Some of you may be familiar with RGBtoHDMI project (https://github.com/hoglet67/RGBtoHDMI) Which uses a raspberry pi board to convert the RGB signals from old computers into a HDMI signal for modern TV’s.
It was originally designed for the BBC Micro but was then extended to include other computers such as the Spectrum and the Amiga.
I popped over to the GitHub one evening and posted a message to see if in theory, the project would work with the Sam Coupe. A couple of messages later and IanSB had already implemented theoretical Sam support into his fork of the project.
So my next step was to build up one of the 12bit boards and wire it up to the Sam to see if it worked. And it did!!
It all powered on first time and the picture quality was absolutely perfect. All I had to do was center the image on the screen.
Once I had proven it was going to work I then made a prototype of the interface board that would connect this up to Sam. I am planning on designing a proper PCB for this part now it is all tested.
I then knocked up a quick case design in Sketchup and printed it out on the 3D Printer to give it a slightly more professional look. I even fired up the Vinyl sign cutter to give it a Sam style logo 🙂
And there we have it. The worlds very first (As far as I know) Sam Coupe HDMI Interface! Once I have the PCBs made up I’m probably going to build up a few of these as there are a number of people interested. But I will be releasing all the files so anyone can construct their own as I don’t want to spend the rest of my life soldering boards and the SMD components on the RGBtoHDMI board are a bit fiddley. Hopefully, I will get a bit better at them the more I do 🙂
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