🚀 go-pugleaf

> Does anybody know what the lowest cost device that would generate a 60Hz
> video sync signal would be.  

To cut a long story short, I suggest a VIDI/O BOX (TM) from Truevision,
Inc. 800-858-8783, list $995.

Certainly crystal stability will be required for your application
(therefore you need 59.94 Hz field rate, not 60 Hz).  Just horizontal and
vertical 4 V 'sync' might work, it depends on the device being fed, but I
suggest (and the VIDI/O BOX provides) 1 V "black burst" which includes
colour burst and pedestal, and is in fact exactly a legal black video
signal.

All respectible (broadcast or industrial) video equipment will free-run
and generate legal timing in the absence of reference video in, this may
or may not be true of your workstation.  I suspect that your workstation
requires reference sync only so that an external sync generator can
generate subcarrier locked to the sync.  This is to allow you to
externally encode a coherent NTSC colour signal, that is, a signal in
which the colour subcarrier is phase-locked to the horizontal sync.  The
VIDI/O BOX includes an encoder.

I suspect that your workstation outputs is colloquially called "RGB with
RS-170-A timing" and not what you refer to as "RS-170(NTSC)"; the
distinction is the subject of a following article.

C.

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Charles A. Poynton			Sun Microsystems Inc.
<poynton@sun.com>			2550 Garcia Avenue, MS 8-04
415-336-7846				Mountain View, CA 94043

"Japan has no laws against damage to its flag, but it has strict laws
forbidding the burning of foreign flags lest this give offense to the
country in question." -- The Economist, July 1, 1989, p. 19.
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