TV-OUT on Olimex's A10-LIME

I got my hands on Olimex's new A10-OLinuXino-LIME as a potential replacement for RaspberryPi which I fried by accident. One specific requirement I had was a composite TV output (PAL/NTSC). It is not mentioned anywhere in product briefs by Olimex, but this SBC does have an analog video output- both VGA and composite. I believe it also supports RGB with sync mode but don't quote me on that.

I purchased mine from a local distributor- Magic Smoke Refill Labs. I can highly recommend purchasing from them, as they are nice people to deal with. Their name is also quite an irony because I actually purchased my board to replace one which put out a bit of smoke.

Getting TV output to work was actually pretty straightforward:

1. Connect TVOUT0 (GPIO_1 pin 20) and AGND (GPIO_1 pin 4) to display.

2. Make a few simple changes to FEX file and compile it to binary configuration file:

   mkdir -p /mnt/mmc
   mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/mmc
   /opt/sunxi-tools/bin2fex /mnt/mmc/script.bin > new.fex
   # ... edit the new.fex file ...
   /opt/sunxi-tools/fex2bin new.fex > /mnt/mmc/script.bin
   umount /mnt/mmc
   reboot
   

3. Summary of the changes to new.fex is shown below. Full file is available here.

   --- prev.fex    2014-03-10 19:58:50.000000000 +0000
   +++ new.fex     2014-04-01 14:39:13.000000000 +0000
   @@ -321,20 +321,18 @@
   [disp_init]
   disp_init_enable = 1
   disp_mode = 0
   -screen0_output_type = 4
   -screen0_output_mode = 5
   -screen1_output_type = 1
   -screen1_output_mode = 4
   +screen0_output_type = 2
   +screen0_output_mode = 11
   +screen1_output_type = 2
   +screen1_output_mode = 11
   fb0_framebuffer_num = 2
   fb0_format = 10
   fb0_pixel_sequence = 0
   fb0_scaler_mode_enable = 1
   -fb0_width = 1366
   -fb0_height = 768
   fb1_framebuffer_num = 2
   fb1_format = 10
   fb1_pixel_sequence = 0
   -fb1_scaler_mode_enable = 0
   +fb1_scaler_mode_enable = 1
   lcd0_bright = 240
   lcd1_bright = 197
   lcd0_screen_bright = 50
   @@ -347,7 +345,7 @@
   lcd1_screen_hue = 50
   
   [lcd0_para]
   -lcd_used = 1
   +lcd_used = 0
   lcd_x = 1366
   lcd_y = 768
   lcd_dclk_freq = 70
   @@ -476,7 +474,7 @@
   
   [tv_out_dac_para]
   dac_used = 1
   -dac0_src = 4
   +dac0_src = 0
   dac1_src = 5
   dac2_src = 6
   dac3_src = 0
   

4. Profit!