I've been wanting to set up a Raspberry Pi teletext VBIT2 receiver for quite some time and as I now have a few teletext-capable sets I thought it was a perfect time. However...
I ordered a couple of Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Ws, went to set one up and noticed that they don't have the solder holes for "TV out" composite video anymore. No problem, they still have solder pads... Until even a few moments after soldering one of the pads lifted right off. Luckily it was the ground but honestly I've soldering directly to pads on Raspberry Pis many times and never had this problem.
I then discover the current Raspberry Pi OS doesn't really support composite video out. No worries, use the legacy version... Nope, I get as far as this before it changes over to HDMI:
Ok, I'll just change it in the config file... Ha ha! No it's going to keep defaulting back to HDMI as soon as it gets past the boot screen!
So instead I found an old Raspberry Pi 3 and luckily it had a pretty old version of RPi OS "Buster" so I set that up and...
Worked perfectly first time! I do wonder if I could find a suitably older version of Pi OS Buster that the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W would've fared better, but unfortunately it's really difficult to find the older versions online.
I built all my signals rack, which includes a Teletext server, all on the first gen 'B' version of the Pi. This has the composite and audio jacks, and they're cheap as chips, I bought five for under £50, all came with SD cards, Wi-Fi dongles, keyboards and other goodies including cases. I used Balenetcher which comes with many versions of the o/s.
These Pi's although old are perfectly fine, and happily run my BBC COW generator, Test card generator, Vbit etc and are in abundance on eBay. Saves all the hassle of the newer ones.
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@crustytv I really like the look of that. I was wanting to sort out a central generator for signals once my new workshop is up and running. Need to get the shelving up next.
Just thought I'd post an update to this, as @waveydipole posted, the legacy versions are out there and after trying several Raspberry Pi OS versions I've found that this version from 2021 works best with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and VBIT2 for teletext:
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_full_armhf/images/raspios_full_armhf-2021-05-28/
Also, when soldering to the pads be VERY careful and add some form of strain relief to stop the pad being ripped off, a dab of epoxy or hot glue or PVA wood glue. Anything!
