Closed VIDC Enhancers for Archimedes A300, A400, A400/1 and A3000

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paul2004v

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Hi All,

I very much wanted some VIDC Enhancers for my Acorn Archimedes computers and as they're like hens teeth, I decided to make my own but I didn't fancy making my own PCB's in an acid bath so I designed my own board and had them professionally manufactured.

VIDC Enhancers provide a second clock signal to the VIDC chip which allows it to run at faster frequencies and lets you run at higher resolutions with faster refresh rates. The VIDC chip itself is rated to a maximum of 36MHz before you get into over clocking and the VIDC Enhancers I've built have a 36MHz oscillator on board.

I had to custom order the 36MHz oscillators because it's not a particularly common frequency any more and so they're manufactured to order.

Because of both of these choices, I had to fulfil minimum order requirements for the boards and the oscillators so now I find myself with several boards for sale.

I've advertised the boards elsewhere and I'm selling them on a first come, first served basis using a form on my site to collate orders so I don't lose track of them.

EDIT: I've sold out of the original boards, see my latest post for more details of the new VIDC Enhancer boards.

The cost for the new boards are £28 each + P&P.

Paul
 
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interested...what's the difference between the 2 fully assembled versions?

I have a A3000...

Michael
 
Sorry for the delay in response, I've not been feeling too brilliant these last few days.

The difference bewteen the s/w control and manual control is quite minimal. Essentially, the manual control version has a 3 position switch added into the mix that lets you select "always on", "s/w control" or "off". The switches I provide are made by Cherry and look like this:

A410-1-manualoverride.jpg


This image shows the switch mounted into a standard faceplate on an A410/1 for the A3000, it's likely you'd need to make a mod to the case to mount it in an A3000.

Generally, leaving the switch in "s/w control" is standard unless you plan on creating your own new screen modes for which software exists on the Archimedes at which point having manual control whilst experimenting is quite useful.

For these two reasons, unless you're serious about over clocking and/or creating your own screen modes, the s/w control version is sufficient.

The standard A3000 board looks like this:

VIDCEnhancer-nonRiser.jpg


In this configuration, the board can be fitted as s/w control or manual control and requires no soldering for fitting.

Paul
 
Hi Paul

as I have said b4, I am interested for the fully assembled software controlled version...how much would p&p cost for sending to Crete Greece?

Thanks Michael
 
Hi Michael,

I shipped a board to Italy last week. The prices Royal Mail quoted for Italy meant that P&P was as follows:

Untracked but Insured £4.95

Tracked (requiring signature on delivery) and insured £9.95

As Greece is in the EU, I believe the costs would be the same.

Paul
 
Just to update everybody, I've now sold out of the original VIDC Enhancers as described above but I've just received a batch of PCB's for "version 2" of the VIDC enhancer.

Version 2 includes the ability to have up to three oscillators on board and control four VIDC clock signals so you can have the original, VGA and SVGA screen modes available whilst still having the ability to over-clock the VIDC chip by fitting a custom oscillator to deliver even higher screen resolutions.

Here's one of the new VIDC Enhancer fitted to my Archimedes A310.

UltraVIDC-A310-fitted-sml.jpg


... and here's what it looks like at 800x600 using the 36MHz oscillator

VIDC-RISCOS310-sml.jpg



Price wise, I've edited the pricing structure in the original post...

Paul
 
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