Spite Sprite

Spite Sprite is an Amiga RGB to composite/S-Video adapter. It was inspired by (if not instigated by) the frustration with the complexity and expense of existing adapters.

I had recently acquired an Amiga 500, but I didn't have an original monitor or a 15KHz capable VGA monitor. I did have a Commodore 1702. There are lots of video adapter options, many of which produce clean digital video but require modification of the Amiga. The most reasonable solution seemed to be some kind of RGB-to-S-video adapter, but they're not really available either. And any solution seemed expensive or unobtainable.

I found this adaptor circuit based on the AD724. That's an integrated RGB to composite/S-Video conversion chip that is technically still in production¹ and reportedly has good quality. I found a source for those, designed a board, chopped up a DB-25, and now I have a simple, relatively inexpensive Amiga video adapter.

They are available from suppliers but Analog Devices apparently doesn't sell many of them as they're currently about $20 each in single quantities or $9 each for a thousand. What's worse is there's a lot of old stock on eBay for more reasonable prices, but they range from seemingly legit to obviously fake. You can find some reputable sellers at this point, but there's no long term guarantee that these will stay available.