Caution: Non registered users only see threads and messages in the currently selected language, which is determined by their browser. Please create an account and log in to see all content by default. This is a limitation of the forum software.
Also users that are not logged in can not create new threads. This is a, unfortunately needed, counter measure against spam. Please create an account and log in to start new threads.
That seemed to be it 
-- the screen I'm using (a dell I forget the model number) which has DVI and VGA inputs seems to be the problem. It just dosen't like the output. Only way I can see something is by a tortuerous route -- using a VGA to HDMI converter and then another converter to go from HDMI to DVI. No other screen I have does VGA directly x.x . I do get the TC64 menu as well btw.
ljones
I've thought about doing this in the past but surely it wouldn't work as there really isn't anything to make it work. Most "ps/2 to usb" or "usb to ps/2" converters you see (pretty much all of them) for sale today work only in one direction and that's wrong way round - they convert PS/2 to USB. What would be needed on the TC64 is USB to PS/2 "the other way round". And unfortunatly that seems to be very rare and expensive.
KVMs for sale today seem to be all about HDMI and USB ports these days as ps/2 ports and vga ports are obsolete.
I have a vauge memory of finding a real usb to ps/2 converter for sale but that was a *long* time ago and it cost a fortune.
Only modern solution I can think of is this, and it would need to be built;
https://github.com/No0ne/ps2x2pico
ljones
Hello!
Has anyone tried this xt core the TC64 V1 and V2 at all?
I've been trying to get it to run, but could not get it to work. I have flashed the nececcary .rbf file and have the ROM files but on both the V1 and V2 all I get is a blank screen, nothing. I have both a TC64 v1 and v2 and can confirm that the .rbf file has been flashed OK and is the correct one for each device.
Has anyone had any success with this at all?
ljones
> next step is to find some time to make patch-boards for older Indivision ECS V2 and Chameleon V2.
Does that mean there's some sort of difference between earlier and brand new Chameleon V2s? Is it a major change in hardware for example?
ljones
Was there any fix for this in the end? Pretty much my chameleon 64 v2 is sitting around unused; tried several monitors including one on the wiki I got second hand but working (the Dell 1708FPf) but still the same smeary/ghosting on video in all modes.
ljones
Thought I'd give trying to photograph the problem I'm having with ghosting on all of my screens. This is the best I could get btw. I've had to increase the contrast in this image btw as it is hard to capture on camera but it is much more pronounced (and at all resolutions) on my monitors. For example on the normal C64 blue screen and after setting the cursor to white I can see about 3 or 4 ghosts after the cursor.
BTW I did also try upgrading to the new core (9k) but no improvement.
ljones
Try lower output resolutions with a lower pixel clock - this is now possible, and gives a considerable improvement. If you're only trying high output resolutions with high H/V frequencies, you're too close to the hardware limits.
I did try with the lower resolutions and clock although I still get similar problems unfortunatly. They are better than the higher modes but still as I had earlier I'm even still getting some ghosting.
ljones
Gave the new firmware version a try here btw on my chameleon 64 v2. Unfortunatly I don't see any improvements on any modes. I tried doing the same thing as on my old thread but the problems remain on all screenmodes.
ljones
Hope I'm not hijacking anything here but I'm getting a similar problem to the above; I made a post here about it. I don't think my vga cable is at fault as it works with another vga output, and I get smearing/ghosting too even with a monitor (which is working fine, e.g with rasberry pi) with a built in cable. Maybe my chameleon 2 is faulty?
ljones
I'll give another cable a try but I do not think that is the problem. One of the monitors I tried has its own built-in cable and works fine (for example with a rasbperry pi). This monitor had the exact same problem with chameleon 2 as did all the others.
ljones
Hello all!
I'm having a bit of a problem here with my chameleon 64 (Version 2). The problem isn't with the operation with the unit but with the VGA output. I'm getting a very smeary picture with ghosting. Unfortunatly it is hard to show this problem "on-camera" all that well although I've tried to attach some pictures below. I've tried with 3 displays (One is a DVI monitor which will accept a vga input via a vga to dvi converter); another a normal HDMI monitor (I used a powered vga to hdmi converter) and an actual monitor with vga input.
The problem remains the same with all 3; trying to change the screenmode on the chameleon either makes the problem worse or the monitor refuses to accept the screen mode setting. In particular when I used the HDMI monitor/powered VGA to HDMI converter and tried to resolve the problem by increasing the video mode on the chameleon the result more closely resembled early 80s UHF TV output - !
Unfortunatly I no longer have any other vga monitors around 
I've attached a couple of pictures btw. I don't seem to have any connection issues btw (cables fit ok in chameleon 64's vga output port). I've also tried differnet power supplies.
Anyone know why I'm gettng such a poor smeary vga output?
Here's the first picture. Note the fuzzyness to the right of each character. I could not get it to show on camera but a little to the right of the white cursor there's also a ghost of the white cursor.
Smeary picture again shown here with lots of smearing in the blue part of the image here (blue background, yellow characters).
I did not use any "sharpening" settings on any of the monitors (only the HDMI display even had that, and it was not being used).
ljones
Display MoreHere's a pre-alpha release of the Next186 core
http://retroramblings.net/snap…_Chameleon_2019-09-15.zip
The zipfile contains binaries for both V1 and V2, along with a BIOS and an optional freedos boot image. The BIOS must be on the SD card (at least the one you boot with). You can boot directly from the SD card if you wish, but if you're using FreeDOS the first partition must be FAT16 formatted, because the FreeDOS FAT32 bootloader requires a 386 CPU. If the boot disk image is on the SD card then it can be FAT32 formatted; the boot code will come from the floppy disk image.
Known problems:
- There's no error handling or display of error messages for the disk image support or BIOS loading
- The core sometimes comes up with a shifted or scrambled display. I don't yet know what's causing this, but I suspect it's to do with phase relationships between the core's multiple clocks, since resetting the core doesn't fix it.
- The OPL3 emulation doesn't start properly on V1 hardware. I have no idea why this doesn't affect V2 hardware or the development Cyclone III board I've been using - the only thing V2 and the dev board have in common is that they have an off-chip 50MHz clock source, which is used by the OPL3, while the V1 hardware has to generate it in a PLL along with all the other clocks. I've tried many things to fix this, including adjusting the 50Mhz clock's speed and phase, synchronising, adding and removing reset signals - but the problem resolutely remains. As a workaround, I've mapped the Freeze button to a separate reset for the OPL3 emulator; pressing this usually causes it to spring into life.
Gave the next186 core a try on my old v1 chameleon and decided to give a few things a go. Unfortunatly my results were somewhat mixed.
A pity it dosen't emulate a 386 if it had that'd brought in some of the older dos based emulators.
Some things worked better than others and some things didn't seem to work at all -- there seems to be lots of issues with graphics at the moment. For example locoscript (more famous on the old amstrad pcw machines although there is a PC version too) started ok but the cursor used to select files just seems to "draw all over the screen".
Turbo pascal 4 also runs and compiles ok - but seems to suffer from corrupted text in graphics mode. Qbasic will run as well but the graphics aren't quite 100%; for example try this:
The circle will show OK but the numbers from 1 to 15 appear as corrupted blocks of colour.
BTW is this what the chameleon version is based apon btw? If it is then (just purely for curiositys' sake) that website mentions the next186 core being able to run windows 3.0 . I did try this but I'm not sure how they got it to work; the installer crashed with a "divide by zero" error while installing on another machine ended up with video corruption and an error "cannot find network.drv" x.x
ljones
