Aurora vs Dinosaur

[Jac Janssen]

Hello Peter, Please see email for the test card.

Jac

[ppppenguin]

Turning down the brightness and/or contrast is always going to make life easier for the CRT.

[tubesrule]

Hello all,
Just getting back into this thread. First to clear up a few things:

The date code on Jac's is indeed 2005-2009

Version 1.x: 8 pos internal DIP switch, parallel image flash on bottom of board, LC sound trap on RF output
Version 2.x: External hex switch, internal 6 pos DIP switch, parallel image flash on bottom of board, LC sound trap on RF output
Version 3.x: External hex switch, parallel image flash on bottom of board, LC sound trap on RF output
Version 4.x: External hex switch, serial image flash, FIR sound trap filter

On version 1.x thru 3.x the default image was stored individually on each unit during final test. On the 4.x units, the image is stored digitally on the serial flash from an image on a master unit that was still stored through the video input. The test card image source is a DV format file played out through a DV->composite converter box. So basically the source image for Test Card C has always been the same and been captured through the TVP5150 front end. It is just stored digitally now during final test, but they should all be the same across all versions. There are no electrical or image storage differences between Jac's 3.x and Peter's 2.x.

Darryl

[peter scott]

Darryl,

Thanks very much for the update and apologies for me casting aspersions at the Aurora. I don't know what happened with my unit but clearly it must have been played with after leaving your production process.

Kind regards,

Peter

[ppppenguin]

Darryl, many thanks for the clarifications. I was doing my best to interpret and guess but far better to have it from the source.

[tubesrule]

One correction to my last post, the output sound trap filter is actually an IIR filter. I mistyped FIR filter.

Thinking about this, I suppose there is a chance that with the 1.x thru 3.x converters where the default image was stored individually during final test, even though the source for the image has always been the same, there could be variances in the capture. I can't imagine there could be much of a difference, but it is certainly possible. During final test the RF output from the converter is viewed on a Sony 9-90UB for overall quality and not necessarily the resolution of the 3MHz grate. Another item of note, on these units with the LC sound trap filter, this was manually adjusted while the output was viewed on a spectrum analyzer. There is a built-in test procedure in these units that creates an unmodulated carrier at the sound RF frequency to aid in the adjustment.

With the 4.x converters, barring component tolerances, everything is identical from unit to unit. The test card and the sound filter are now digital and will always be the same. It is even possible to store the default images completely digitally as they are just uncompressed 8 bit data in the serial flash, monochrome for most formats and 4:2:2 color for the color units. Since this flash also shares the FPGA code, care would need to be taken to not overwrite this code.