Looking for an HDMI solution for your Classic OCS or ECS Amiga? Don’t want to use lots of money on it? Then look no further. This RGBtoHDMI adapter for your Amiga is what you need. Amiga community never stops to amaze me!
The price is reasonable as just this product is priced at around 80 SEK (€7.91) with that to change. Hans Liss ordered the boards and made a small batch of the partly pre-assembled boards. David Banks is the main guy for RGBtoHDMI. You can even get some more info regarding this product here.
Raspberry Pi Zero helps the Amiga
RGBToHDMI is a project to use a Raspberry Pi Zero to produce HDMI output from old video sources, mainly retro computers. Using HDMI in your own products is difficult due to licensing and DRM issues, but using a Raspberry Pi solves that problem, and provides enough computing power to sample video signals in real-time and generate pixel-perfect images on a modern flatscreen.
Several different adapters have been designed to interface to the Raspberry Pi and use the RGBToHDMI software, but one of the most interesting is the Denise adapter, which can be used with an Amiga 500 or similar to get crisp and clean HDMI output from the Amiga.
Guide on how to use the RGBtoHDMI adapter
To use the adapter, you remove the Denise chip from its socket and replace it with the adapter, then you place Denise in the socket on the adapter and attach the Raspberry Pi. The adapter converts and transmits the digital RGB signals from Denise to the Raspberry Pi, and RGBToHDMI uses that to provide the image.
It’s a masterpiece of engineering, and it will revive old Amigas to a modern standard with a far better picture quality than ever before, with a relatively simple change.
The current version of the adapter supports both Denise (OCS) and Super Denise (ECS), using a jumper on the bottom side of the circuit board to select between the two.
On some older versions of the Amiga, namely the Amiga 1000, the original Amiga 2000 Rev 4.0 (“Amiga 2000-A”), and the Amiga 500 Rev. 3, the adapter doesn’t work out of the box, since some important signals are missing on the Denise socket on those computers. However, for the Amiga 2000-A and the Amiga 500 Rev. 3, this can be solved by patching the signals from other places on the motherboard, if you’re handy enough with a soldering iron. A similar solution may be possible on the Amiga 1000, but it hasn’t been tested yet.
The Amiga 600 is a bit too cramped for this adapter solution to fit. For the Amiga 600, there’s another adapter available that uses cables to pick up the necessary signals from various places on the motherboard. This is, of course, a more advanced mod.
How to get one? People can look for these locally on Facebook on various Retro groups. They might be sold out, as they go fast.
Important Links to the RGBtoHDMI adapter
Source: Hans Liss
