Indiviosion MK3 questions

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    Hi all, hi IC, hi Jens,


    I already got my answers about ACA1234 in my previous post, so now I have some questions about MK3.


    I did read a lot of info I could find on this board and watch some videos on yt, but still I have some questions, especially because I really did not know anything about various Amiga resolutions back in a days as I had 1084s monitor and never thought about resolutions...


    1. As in my previous post, my primarily goal is to play games. From what I read, in order not to have any lag a monitor should support 50Hz (I live in EU so PAL). I have some old CRTs that I still use like Samsung SyncMaster 959NF which was at the time the best flat CRT one could buy for PC. I was checking its specification and used my Ultimate64 to try some resolutions over the VGA and it seems that 50Hz is not supported. I get picture, but it looks like "interlaced" mode (screen hard to look at, flickering...). So maybe this monitor will not be the solution. Also, it is hard to find a good PC CRT monitor that supports 50Hz nowadays.


    But I read somewhere that if a monitor supports 100Hz at the specific Amiga resolution, it would be the same as it would work at 50Hz and that it would be a solution for a 50Hz mode. And it is much easier to buy a monitor that can support 100Hz at Amiga gaming resolution than 50Hz.


    Is that correct? Would 100Hz solve the 50Hz issue?


    2. Damn, while writing the first question, I forgot what the 2nd one was... I will update it as soon as I remember.


    Thank you in advance for your support.


    Igor

    Quote from IgorK

    and it seems that 50Hz is not supported.

    I've found a German manual online that claims that vertical frequency of 50Hz is supported. Might be a problem with the horizontal frequency: THis must be over 30kHz for this monitor, so if your U64 outputs 5kHz, it won't work with this monitor. The output must be line-doubled for this monitor, which is easily done with Indivision AGA MK3.


    Quote from IgorK

    Is that correct? Would 100Hz solve the 50Hz issue?

    We've thought about adding a 100Hz V-synced mode, but that's not part of the feature set at this point. This is mainly due to the fact that none of the iComp employees have a monitor that supports such a mode. Further, if you're using an async 100Hz mode with the double buffer feature, you also get a 50Hz update rate, so it'll be the same flicker-free experience, so a fully-sync 100Hz mode isn't really a necessity.


    Further, a monitor that supports 50Hz is perfectly primed to be used with the "Auto resolution" feature of the flicker fixer, also giving you a pixel-synced output with zero lag.


    Jens

    Jens


    Thank you for your input.


    I think you do not need to bother with 100Hz mode on MK3. It is probably not necessary.


    I was just thinking that when buying a new LCD monitor, from what I saw, most of the time 50Hz refresh rate is not available. But this is solved if a monitor has 100Hz refresh, because MK3 can provide 50Hz mode which would look perfect on 100Hz.


    I tried this with Ultimate64 on my 49" 120Hz screen through HDMI and it is working great. I have an option to select 4:3 aspect ratio in 17" or 19" size on monitor and also to select 60, 100 or 120 Hz. So when U64 is supplying PAL signal, I do not have to be in 60Hz monitor mode but can select 100Hz and the picture looks great and I have no lag.


    I will try my CRTs first with MK3. I am glad that you think it should work. But still it is just huge and take most of my retro desk... Maybe new LCD would be a perfect compromise having in mind that MK3 can give great picture.


    Thx once again,

    Igor

    Hint: If you buy a TV instead of a computer monitor, you have the full HDMI feature set, which includes 50Hz compatibility. The only thing you then have to look after is a true "PC mode" where no "magic" is applied to the picture, like movie enhancement or whatever nonsense TV manufacturers think of to "enhance" the picture. When we were in the hot phase of development, we've bought a few cheap HDMI TV sets, and all of them had 50Hz support: Very low cost, very nice picture, even including audio.


    Jens

    Hello,


    Might get out of main topic here but does mk3 (ocs/ecs) support dvi output? I have mk2 with vga cable only but require DVI on monitor (regular vga->dvi converters are quite expensive).


    Regards,

    Miro

    Indivision ECS V3 has VGA-out only.


    The only product we have with HDMI output is Indivision AGA MK3. This can be set to "DVI signalling" by disabling audio in the config tool.

    Jens

    I have Indivision AGA MK3. Great product, I am satisfied.

    But only from this topics I found out, that indy MK3 has HDMI audio output.

    I am not using it, I had all computers connected to Behringer line mixer, but in general it is very nice feature.


    Maybe some others is in the same situation like me - knows nothing about HDMI audio output possibility.


    Maybe it would be appropriate to explicitly write this feature to Wiki and eshop pages.

    There is only simple information in IndivisionAGA/doc/global settings "modes that do support audio with the mixer frequencies 48kHz, 44.1kHz, 96kHz, and 88.2kHz"


    :)

    There needs to be a disclaimer about audio through HDMI, as we are re-implementing parts of Paula in the FPGA in order to generate digital audio. Further, the CIA adapter must be installed to get the information about the power LED status for filter emulation (which also needs to be digital).


    The audio feature wasn't in from the very start, but it was planned from the beginning. With the very few reports of audio sounding wrong or even not working, I guess we can at least list the "experimental" status and call it "beta" until a few people with very good knowledge about the real Amiga sound confirm that it's "just right" :-)


    Jens