Tandy 1000 TL Video Capture with Datapath VisionRGB E1s
0This is my first real attempt to capture "analog" video with my Datapath E1s. I am using a Tandy 1000 TL and I think the results came out very well. There is a little noise most visible in the dark gray color, I will work on filtering that out in future captures.
In order to capture digital RGBI via the Datapath, you need a special digital to analog converter that can handle the peculiar qualities of that signal, especially color #6 (which is brown, not dark yellow). I am using the GGLabs CGA2RGB.
The Datapath has some trouble when the video modes switch. The text mode used in the TL is 640x225, so I set my window to 640x480. The games use 320x200, which is why they look more squashed. A real 1000 has this issue unless you use the DOS command MODE 200, which can't be done until the system finishes booting. MODE 200 gives you a 640x200 text mode like CGA and PCjr. The TL does a fast boot and I wanted to show it to prove this is not being captured by an emulator. I am only capturing 640x240 pixels, so I have stretched it vertically and then resized it to 1920x1440 using nearest neighbor resizing.
When you see the text modes, at first they will appear ugly and blocky because the Datapath does not detect the mode properly and I have to manually set it in VCS. I also had to adjust the pixel position for the third game to get it properly centered horizontally. It can be rather a chore to get the video centered vertically when there is so much black!
I had to tweak the volume on the Tandy sound because it was clipping in the first game but was too quiet in the third game.