PS2 PS2HDMI - Internal mod(board) in the works!

Bit of an update on this...so what have I done in the last 2.5 months, not a lot really! I got COVID, was away for work a lot and wanted to chill in my free time and over Christmas, so that was mid-Oct to now basically with no progress.

Started working on this again in the new year and I now have audio working great over HDMI, so that is full 1080p/60 and audio over HDMI from the PS2! However it's clear I need to spend some time on optimising some of the timing, especially the overscan as when the console goes from the PS2 home menu into the 'PlayStation 2' splash screen the video clock stops for a couple hundred microseconds, then when it goes from the splash screen into the game it does it again.

At first it was messing up my lock on the video feed, but I now have it working, however it's not perfect (due to 'reasons', I'm not sure it ever will be), but I think it can be improved a fair bit as when I got it working initially I just kind of hashed the timing quickly to make it kind of work.

I'll keep trying to update this periodically (every couple of months or when I get to a milestone), however I think the bulk of the work is now done and what remains is as follows...

  • Sort the overscan timing as best as is possible while still making sure it actually works and locks on reliably.
  • Move the I2C programming of the HDMI encoder from the Arduino onto the FPGA
  • Start working on the final hardware design so it can fit inside a PS2

Thats for the PAL setup at least, NTSC will require some additional work / changes I assume (not looked into it really), but I can add a solder jumper to the final board design so that if jumper 1 is connected it uses the PAL configuration and if jumper 2 is connected it uses the NTSC configuration. The hardware itself should remain the same, just the FPGA config will likely need tweaked a bit.
 
Seems like PS2HDMI Digital is progressing too well :adoration:


https://twitter.com/citrus3000psi/status/1633478885147922434

Left : Slim | Right : Fat

FqtIYt4XoAA79B6


Current Compatible Model List :

FqtKpc_WAAA4uST
 
Louay said:
@Mario87 its good to see people work on good mod for HDMI on PS2, how is your progress man ?
Click to expand...

Hi @Louay, I actually just came back to update this thread and saw you tagged me yesterday (e-mail notifications turned off) so good timing! :D

Progress has been slow as my day job has had me out of the country almost as much as it has had me in the country due to various reasons and when I come home for a week or so I'm usually too tired to do anything.

However last week I pulled my finger out and made some progress. The overscaler to elminate the black borders is working, as is the watchdog for it, but the overscaler itself isn't perfect and it's essentially because each game generates its own HBLANK & VBLANK signals at different points than others. All within the same "rough region", but not the exact same place, so if I fine tune it for say GT4, when I run GTA: LCS I get a slight black border to the left.

However I had some time this morning and took a better look, I now know exactly what I need to do in order to fix it. It will involve the FPGA needing to take some initial signal readings, counting clock cycles then doing some basic math so that it can then calculate the correct signals to generate instead of having a fixed value which is what I had originally thought would be fine to do.

The new method of having the FPGA do the calcs should also mean NTSC and PAL games will both work with a single board design, no changes needed as any difference to the internal signals will be calculated at game bootup.

Audio is now working perfectly and so the remaining work left to do is as follows...
  • Fix the overscaler (this will take a bit of time and trial / error)
  • Move the HDMI encoder configuration functionality off of the Arduino and onto the FPGA
  • Final hardware design and implementation
I have noticed in the info above they mention for SCPH-39xxxx that a PSU and shield swap will be required from a SCPH-50xxxx model, however I think I can avoid the need for that, but time will tell, I have been more focussed on the FPGA development than hardware implementation, but I think I can make it work on an SCPH-39xxxx without needing to swap components

I am trying to spend more focus on it just now and if I had not been away for work so much I would be WELL into the final hardware development as all the progress I have made since my original post has been in about 1 month of actual work (if that), just spread out over a 6 month period.

Unfortunately the day job does not appear like it will be relenting any time soon, so progress will continue to be a bit slow, but it WILL get there.

As previously mentioned however, this is simply a passion project for me, not something I aim to make a living from like the guys who are developing PS2DIGITAL, so I just do it in my spare time (evenings and weekends) and if I do nothing for 2 months straight (as has happened here), it doesn't affect me in any way (other than bug me inside because I haven't worked on it and made the progress I want to).

In saying that, however, I do want to complete it and make it happen, more just for me than anything else and later I will decide if it will be sold, released as open source or something else.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Back
Top