Questions that do not deserve a thread

[SGGG2]

Does anyone have any experience with 2d to 3d conversion boxes? The built in conversion for my passive Asus monitor is surprisingly decent, but it doesn't compare to real 3d and I'm wondering if there's anything better.

[Axelay]

Personally I've never seen any official Sony RGB cables except for SCPH-1050, which was only sold in Japan and is wired for JP-21 rather than SCART. The problem with most cables, including the official one, is that they use the CVBS signal for sync and with PAL consoles (both PS1 and PS2) this causes checkerboard patterns on solid colors. So you won't get the best possible image quality.

The solution is either modding your console or buying a modified cable that uses luma for sync. Or maybe there are a few cables out there that were designed for that in the first place, but for some reason most manufacturers didn't think of that...

Okay thank you for that !

My ps2 looks pretty darn decent . Just wanted to know if I could get it looking better .
You wouldn't happen to know anywhere or any ebay sellers that sell ps2 or ps1 rgb cables with luma do you ?

Or could you recommend a cable ? Cheers Xan

[Xan]

The only source I'm aware of is Wolfsoft (Germany). The cable is modded and quite pricey. Here's the link: http://www.wolfsoft.de/shop/product_inf ... mized.html

Before considering this you should fire up a game (PS1 240p/288p preferably) and see if you even notice the crosshatching patterns on whatever RGB cable you are using now, and decide whether it bothers you enough.

[Einzelherz]

Retro Console Accessories on eBay has a PS1 SCART with sync on luma.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

What do I need to connect a PS2 with a component cable to a VGA port?

[Fudoh]

If your VGA display can show RGsB, nothing but an adapter. If your display can't, then you need a sync converter from RGsB to RGBHV.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

Alright, thanks.

[ruger]

I plan to have a pretty long 5 BNC RGBHV cable beetween two Extron Crosspoint switches.
The systems hooked up to the switch with the longest cable run will be old home computers with resolutions no higher than 800x600.

How bad do you think a 50 ft / 15 meter cable (between the switches) would be? Too long or good enough?

[Fudoh]

With the proper cable 15m in RGBHV are no problem at all.

[ruger]

Thx Fudoh!

[HDgaming42]

Bugged Fudoh about this earlier and got great advice, but I suspect he's not looking to become my personal soldering coach so I'll throw this one out here too.

I'm repairing what will (hopefully) become my gaming speakers, a pair of Mackie HR624 MK2s. They don't power on, and it seems that a capacitor swap might bring them back to life.

Long story short, I believe I lifted the copper ring when removing the original capacitor, and now I have a mess on my hands. The solder won't adhere--I guess there's nothing left to stick to. See below.



Here's the schematic for the MK1 series, but it seems to be the same comparing it to the board (click for full PDF--Page 1, B4)



I'll have to bridge the + leg of C65 to R115 and ground. In picture one, I'm assuming that's the LEFT leg (gold vs brown stripe) of R115?

Now ground...should I literally run a wire from the leg of the resistor to the pad labelled GND? Or can I run it from the + leg of C65 to GND (the resistor will be very difficult to work on)?

So the positive leg of C65 would have one wire connecting directly to R115, and one wire out directly to GND?

How does the negative leg of C65 look? Did I pooch that too?

(what I love is that I practiced on three old video cards, and swapped out their capacitors without issue. Didn't wreck any pads. Cards still work. But something that matters? Nah--I have to screw that up. I guess I must have become overconfident.

[Fudoh]

What about this:



This would be a restore of the original config. And if required you can still put another connection to ground on that leg.

[HDgaming42]

This would be a restore of the original config. And if required you can still put another connection to ground on that leg.

Just to clarify--is the positive leg only connected to two wires, running in opposite directions, or are you suggesting I scrape off the surface of that trace, and solder to the trace at that location as well (I'm guessing not, as that would remove the need for the wire heading to the right, no?)

[Fudoh]

no scraping, the "blob" in the middle is just the two wires to the leg. You can scrape the connection right next to the left "hole", to make sure that connection is 100% gone.

[HDgaming42]

no scraping, the "blob" in the middle is just the two wires to the leg. You can scrape the connection right next to the left "hole", to make sure that connection is 100% gone.

thanks! will update the thread when I manage to burn a hole through something, or drown it all in solder. *fingers crossed*

[SGGG2]

Does anyone have any experience with 2d to 3d conversion boxes? The built in conversion for my passive Asus monitor is surprisingly decent, but it doesn't compare to real 3d and I'm wondering if there's anything better.

Well, I took a chance and ordered the KanexPro CupeUp 3DTV for $20, the conversion was was okay but not nearly as pronounced as my monitor's built in conversion, but the lag was absolutely terrible! No way anyone can use this for gaming. It's difficult to believe it originally retailed for $300. If I can find a 3D-Bee diamond at a steal I might give it a shot, otherwise I'll just have to wait until the Blackmagic Terranex 3D gets cleared out of production houses in five years or so

[HDgaming42]

thanks! will update the thread when I manage to burn a hole through something, or drown it all in solder. *fingers crossed*

Managed to get the cap back in there, and run both wires successfully (ran the one to the resistor on the opposite side of the board). Didn't do anything sane like continuity testing--just plugged it in.

IT WORKS. Thanks so much. Disassembled it last month and don't remember how it goes back together. Luckily I have another (dead) one so I'll take that apart and use that knowledge to reassemble the first.

...can't believe it worked. Not a pretty job, but apparently (crosses fingers) sufficient.

[hector]

I am using the D-SUB15 output on the Sync Strike to take my N64 RGB video to the pexhdcap. This works fine, but I want to use the screw terminals on the sync strike to output R, G, B, and Csync to my Sony PVM, so I won't need a scart splitter. Will a BNC -> screw terminal connector like this one work for this?

http://www.mpja.com/BNC-Male-to-Screw-T ... 9456%20PL/

[HDgaming42]

Second speaker up and running! Didn't have the time to do it properly (could only get the legs partially through the board) but it works.

Next stupid cap-replacement question:

I have an old PC that I wanted to put a GT610 in, but the heatsink is so massive it runs into two caps on the board. Could I remove those caps, and then mount them laying on their sides? Or tape them down somewhere with wires leading from the solder points to their legs?

Is there any danger in doing that? Is what I'm speaking insanity, or commonly done? Anyone here do it?

[Fudoh]

no problem with that, but I would keep the "extension" wires short.

[beatsgo]

If the wires happen to be long, make sure to insulate them with heat shrink wrap for electrical wires. You can also replace the heatsink with a 3rd party if you desire not to move the capacitors.

[Lord of Pirates]

If the wires happen to be long, make sure to insulate them with heat shrink wrap for electrical wires. You can also replace the heatsink with a 3rd party if you desire not to move the capacitors.

I'd second this, and active cooling is better (more headroom on GPU clocks and it'll run cooler) if you don't need silence.

[Ed Oscuro]

<Ed_vnz83o>: ahaha, kramer fc-4040 is a bust so far
<Ed_vnz83o>: unit itself works pretty well
<Ed_vnz83o>: SNES is dead
<Ed_vnz83o>: so can't do battle with the fc-4040ness yet
<Ed_vnz83o>: it does display color bars though, which look okay
<redrum>: ed ded sned
<Ed_vnz83o>: sned is dead
<redrum>: drop sned ed

d'oh

Unfortunately I don't have any equipment to really troubleshoot this. Maybe sometime. At least it wasn't a 1-CHIP or anything special. I'm actually not sure when it worked last.

I have ruled out the power adapter and the cables.

[bobrocks95]

Couple quick things. First is that I checked my Trinitron's self-diagnostic menu on a whim (the one you acces with Display -> 5 -> Vol -) and saw some numbers I don't remember seeing when I first bought it. It's best to have all 0's from what I understand, but I have:
AKB- 1
ZCD- 6
WDT- 2

According to my service manual for a very similar model (FV300 vs. my FV310), AKB triggers if the "RGB levels do not balance within 2 seconds after the power is turned on", ZCD appears to be the Zero Cross which triggers if some specific board goes to 0V when the TV is turned on, and there's no explanation given for what WDT is. Does anyone have any experience with these readings and are they something I should be concerned about? If word-for-word descriptions would help I've got them.

Second, if I wanted to open the TV up and tweak the convergence and geometry myself, how safe would that be? I understand everything about high voltages and all that, but all the modifications seem to be done on the deflection yoke according to my service manual. Does that carry high voltages as well? I'd assume I don't need to remove the tube (and thus the anode cap) to do these adjustments, is that an incorrect assumption?

Thanks in advance guys.

[McCracAttack]

Can anyone recommend a really low level "explain it like I'm 5" guide for configuring MAME? I've poked around the mame.ini file and can adjust things there but I can't seem to figure out adjusting the resolution. I can change the resolution that the MAME menu seems to run at but the games seem unaffected.

The MAME "documentation" feels like it was written by someone who resents people trying to use MAME.

Edit: To elaborate, I'm trying to get that "too sharp" look emulators are famous for and then apply filters on that. But MAME is displaying the games in an oddly fuzzy way that looks like a resolution mis-match.

[bobrocks95]

Can anyone recommend a really low level "explain it like I'm 5" guide for configuring MAME? I've poked around the mame.ini file and can adjust things there but I can't seem to figure out adjusting the resolution. I can change the resolution that the MAME menu seems to run at but the games seem unaffected.

Edit: To elaborate, I'm trying to get that "too sharp" look emulators are famous for and then apply filters on that. But MAME is displaying the games in an oddly fuzzy way that looks like a resolution mis-match.

A quote from Fudoh from another thread may be helpful to you:

that's because you allow MAME (and other emus) to scale the image to 640x480 fullscreen resolution. That doesn't work very well. You need to limit your emus to linedoubling. In MAME you can achieve this by disabling D3D and running MAME on DirectDraw instead. This way you get a 1:2 line mapping and a 1:1 mapping on the Pioneer - at least on the vertical. Games with 224p resolution, for example, will be doubled to 448 lines this way and the rest of the vertical will be padded with black. On the horizontal you won't get 1:1 anyway, not unless you use a rom actually using 320 pixels in width. But don't worry about that. The line mapping is important, horizontal pixel mapping isn't (as much).

Now, that applied to low resolution displays. I don't know if you can do 1:3 or 1:4 mapping this way, or if it will even display in a way that looks any better with your monitor (I'm assuming you're using a 1080p LCD). But it's a simple change that's worth a shot. I never thought MAME looked fuzzy at my monitor's native resolution, but at the same time I haven't run MAME through anything but a CRT in quite a few years, so I'm not exactly an expert on the subject.

The MAME "documentation" feels like it was written by someone who resents people trying to use MAME.

Programmers aren't usually very thoughtful to the end user when it comes to documentation unfortunately. I can't think of many things that involved editing an .ini or other text-based config file that didn't have a learning curve of some sort. There needs to be more "explain it like I'm 5" guides for things imo.

[McCracAttack]

Can anyone recommend a really low level "explain it like I'm 5" guide for configuring MAME? I've poked around the mame.ini file and can adjust things there but I can't seem to figure out adjusting the resolution. I can change the resolution that the MAME menu seems to run at but the games seem unaffected.

Edit: To elaborate, I'm trying to get that "too sharp" look emulators are famous for and then apply filters on that. But MAME is displaying the games in an oddly fuzzy way that looks like a resolution mis-match.

A quote from Fudoh from another thread may be helpful to you:

that's because you allow MAME (and other emus) to scale the image to 640x480 fullscreen resolution. That doesn't work very well. You need to limit your emus to linedoubling. In MAME you can achieve this by disabling D3D and running MAME on DirectDraw instead. This way you get a 1:2 line mapping and a 1:1 mapping on the Pioneer - at least on the vertical. Games with 224p resolution, for example, will be doubled to 448 lines this way and the rest of the vertical will be padded with black. On the horizontal you won't get 1:1 anyway, not unless you use a rom actually using 320 pixels in width. But don't worry about that. The line mapping is important, horizontal pixel mapping isn't (as much).

Now, that applied to low resolution displays. I don't know if you can do 1:3 or 1:4 mapping this way, or if it will even display in a way that looks any better with your monitor (I'm assuming you're using a 1080p LCD). But it's a simple change that's worth a shot. I never thought MAME looked fuzzy at my monitor's native resolution, but at the same time I haven't run MAME through anything but a CRT in quite a few years, so I'm not exactly an expert on the subject.

The MAME "documentation" feels like it was written by someone who resents people trying to use MAME.

Programmers aren't usually very thoughtful to the end user when it comes to documentation unfortunately. I can't think of many things that involved editing an .ini or other text-based config file that didn't have a learning curve of some sort. There needs to be more "explain it like I'm 5" guides for things imo.

Thank you for your reply! That's sort of lining up with what I read here:

Mame New Video

In D3D mode turning the pre-scaling option up to 2 or 3 seems to get the results I'm after. I'll see if I can mess around with DirectDraw as well.

[bobrocks95]

Thank you for your reply! That's sort of lining up with what I read here:

Mame New Video

In D3D mode turning the pre-scaling option up to 2 or 3 seems to get the results I'm after. I'll see if I can mess around with DirectDraw as well.

Also, are you using a command line version of MAME or something with a GUI like MAMEUI? The latter would make video option tweaking a lot easier and faster if you're not already using it (or another version with a GUI).

[LordHypnos]

So, I have recently started running my Dreamcast through VGA ever since I found an old PC CRT in the alley, and boy does it make a world of difference to the clarity of the picture (although mostly with 480p games, which is not the majority of what I play).

I was wondering though: Some 240p games can be tricked into being compatible with VGA, and some run just fine naturally through VGA. What is actually happening to the picture when it's being displayed through a monitor that doesn't support 320x240? Is the DC actually doubling the lines / scaling the image? I'll post a photo of Fast Striker, and one of Gunbird 2 (which isn't actually really playable through VGA due to slowdown / graphical glitches). I'll also post one of Jet Grind Radio as a "control" (because it's 480p).

On the same topic, I've heard various things about the way that the VGA signal is processed by TVs (and probably by extension monitors), so can someone tell me what the actual resolution that games are supposed to be run in on the DC? Is it 640x480 or is it something weird like 720x480? Should a pretty basic consumer VGA monitor be able to display this right?

pics (pretty low quality):
Fast Striker (240p): http://i.imgur.com/xppjGBW.jpg
Gunbird 2 (240p, or maybe 224p?) http://i.imgur.com/zb4ssxk.jpg
Jet Grind Radio (480p): http://i.imgur.com/6pVzNoN.jpg

Sorry for the giant post

[BuckoA51]

It's 720x480, most monitors will display this, some display it as 640x480 incorrectly, which can affect the picture quality.

and yes 240p games must be line-doubled to display on a VGA monitor.