The +5V line on the video connector output is protected by 250mA PPTC resettable fuse. So if a device states it requires 250mA, it may be borderline whether it works. A separately powered device may be more compatible.

Hey all!

It's been a while since last update. We have been busy doing production runs, and are getting closer to actual shipping. There has been a lot of "secondary" work, such as testing a massive number of VGA adapters for compatibility (47 so far), building a test bench for verifying manufactured boards work properly, having some summer vacation time off in between, and also writing a shiny user manual for the product!

Check out https://oummg.com/manual/ on how it all looks like. Let me know if you have any questions. The manual is going to be a living document, and lives at https://github.com/juj/crt_terminator/ . That GitHub page will track any issues related to the board and software.

We have had that "I'm interested" mailing list mechanism on the site for a while, but since some time has passed from that, what I will do is have a separate "I want to order" preorder-style mechanism on a lite store page, which lets people enter a buy queue. We'll then start collecting payments and shipping out boards in the queue order.

This way a queue helps us only collect payments from people when we are able to ship a card immediately, since we don't want to collect any payments in advance if we aren't able to actually send out a ready made board.

I'll post more info here and in the mail group when the actual store buy queue page is ready to go.

Well I'm certainly interested *and* want to order. :D This is excellent news, thank you!

Hope I'm one of the first in the queue. Glad to see the work has borne fruit so far.

Keenly awaiting the store page!

Hmmm... I couldn't even find the I am interested mechanism on the site. Did you guys remove it? In nay case I would be interested in buying a couple of units once they are available.

Shadow Lord, yes, I took it down yesterday to prepare to build up the actual store queue page.

I'll be sure to post here in this Vogons thread when the order system is up live, so keep an eye on new posts notifications in this thread, then can't miss it as soon as it is up.

I assume the old interests will be added to the new queue? 😀

Keropi, I am keeping the previous "I'm interested to order" mailing list separate, for two reasons:
a) quite a lot of time has passed from setting up that mailing list, so people's interests may have changed.
b) the wording on that was not made in the style of a Purchase button, but rather a "here's a mailing list to keep in touch",

so we won't presume that people who signed up for that mailing list would automatically be placed in an ordering queue.

Hi there,

this is it! The unimaginable has happened: CRT Terminator is now available to order.

It has taken a long time, took more hurdles that we could have imagined, and every time we thought that we were ready, there was one more thing to figure out. But now finally, there are no more things we can hold off on, and CRT Terminator is going to ship.

The journey has been wondrous and we have learned a lot to get here: in the past two years we have analyzed the behavior of close to 50 (S)VGA adapters, ordered several test runs of the CRT Terminator board, reverse engineered "secretive" undocumented FPGA vendor behavior, hunted eBay for different VGA adapter RAMDAC models that might be capable to perform DDR video signaling, and geeked out on sub-millisecond frame timing precision for video synchronization to work just right, to name a few of the experiments that stand out.

But at some point you just have to say enough, and let your baby out there. This is now that terrifyingly exciting moment.

The CRT Terminator store is now open for orders: https://oummg.com/store.html

In our own eyes, CRT Terminator is a masterpiece, the perfect companion to bring vintage ISA PCs to the modern era. We have learned a lot to get here, and now finally, we want to make CRT Terminator useful to everyone in the retro community.

However, there are limitations to what the VESA Feature Connector bus is capable of, so please be mindful to read the user manual https://oummg.com/manual/index.html carefully to learn where the card's limits lie.

Hopefully CRT Terminator will serve you all well to the same excitement that we have had building this project!

Been following the thread since the start, big congratulations on the release and making it happen 😀 I'll contr0l my impulse to buy right now as I really have no use for it and have both enough working CRT's and the necessary room to use them, but I'll stick around and wish for your success! And maybe I'll buy v2 when it's the right time, with the lessons learned from this first release? 😁

Order placed. Thanks!

congrats on the release!
I have placed an order as the terminator will be quite handy in the future 😀

I'll echo the congrats on the release. And another order placed. 😁

Boohyaka wrote on 2024-10-28, 16:48:

Been following the thread since the start, big congratulations on the release and making it happen 😀 I'll contr0l my impulse to buy right now as I really have no use for it and have both enough working CRT's and the necessary room to use them, but I'll stick around and wish for your success! And maybe I'll buy v2 when it's the right time, with the lessons learned from this first release? 😁

Joking about v2 makes my head spin, right now we just hope to manage the first batch of orders without being overwhelmed.

To everyone who ordered, I will be unrolling the queue in the couple of coming days as I process through all the UPS + customs export + PayPal side of things.

Thanks all for your support! I hope to hear very detailed and stern comments of how your experience works out.

Order is in for a first one. Considering a second one once more people have had a chance to get into the queue.

ETA: Any plans on making the "manual" available as an easy to download PDF?

clb wrote on 2024-10-28, 17:30:

Joking about v2 makes my head spin, right now we just hope to manage the first batch of orders without being overwhelmed.

Haha I bet! Enjoy the moment and here's hoping it all goes smoothly for you and the first buyers 😀

Boohyaka wrote on 2024-10-28, 18:15:

Haha I bet! Enjoy the moment and here's hoping it all goes smoothly for you and the first buyers 😀

Thanks! Let's hope for the best. And of course if there are issues, that is why we provide the return option to cover all bases.

Shadow Lord wrote on 2024-10-28, 17:35:

Order is in for a first one. Considering a second one once more people have had a chance to get into the queue.

ETA: Any plans on making the "manual" available as an easy to download PDF?

The manual is actually handwritten as a .html file. I found that to be the easiest way to produce the content. I tried now the browser's "Print to PDF" feature, which provides this result. That might not be the best, though if you'd like an offline copy of the manual, then Chrome does have the "compiled HTML" that saves a single-file version of the html file as a .mhtml file type, like this. Maybe one of those formats might be workable?

clb wrote on 2024-10-28, 19:04:

The manual is actually handwritten as a .html file. I found that to be the easiest way to produce the content. I tried now the browser's "Print to PDF" feature, which provides this result. That might not be the best, though if you'd like an offline copy of the manual, then Chrome does have the "compiled HTML" that saves a single-file version of the html file as a .mhtml file type, like this. Maybe one of those formats might be workable?

Thanks but not exactly what I had in mind. I have done that myself as well but the formatting is not the greatest. I was looking more for something that was properly formatted with matching size pages. That way, if a user wanted to, it could be printed out as a booklet or easily viewed on a tablet without scrolling (I have an old tablet that I use only to read manuals off of. All the PDFs are on my local server and I can pull up a manual whenever/where ever when working on a system). I know the HW is the important bit and is taking all of your time but when/if you get the time you may want to consider a download section on your site where FW updates, any NECESSARY utilities, and the the manual can be easily downloaded. Having github is great but github doesn't help less technical users and not all the info there is needed to just be a user. Just a thought. Thanks and I am looking forward to getting my unit!

What happens if you input high/true color SVGA to CRT Terminator? Does it display anything?