jack on a c64 considering it puts out s-video natively. All you need is the right cable since the luma and chroma are both on the monitor port.
Great t-shirt Adrian
I remember from back then that the jail bars on my C64 got more pronounced once the CPU hit a "kill" opcode, e.g. $02 (which locked the CPU up completely). That was always the sign for me that I had to power cycle it.
I can't believe how much I love that MECC t-shirt
Just o word of appreciation: This channel has very well made, good looking and generally great intro - something many multi-million channels cannot say about themselves.
I think that might be the very best t-shirt I've seen you wear in a video yet! I absolutely LOVE Rocky Horror, and so does my wife. We make a big event out of going out to see it in a theater on Halloween whenever we have the chance! Thanks for the informative video, too!
Perfect timing! I’m getting a 128 delivered on Monday, and was looking at how I should improve the video.
that's the friendliest negative review I've ever seen :)
Is it just me that noticed that Adrian didn't plug the monitor into the Mods Output socket?
I mean I thought if you're going to bypass the standard output you would plug your monitor into the Mods Output, or does the Mod do some trickery and feed it's output also to the stock standard output as well as it's own output?
The latter. The stock RF modulator produces the final signals which are sent to the DIN socket, this mod replicates that functionality.
@@eDoc2020 Then what purpose is there to ensure the mods output Socket is positioned perfectly for a monitor plug to plug into it?
In fact why is there a Mods output socket if the original output socket now outputs the Modified signal along with the unmodified signal?
@@KorAllRBare it's s video. it's an improvement over composite that's all
I tried the CLEARVIDEO 128 in my C128D-CR (PAL version) and was a bit disappointed.
The installation was a bit complicated and the instructions were sometimes a bit not precise enough.
Finding the VIAS of the VICII signals was a bit tricky and I had to beep the connections with my multimeter.
The power supply connections for the modulator replacement was also a bit challenging.
When everything was installed, I couldn't find anything in the description which potentiometer changes which signal.
I tried for a long time to find the best setting.
In the end, I wasn't very happy, as the picture wasn't that much better compared to the original modulator.
Otherwise, everything was fine. The scope of delivery is very good, as coaxial cable and 3D printed parts are included.
For the money plus delivery costs, the CLEARVIDEO 128 was not worth it for me personally.
@Adrian: THX for the entertainment and keep on the good work.
Thank you for this.. I have a 128DCR and decided I was NOT going to do this and you convinced me that I made the right choice.
Thank you Adrian - highly interesting! (I did watch videos about the Lumafix for C64 but haven't heard about this "special" one for the C128 yet)
Great video, I really enjoyed that.
This was very interesting!!
I used to get the same kind of jail bars on my C64 back in the 80's although I always thought it was just interference from the method of hooking it up to a TV set.
You got a clearer image. Just adjust the TV'S image settings to restore the proper tint, contrast and saturation. I always tweak display settings for optimal image by input on the display device.
Yay, flying toasters in the background.
I wish there was a Windows 10 version of that old software...
Anyone know if Johnny Castaway works with Win10?
Or just an .SRC version, there's no way the old installer will even run.
Is that a game.
@@robertcioveie8113 It was a screen saver that had short humorous clips of a man trapped on a very small deserted island and his attempts to escape.
I think trying to get it to work might be an impossible to win game
Use a DIN *and* an Svideo plug to align the board in the case before soldering.
The DIN and Svideo plug both work, they are wired in parallel.
The drive memory expansion uses the small black square board together, the small board selects the ram enable when the other devices on the bus (rom, 6522's, etc) are not enabled.
ClearVideo for vic20 uses the HIGH and LOW video signals as luma and chroma.
Nice video, the frustration is so etched in your face, I thought you were going to rip the board out at one point. A question if I may, what is the name of that little animated screen with the Atari logo, Amiga animations etc? And now a bit of bad news, as a C64 user you may have heard of Jason Kelk or T.M.R. as he was known on the scene, he wrote games and demo's for his group Cosine, well he's been in hospital with severe covid for the last 14 months, he was slowly improving but then he had multi organ issue and died at the age of 49. He was a well loved member of the community and a person friend who I worked with. Sad day for the C64 scene..
I believe you are referring to the Tivoo (from Divoom)
@@ChristopherScoggin Thank you so much, Christopher...
@@Mclaneinc Happy to help. I had the same question some time back and ended up buying one for myself (nice little speaker and easy to use mini/"retro"-screen).
@@ChristopherScoggin They look great but so unavailable at the moment :) Trying to source from the UK to save on duty and its just out of stock everywhere...But again thank you for the info.
Very educational.
Adrian is great, since I try to repair my Apple //e by myself, solved one problem and another appear, that made me crazy.
I always thought the Jailbars were artefact's introduced because of Digital noise on the Video O/P's the smearing I thought was due to either Timing issues between Luminance and Chrominance or leakage between the 2 signals. Seem to remember reducing the Jailbars on my Atari (in the day) by more comprehensive filtering of the power rails into the Video circuits, addition of a couple of caps of different values close to the Modulator - suspect some inductors in series would also have helped, but personally didn't do this 40 or so years ago!
Kind of think you did a bit of a dis-service wrt a comprehensive review of the product without checking the actual O/P's from the board!
Funny to think what would be said if we had these sorts of problems on $600+ video cards of today!!!!!
Tune original video circuit to perfection and there will be no bars at all. Also, another question- where is that fine line between original hardware experience and full digital emulation. Jail bars are part of history and original experience.
24:35 Clearvideo side on the left looks more like how I remember it bitd, brighter. Your video cable may be introducing the jail bars. Use a highly shielded cable. 'Hercules workshop' sells such a cable for Atari 8bit, unsure if it will work with the 128
Not the cable.. I have a shielded S-Video SCART (high quality) and you will get jail bars on ether the C64 or C128..
@@bit-ishbulldog2089 the more of these I read it seems like the internal RF modulator is not shielded well and broadcasts interception.
A better approach might be using a comb filter to convert the composite signal to an S-video signal. They can be found in old TV sets and they are marvels of engineering. They are great at passing color properly and eliminating anything that shouldn't be part of an NTSC signal.
A soft-outline resemblance of the Chroma comes out the comb filter., but wait! there's a never-been-blended chroma signal right there at pin14 of that 6567 chip already!
In composite video, the spectrum of chroma and luma are essentially mushed together. A comb filter is an attempt at separating the two, but it can never be perfectly unambiguous, neither in PAL nor in NTSC. The best approach is to not mush the signals together in the first place, and as a sibling comment mentioned, the C64 (with or without this mod) *does* already have luma and chroma on separate pins, which achieves a picture quality that filtering composite never can achieve (even though some modern filters are pretty impressive).
Awesome shirt
Like always great video! ❤
Back in the day I loved the flying toasters!
What an appropriate T-shirt in the intro considering that the game 'The Rocky Horror Show' actually was one of the few games that was available in a slightly enhanced C128 version.
Grate video
lmao that rick roll in the background in the first few seconds
Interesting, I’m expecting the VIC-20 version from him any day now.
'Hello everyone welcome back to Adrian's basement, I am Adrian'
'As**ole!'
(RHPS) shirt.
Hey man, love the channel. I’d love an Atari 8bit video from you! Is there anything stopping you? I think I saw some stuff get donated. Perhaps it’s not popular enough?
I bought a c128 that had this preinstalled. I had been using the din s-video connection and had the issue with the picture being brighter. After a while I started having issues with interference. Using the dedicated s-video connector give an almost perfect picture. So I think it is intended to using the new s-video port as opposed to the old vin port.
The kernal switcher was made by Jay. It only bases on my design, but it fits under the CIA instead of on the keyboard connector, like mine. And the source code of my kernal switcher does not base on your arduino pro mini design. My switcher is monitoring the keyboard activity and switches to another kernal, if RESTORE and a number is pressed simultaniously. I think, Jay‘s kernal switcher also fits under a VIC 20 VIA.
I wonder if Bill Herd could shed some light on why the video quality in the 128 has these problems.
The 128 powers up with it's Z-80 CPU which finishes by disconnecting any circuits that weren't in the 64, if you choose GO64. Same circuits, same jailbars.
@@bryanminugh9680 I don't remember my 64 having jailbars though. Then again that was a LONG time ago and I used a regular TV for many years and perhaps the signal helped to hide them.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere The jailbars were always there, TV's back in the day didn't have the video bandwidth or picture resolution to show how ugly the signal really was.
@@glenndoiron9317 I guess.
If you ask me the brighter screen is making the lines blend in, rather than any improvement.
Use a very bright light and it improves your eyesight. If you look through a pinhole your eyesight gets better because the convergence is smaller, and because a bright light shrinks your pupil it does the same thing. It still freaks' me out how one min I can't see, and then with a bright light I can see tiny parts.
Good lighting makes all the difference.
The higher brightness and lower saturation reminds me of the PAL version, where the light and dark blue are also slightly purple. I would guess that the Clearvideo would not make much of a difference on a PAL 128.
I wonder if there is a difference between the original DIN output and the new SVideo output. Have you done a comparison between these two outputs?
Same wiring, same signals. They are in parallel.
Is your field find (ants nest) 64C still your favourite c64?
Also did you change the caps on that? How is it going now?
Just bought one for my C128, hope I will eventually align the svideo output because that's the cable I want to use towards my scart equiped flatscreen
Adrian, whats the name of that little tv thing on your bench that plays all the c64, amiga and Atari anims?
Adrian, how much of an initial product launch cost difference do you think might have been necessary in order for Commodore to have released the C128 with a good clean output signal in the first instance? Was it the case that really the only option for anything usefully better at the time would have been a proper VIC2 revision, something presumably Commodore would not have wanted to do? Or put another way, how much did they really save by leaving the rather messy output as it was? Speculation of course, but I wonder how the image quality affected purchasing decisions at the time.
so. you found a way to rickroll me without me even noticing before it happened.
That’s been there for quite a while… years, now I think?
🎶 You know the rules and so do I… 🎵
😜
Hello from thunderbay Ontario Canada
Oh nice! The dude behind the fix is a local. Fake London FTW. :D
By the way, in case anyone's interested, the Vintage Computer Federation (see their UA-cam channel) just posted an interesting talk with some of the engineers who worked on VIC I and II chips, titled:
"Commodore VIC I and VIC II Chips - Bil Herd, Al Charpentier, Stephen Edwards" (July 21st 2022)
(Sorry I can't link directly to it; UA-cam is silly.)
Hey Adrian, keep meaning to ask, what is the animated screen on top of your component drawers on the bench?
Hi Adrian! Great video as usual! I'm not really in the retro computing but this problem intrigues me...
Is there any place where the real reason behind the jail bars phenomena is explain deeply? Is it a Vic chip fault or something else?
Thanks you!
Exactly my thoughts!
Adrian said as much right at the end of the video, suggests its a manufacturing limitation with the old hardware in the original VIC chips (1980's)
Gee I just saw a "Daniel Jackson" in the patrons… I suppose they use C128s at the SGC :-D
Why is it blinking so much faster in radar rat race in clear view?
the more of these I read it seems like the internal RF modulator is not shielded well and broadcasts interception.
I haven't see a tv screen with s video input for many years. Must be only available in the US
It's also rare here nowadays; however adapters to digital formats seem to be readily available.
They aren't available in the US any more either. You need to buy a separate converter box to change it into HDMI or something your TV does accept.
Does anyone know what the fundamental reason for the c64 and c128 jail bars is? In particular, is it a part of the VIC-II’s generated video signals (chroma and luma)? Adrian mentions a chroma-smearing issue, which can be an issue with time-alignment or video-signal filtering.
On the other hand, if the jail bars are caused by power-supply or clock-interference issues, that’s another can of worms. It seems like this issue needs some analysis using an oscilloscope or analog video analyzer (VM-700T).
It is something that happens inside the VIC-II, internal digital signals are bleeding into the video output, boards like the one in this review and the lumafix boards try to reduce the interference by inserting opposite polarity noise. They can't actually fix the underlying issue, they only mask it (and usually not that well, either), the only way to get actually get a clean signal is by... NOT using a VIC-II chip to generate the video, which means some sort of FPGA reimplementation.
Nice Rocky Horror shirt =D
for good work you NEEED Haribo Goldbären, there are so satisfying !!!! Greetings from Germany !!
I wonder… what about trying to do adjustments in a certain sequence of color order? Start with red, green, blue, then switch to cyan, magenta, yellow, then a couple shades of gray? Would that work in trying to get some balance in the color levels? One other suggestion I’d throw in to send to Jay is for those that opt not to bother with the S-video port, to include some kind of sticker that can be used to hide those ports after the installation.
You need an oscilloscope to get it perfect, dual channel. Seeing what you're changing, you can find the right operating node. Adrian found one node of many. It should appear less bright as well.
AFAIK you can downconvert S-Video to composite just by mixing the signals, but to make a 2-way converter you need a ceramic capacitor to separate the chroma signal (composite to S-Video done that way returns a terrible quality, but that's mostly because the composite signal is already low-quality).
there is a loss of information after combining two signals into one, they can't be separated without the resultant loss. A capacitor adds the signals together but the only way to have composite and svideo is with video opamps. The 75-ohm Svideo outputs can be sampled by a pair of high-impedance video opamps, then merge into composite so it doesn't affect the input source. It would probably add $10 to the price.
@@officermeowmeowfuzzyface4408 Yeah, didn't though how to keep both functions at the same time; that would add complexity. It would still be a quick fix if you only want the image improvement and don't care about the S-Video signal, I suppose. (The loss of information is what I meant by "low-quality", sorry for my terrible way to explain things.)
8:05 i thought the 8 bit Guy ended up NOT using the 65C816 and instead stayed with the 65C02 (which is still confusing to me as the 816 is a straight up upgrade over the C02 even if you ignore the upper address pins)
This poor man! He had to act like he liked everything!
For 2/3rd of a second I thought your desoldering gun was a hot glue gun and I'm like "Wtf is he doing?"
Pointer was hovering on the Add to bracket button on the ClearVideo128 pending the outcome, I didn't click. I've tried a Lumafix128 before and was disappointing with that too.
This board seems to be a combination of the Lumafix128 and the chroma cleanup mod. The chroma mod works well to reduce the phase shift/color bleed, while the lumafix side of things works poorly to reduce the jailbars.
That's why NTSC is affectionately known as "Never The Same Color". :-)
Never Twice the Same Colour
Er, not really. The problems in this video have not much to do with the color carrier.
All these 'lumafix' type boards do is add a bit of different noise to the signal to try and cancel out the some of the original noise. You can spend you life tweaking it so it looks better on the boot up screen but some other combination of colors will look worse. They also reduce the signal level, which you see as a more washed out image, this also reduces the intensity of the jail bars. It is really just snake oil, IMHO, but if it makes people happy to install them and tweak on pots like crazy, I'm happy for them.
I don't know what other people are doing, but from personal experience the Lumafix64 works just fine with my C64C and 42" LG TV but I also added a quality S-video cable from Retro Computer Shack into the mix. The original RF modulator is still installed. Sure, it took a bit of fiddling to get it right but the improvement in quality is definitely noticeable after installation. YMMV I guess, but I think the quality of your TV and other factors will also have an impact in the final output.
I couldn't agree more. When I upgraded to the C128 from the 64 back then I noticed the difference right away in the video quality. But it didnt bother me and it really wasn't ever a big deal in discussions or the mags back then, at least not that I can remember. I remember thinking you can see the lines but I didnt care. I am not sure why it is such a big deal these days. But yeah if you like tweaking this stuff and trying out mods, more power to you.
@@RacerX- I'm thinking it's because we went from blurry noisy relatively small CRT televisions with 240p displays to big screen high def TVs at 720/1080p and all the imperfections you didn't notice in the past now stand out more. Also you're not going to notice much on a moving scrolling screen vs a static screen. I suppose it all depends on what display and/or upscaler you're using with your retro computer (and what your preferences are, of course). My first TV was a 9 inch portable black and white jobbie and I'm just grateful for any improvement in video quality! :D
@@LeftoverBeefcake That's a good point. I am still using the same 1702 and 1084 Commodore CRTs that I used back then. They were in storage for a while but it is pretty much just how I remember it. Yeah on a TV the quality was worse then on the Monitor so it makes sense some of this stuff would be blurred out somewhat. I try to avoid using my old systems on modern LCDs and the ones I do have that are smaller in size seem to do an OK job on their own so for me I don't think I would ever bother with one of these...
Go with RGB and be done with it, Composite and S-Video aren't worth the time or effort
Is it really that difficult if you just plug a svideo cable and wrap the cable with electrical tape until it fits?
I thought the jail bars were intentional. I could see it best fixed if a post processor knew the RGB values for the 16 colors and reproduced the color accordingly to the closest match
Why on earth would they be intentional?
Do you have any TI 994a content?
After Dark!
London is 100km/60mi east of Detroit. 170km west of Toronto.
The jail bars are at the edges of the character columns, right? Does it have to do anything with that? It feels like when it's starting to draw a line there's some information missing at the beginning and with the start of each column the thing starts over. Like it takes multiple components to make up 1 pixel and the frist one misses 2 out of 3, the second one has 2 out of 3 and from the 3rd pixel it has all (kinda like a face-in effect). But when it gets to a column's first pixel it starts over. I wish I knew more on how this whole thing works...
The jail bars are the 1MHz clock bleeding through into the video output. It does align to the character cells, but that is because the VIC-II divides the 8 MHz dot clock to generate the system clock. There is also a Z80 clock being driven extremely hard and that adds to the noise. If you put the 128 in 2MHz mode, the VIC screen blanks and the jail bars become half as wide.
@@coyote_den Thanks for the explanation! Now I understand why the different chips have different jail bars on the c64, it must be a manufacturing defect. Is it possible to have that 8 MHz system clock outsorced so it doesn't cause noise inside the chip? I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud...
Upvote for RHPS
Does anybody know what the little display on the shelf behind Adrian that’s displaying logos n stuff is?
Divoom Tivoo
@@Jpetersson thank you 😁
@@UKMrFoxy :-D
If you check the comments section on ANY of his videos, there are at least ten people asking this. Every time. I’m starting to think the guy should just hang a sign above it.
Can anyone enlighten me on what that is playing some animation next to Adrian’s computer?
A Divoom Tivoo
Why not outputing clear RGB?
Automatic thumbs up for "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" T-Shirt. Where did you get it?
I've had it forever -- probably 15 years -- so I can't remember anymore! I'm a big fan of the movie and soundtrack. I was lucky to see it live at the Hollywood Bowl years ago. Everyone had props -- it was so great!
😀👍🍻
Oh no they aren’t! Surface mount capacitors and resistors come in all sorts of sizes, and which size is used typically depends on how densely the board needs to be packed. At the moment (I just checked), Digi-Key is showing sizes ranging from 0201 up to 4044.
0201 is also the smallest, it's only a footprint of 0.3x0.6mm, that us do small, you need a microscope and a soldering iron you have to watch out not to bend
Thinking it might be simpler to actually solder the pin headers on the mainboard first, then only install the PCB over when in the case, plug the cables, and solder them when it's aligned…
Most of these problems arise when people either open up their machines and discard the foil coated cardboard EMF shielding they find inside thinking that it's useless, or use sub standard cabling that acts as an Antenna in EMF-Noisy environments.
Do you think that's the case here? The jail bars are regular, they are absolutely vertical and so coincide perfectly with the VIC's columns. Any external interference would not be in sync with the video signal; even if it was nominally at a harmonic frequency it would drift, so you'd see noise instead of a regular pattern. This interference is coming from the C128 itself.
Not sure why, but when I read clear video and jail bars I thought it was something about those clear plastic tech that are used by inmates serving in jail.... :-D I guess I am watching too many tech reviews on youtube...
😎
13:30 "far worse than any 64" well that's not good news for mine then. My 64 was quite a bit worse than that before I installed a lumafix. Something failing maybe?
The bars may be better, but the color looks washed out. The color looks so much better on the stock. Frankly, i think this thing is way more trouble than it's worth. I'm never going to sit down and program on my 64 like when I was a teenager and I was using a really crappy 19" black and white TV. I'll be playing games from 1/2 way across the room and I'll be doing so on a CRT. To me, hooking these old computers to a modern LCD screen is stupid and pointless if you have room for a CRT, which you most likely do if you have a bunch of retrocomputers.
I had a 128 growing up and suffered through years of jailbars to support all that extra stuff that I never even used once :(
Look at my new 128!
> GO64
But but, its got all these new features!
> GO64
Oh. Okay then.
@@DanPellegrino486 LOL or go to a friends house and hold down the commodore key on his bread bin while turning it on... "What are you doing? why are you doing that?"
why has the volume of videos suddenly become so low? Advertising has high audio volume while almost all videos have low volume.
Does anyone know that?
This video has low volume. I think it's youtube's fault. I use android
Your bench is gradually becoming more cluttered. Like moss on a monument. I've been drinking
has anyone tried using bigger decoupling capacitors and adding extra decoupling capacitors?
VIC-II already has adequate decoupling. More capacitors doesn't make any visible difference (unless of course the existing cap is bad). Jailbars are due to internal digital signals getting into the video generation circuitry.
@@glenndoiron9317 ahhh, so the perioidic lines come from the frequency of the cpu?
@@Walczyk Its more complicated than that. The VIC-II has an 8MHZ pixel clock, a 1Mhz memory clock, and a 3.5mhz (NTSC!) color clock. Additionally there are digital address, data and control lines running around inside the chip. All of these can contribute to jailbars. It can stuff way more color transitions (8Mhz) than the composite signal can actually carry (3.5Mhz), which is part of the reason that composite looks so terrible, and the default font is 2 pixels wide.
London Ont. is 6 hour drive or so from Toronto
closer than London England i guess lol
Where do you get 6 hours from? It's just about a 2 hour drive down the 403 OR 401. Even Windsor is only 3.5 hours from TO. Montreal is right about a 5 hour drive...
Before using jargon like jail bars, it helps to explain for those who worry about other stuff.
Not a Commodore person, so I gotta ask... Is RGB output not an option?
Amiga evolving to thousands of colors inspired CBM to try RGB analog for the first time, later in the 16 bit era.
The C-64 was designed in 1981. Nobody had RGB monitors, and there was no support for RGB in the chipset. The C-64 supported the precursor to S-video (split chroma/luma). With a supported monitor, it was a *lot* better than what everyone else had (composite video) at the time.
@@glenndoiron9317 The Atari 2600 has a RGB mod kit. Are you saying the c64 doesn't?
@@GerardPinzone You can entirely replace the VIC-II image generator chip 6567/69 with a module that runs any panel display signal format (a 2021 prototype) and extra registers for Amiga many colors and resolutions.
@@GerardPinzone Any output other than composite or s-video requires either a VIC-II FPGA replacement, or some sort of S-video/composite converter (which doesn't actually make the image any better). The VIC doesn't have RGB signals (even internally to the IC!), it generates chroma/luma. Colors are generated by varying the luma signal (for the brightness) and phase modulation of the chroma carrier. Repeat, it has no RGB to bring out with a mod kit.
*unboxes ones C128*
Mh. I hoped that would be a solution for my C128, but after this video think that has even worse problems than just those jailbars :-/
Yeah, gonna pass on that clear video fix. Seems like a pain
It would be interesting to see the ringing reduction from the RF modulator inductor/coil removal you mention.
and see why it was needed
Nice, but somehow it does not look "real" without jailbars! ;-)
I have try other jail bard remover for 128 and 64....at the end I have remove them all...
Could you tell us what mod have you used? Thanks!
@@ShoresOf Last one LumaFix128 by e5frog
15:18 - some would say it's chroma-smearing, I say it's a drop-shadow effect B-)
The board gives you a separate signal path throught the SVideo connector, and yet you don't use it. You plug into the DIN connector, which is clearly on another signal path, and then judge the board. I think the fairest assessment is to use the board as it is intended, not how you intend it.
At first I thought that too but then it was pointed out that they are the same signals and in parallel. So the only difference would be the cable you are using. That could make a difference but I doubt it as the C128 is just noisy and there is not a lot you can do. Back in the day we just ignored it and it wasn't a big deal at all.
I don't really understand why people do these 'fixes' in the first place.They're such drastic mods and make such a small difference. If you want perfect video, use emulation and HDMI. If you want an authentic experience... live with the lovely jail bars!
unless your modulator is messed up