Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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djsheep
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Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by djsheep »

For those who were waiting, this, plus some other devices have been announced for 2020:

http://etim.net.au/new2020/index.html
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Gunstar
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Gunstar »

Awesome to see another VGA to SCART adapter option.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by kitty666cats »

Ahh, well this explains why that JS Tech box didn't arouse much interest when I reached out to a few places to toy with it, heh. This thing's got several more inputs and dat versatile output!
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by MarkOZLAD »

Keen on the Supergun Attenuator to replace my box of resistors on my arcade cab with modded TV.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by kitty666cats »

kitty666cats wrote:Ahh, well this explains why that JS Tech box didn't arouse much interest when I reached out to a few places to toy with it, heh. This thing's got several more inputs and dat versatile output!
(...as in, those big retro vidya/gear news sites/YouTube pages and some of the AV companies have their hands in eachother's pockets and don't give a flying fuck about something different when they've already been in the know about stuff like these new devices that their personal friends made, haha. BUT, that's good business, hype something up too early and the idea could get jacked :o These new devices do look cool!)

EDIT: Not at all that I am butthurt about that 1:2 SCART splitter, it's a pretty simplistic unit, I just found it ironic that several I'd reached out to try it viewed it with skepticism, perhaps the impression was as if it was some iffy dev new to the mix. Head honcho's a nice fella who's been making transcoders/switches/splitters & scalers for like 2 and a half decades :shock: BUT, to be fair, the products of JS Tech aren't intended solely for gaming use, and never were. A bit of an apples and oranges deal, this new splitter+switch is quite diff :) I guess I'm just bummin' my efforts convincing that company to make it may have been over-excitment over something people would need (wasn't gonna make any moneys on the device!), but with enough factors of what people are willing to pay coming into the mix, people usually just grab up those Shinybow Matrixes or gscartsw's / Hyrdras if they're already ready to drop around $70

I'm just glad there's more units being made providing dual SCART output that aren't loaded with more inputs/tech/features than I'd particularly need, there's a pretty strange lack of ready-to-order powered SCART devices to distribute a console's RGB signal. The Shinybow matrixes and also their crazy 1:8 distro amp seemed to be the cheapest bet, and reside still far over a hundo :o

Hope more stuff with 2 outputs keeps getting made, even something like a switchable 2:2 would be neat! No clue if that's fathomable under $100 though :o All the TaoBao designs making it over to Aliexpress are interesting, can't wait to see if more stuff pops up.

--------------------

ONWARD: on the note of the Worthington stuff, I am most definitely interested in seeing a price point on his SCART switch/splitter, as well as that DE-15 -> SCART doohickey. Don't particularly need either, but I dig the designs of them... moreso curious about the first one! The latter is nice, but I feel like we've already had boundless possibilities for CRT Emudriver / 15kHz DE-15 to SCART Pi output for quite a long time now. I do like how it has that 'damage control' for 31kHz and beyond though :)

For instance, Antonio Villena has designed this cable that carries audio through the DE-15 cable (though it's currently used specifically for his own devices)

https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/pro ... art-cable/

Image

Here's the unit said cable was originally designed for, I think?

https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/pro ... 0crt-rpi4/

Image
Last edited by kitty666cats on Wed May 06, 2020 5:42 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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I like it! Coincidentally, I just built a frankenstein VGA/RCA Audio > SCART cable out of 3 different cables-- a SCART male to SCART male, an old d-sub 15 VGA cable, and a SNES SCART cable. It was touch and go for a while but I got it working, built it specifically for a GroovyMAME / CRTEmuTools build for my FD Trinitron Wega. It looks and works with 15KHz FANTASTIC, but Tims is a much more elegant solution than my scary cable. Im not sure what my c-sync level is, but its probably outputting TTL to my SCART>YUV box. I probably need to revisit it and add a resistor to attenuate, but it seems to be working fine for the time being.
Last edited by Josh128 on Thu May 07, 2020 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by kitty666cats »

Josh128 wrote:I like it! Coincidentally, I just built a frankenstein VGA/RCA Audio > SCART cable out of 3 different cables-- a SCART male to SCART male, an old d-sub 15 VGA cable, and a SNES SCART cable. It was touch and go for a while but I got it working, built it specifically for a GroovyMAME / CRTEmuTools build for my FD Trinitron Wega. it looks and works 15KHz FANTASTIC, but this is a much more elegant solution than my scary cable. Im not sure what my c-sync level is, but its probably outputting TTL to my SCART>YUV box. I probably need to revisit it and add a resistor to attenuate, but it seems to be working fine for the time being.
Don't quote me, but your RGB to Component transcoder could very well be taking care of the TTL levels for you already :)
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Josh128 »

kitty666cats wrote:
Josh128 wrote:I like it! Coincidentally, I just built a frankenstein VGA/RCA Audio > SCART cable out of 3 different cables-- a SCART male to SCART male, an old d-sub 15 VGA cable, and a SNES SCART cable. It was touch and go for a while but I got it working, built it specifically for a GroovyMAME / CRTEmuTools build for my FD Trinitron Wega. it looks and works 15KHz FANTASTIC, but this is a much more elegant solution than my scary cable. Im not sure what my c-sync level is, but its probably outputting TTL to my SCART>YUV box. I probably need to revisit it and add a resistor to attenuate, but it seems to be working fine for the time being.
Don't quote me, but your RGB to Component transcoder could very well be taking care of the TTL levels for you already :)
I did consider that, at the very least it might take the brunt of the damage instead of the TV! :lol:
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Taiyaki »

That VGA to SCART for Groovymame sounds very promising!
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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I wonder when hes going to sell the VGA>SCART? Its not in his online store yet.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by djsheep »

​For those waiting on Tim's new products, they just dropped on his store:
https://etim.net.au/shop/shop.php​


He's also got a bunch of adapter cables and other things he's distributing now:
https://etim.net.au/shop/shop.php?crn=213​
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by kitty666cats »

The fact that you need special 8-pin mini DIN cables to even use the SCART switch thing / there isn't at least one included is... interesting. It's 2020, when will people finally move past the Framemeister? Your choices are to either make one, order one from somewhere that will have them available one Sunday morning per month, or order them from somewhere else that will probably end up selling out pretty quick. Coulda, y'know, had the output be the same as the input - one people can actually access easily worldwide u_u;
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by ldeveraux »

kitty666cats wrote: It's 2020, when will people finally move past the Framemeister?
That's the OSSC.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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kitty666cats wrote:The fact that you need special 8-pin mini DIN cables to even use the SCART switch thing / there isn't at least one included is... interesting. It's 2020, when will people finally move past the Framemeister? Your choices are to either make one, order one from somewhere that will have them available one Sunday morning per month, or order them from somewhere else that will probably end up selling out pretty quick. Coulda, y'know, had the output be the same as the input - one people can actually access easily worldwide u_u;
The SCART switch was originally designed near the end of 2015 and ready for production by March 2016. I wanted a small automatic SCART switch to go with my SCART To JAMMA stuff and found an enclosure that happened to fit perfectly on the Framemeister. At the time this was the most popular scaler - I don't remember if the OSSC had been released yet or not. Pretty much all commercial SCART switchers were going out of production at this point too.

I think it would have done OK if released on time, but due to various reasons it didn't happen then (along with the rest of the SCART To JAMMA project). This current batch was produced in January 2019. I don't remember why I thought it was a good idea, but it did occur to me afterwards that the choice of output connector was a bit of a liability.

The problem is that I don't really want to get into the video cable making business, and I don't want to send this whole production run to e-waste. These days it seems everybody and his mother is making a SCART switch, so its not a market I'm particularly interested in any more.
kitty666cats wrote: ONWARD: on the note of the Worthington stuff, I am most definitely interested in seeing a price point on his SCART switch/splitter, as well as that DE-15 -> SCART doohickey. Don't particularly need either, but I dig the designs of them... moreso curious about the first one! The latter is nice, but I feel like we've already had boundless possibilities for CRT Emudriver / 15kHz DE-15 to SCART Pi output for quite a long time now. I do like how it has that 'damage control' for 31kHz and beyond though :)
Here's a photo of the internals of the SCART switch - no board space unused in there.

Regarding the VGA to SCART adapter - the choice was between putting a VGA socket on my Arcade Driver video amp board, which I did not want to do, or come up with a kind of universal VGA to SCART adapter. There are some half baked solutions out there, but they have some serious deficiencies (like no audio support). The over frequency sync blocking isn't strictly necessary, but as I've already sold hundreds of SCART To JAMMA Adapter boards that have no protection, many of which are connected to monitors that have no protection, I thought I'm likely going to get into trouble if I don't include it.

Anyway, the VGASCART adapter design was not ready in time for the production in January this year, it will probably have to wait a bit longer as I'm quite busy right now.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Gunstar »

How much stock do you have of these SCART switches? Sounds like you won't make more and so just wondering if I should grab one now rather than waiting for the VGAtoSCART to drop (also is there a rough ETA on them?).

Really glad you're making a VGA to SCART adapter with sync protection, my ArcadeForge UMSA developed a faulty sync output and I wonder if it was caused by higher than expected voltage. I've also begun to gather parts to build the hackaday Ultimate VGA to SCART cable which, I believe, is based on some of your schematics and has sync protection but an off the shelf solution is most welcome.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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viletim wrote:
kitty666cats wrote:The fact that you need special 8-pin mini DIN cables to even use the SCART switch thing / there isn't at least one included is... interesting. It's 2020, when will people finally move past the Framemeister? Your choices are to either make one, order one from somewhere that will have them available one Sunday morning per month, or order them from somewhere else that will probably end up selling out pretty quick. Coulda, y'know, had the output be the same as the input - one people can actually access easily worldwide u_u;
The SCART switch was originally designed near the end of 2015 and ready for production by March 2016. I wanted a small automatic SCART switch to go with my SCART To JAMMA stuff and found an enclosure that happened to fit perfectly on the Framemeister. At the time this was the most popular scaler - I don't remember if the OSSC had been released yet or not. Pretty much all commercial SCART switchers were going out of production at this point too.

I think it would have done OK if released on time, but due to various reasons it didn't happen then (along with the rest of the SCART To JAMMA project). This current batch was produced in January 2019. I don't remember why I thought it was a good idea, but it did occur to me afterwards that the choice of output connector was a bit of a liability.

The problem is that I don't really want to get into the video cable making business, and I don't want to send this whole production run to e-waste. These days it seems everybody and his mother is making a SCART switch, so its not a market I'm particularly interested in any more.
kitty666cats wrote: ONWARD: on the note of the Worthington stuff, I am most definitely interested in seeing a price point on his SCART switch/splitter, as well as that DE-15 -> SCART doohickey. Don't particularly need either, but I dig the designs of them... moreso curious about the first one! The latter is nice, but I feel like we've already had boundless possibilities for CRT Emudriver / 15kHz DE-15 to SCART Pi output for quite a long time now. I do like how it has that 'damage control' for 31kHz and beyond though :)
Here's a photo of the internals of the SCART switch - no board space unused in there.

Regarding the VGA to SCART adapter - the choice was between putting a VGA socket on my Arcade Driver video amp board, which I did not want to do, or come up with a kind of universal VGA to SCART adapter. There are some half baked solutions out there, but they have some serious deficiencies (like no audio support). The over frequency sync blocking isn't strictly necessary, but as I've already sold hundreds of SCART To JAMMA Adapter boards that have no protection, many of which are connected to monitors that have no protection, I thought I'm likely going to get into trouble if I don't include it.

Anyway, the VGASCART adapter design was not ready in time for the production in January this year, it will probably have to wait a bit longer as I'm quite busy right now.
Ahhh, the fact that this design is actually quite old clears things up quite well. Thanks for your response!

Can't get over the clever design of that VGA to SCART, haha :) So compact and efficient
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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Gunstar wrote:How much stock do you have of these SCART switches? Sounds like you won't make more and so just wondering if I should grab one now rather than waiting for the VGAtoSCART to drop (also is there a rough ETA on them?).
I have made 200 units. If I manage to sell them in a year's time, I'll surely make more (though likely with a SCART output).

I think the VGA to SCART adapter will be available in three months time. The design is finished - it just needs to be manufactured with other products to keep the costs down.
Gunstar wrote:Really glad you're making a VGA to SCART adapter with sync protection, my ArcadeForge UMSA developed a faulty sync output and I wonder if it was caused by higher than expected voltage. I've also begun to gather parts to build the hackaday Ultimate VGA to SCART cable which, I believe, is based on some of your schematics and has sync protection but an off the shelf solution is most welcome.
This is actually the second version. Here's a couple of photos of the first one from 2013. Never released, unfortunately.

Image
Image
Pictured plugged into my old SCART To JAMMA Adapter V2 board
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Gunstar »

Thanks for the reply and info, a 3 month wait isn't so bad.

The mk1 VGAtoSCART look great, I love the LED status/notifications.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Gunstar »

Any news on the VGA to SCART adapters, Tim? thanks
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by strayan »

Gunstar wrote:Any news on the VGA to SCART adapters, Tim? thanks
I really want one (for a GBS-C) as well. Form factor of the 1st ed. is perfect!
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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Gunstar wrote:Any news on the VGA to SCART adapters, Tim? thanks
The boards are being assembled at the moment. If nothing goes wrong with production, the adapters should be for sale in 2-3 weeks time.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

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viletim wrote:
Gunstar wrote:Any news on the VGA to SCART adapters, Tim? thanks
The boards are being assembled at the moment. If nothing goes wrong with production, the adapters should be for sale in 2-3 weeks time.
Excellent news! Thanks for the update.
strayan wrote:
Gunstar wrote:Any news on the VGA to SCART adapters, Tim? thanks
I really want one (for a GBS-C) as well. Form factor of the 1st ed. is perfect!


I really like the LEDs it has too.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Gunstar »

Tim's VGA to SCART adapter is up for sale:
Image
Features:

-Combines horizontal/vertical sync (of any polarity) with a XOR gate to make composite sync.
-Accepts TTL composite sync through the VGA input.
-Generates SCART status signals that put the TV into RGB mode when a valid sync signal is detected.
-May be powered from via the VGA cable or via a separate DC barrel connector.
-Aspect ratio selection (requires soldering a switch in place)
-Blocks sync signals that are out of range (useful when connecting old arcade monitors).
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by strayan »

Gunstar wrote:Tim's VGA to SCART adapter is up for sale:
Image
Features:

-Combines horizontal/vertical sync (of any polarity) with a XOR gate to make composite sync.
-Accepts TTL composite sync through the VGA input.
-Generates SCART status signals that put the TV into RGB mode when a valid sync signal is detected.
-May be powered from via the VGA cable or via a separate DC barrel connector.
-Aspect ratio selection (requires soldering a switch in place)
-Blocks sync signals that are out of range (useful when connecting old arcade monitors).
Picked up one and it’s working great with my GBS-C in 480p to 240p downscale mode (the GBS wouldn’t power it though):

https://imgur.com/a/hlnHnWl
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by Elrinth »

How will OSSC like this if we feed it VGA via Scart (via gscartsw) instead of in the VGA port? Will it still handle all the synk signals, resolutions etc the same way?
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by nmalinoski »

Elrinth wrote:How will OSSC like this if we feed it VGA via Scart (via gscartsw) instead of in the VGA port? Will it still handle all the synk signals, resolutions etc the same way?
Being a VGA to SCART adapter, which requires sync combination circuitry, I'd expect it to be direction; in which case, it likely wouldn't produce a VGA signal from SCART input--that would warrant a different device.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by strayan »

nmalinoski wrote: Being a VGA to SCART adapter, which requires sync combination circuitry, I'd expect it to be direction; in which case, it likely wouldn't produce a VGA signal from SCART input--that would warrant a different device.
I think you may have misunderstood his question. Sound likes he wants to hook up a RGBHV VGA source to the SCART input on the OSSC presumably to take advantage of the low pass filter.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by NormalFish »

Potentially offtopic so pardon me, but does anyone have a SCARTMUX switch? Curious how it handles sync-on-luma with a PS2, particularly if it switches reliably. I don't understand the way these automatic switches function well enough to guess.
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by kitty666cats »

NormalFish wrote:Potentially offtopic so pardon me, but does anyone have a SCARTMUX switch? Curious how it handles sync-on-luma with a PS2, particularly if it switches reliably. I don't understand the way these automatic switches function well enough to guess.
I don’t have one but if I were a betting man it passes luma sync fine. Also, the interior has a sync separator you can switch on if you run into any issues with displays or external devices between the switch and your display :)
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Re: Tim Worthington: SCART2ARC30 Announced

Post by NormalFish »

kitty666cats wrote:
NormalFish wrote:Potentially offtopic so pardon me, but does anyone have a SCARTMUX switch? Curious how it handles sync-on-luma with a PS2, particularly if it switches reliably. I don't understand the way these automatic switches function well enough to guess.
I don’t have one but if I were a betting man it passes luma sync fine. Also, the interior has a sync separator you can switch on if you run into any issues with displays or external devices between the switch and your display :)
might be a worthy purchase, then, sounds good.
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