Retro Consoles and HDMI Mods

[Seraphic]

Have not been active in the retro scene for a long time, but I noticed there are HDMI Mods available for the NES, N64 and now GameCube. The GameCube Mod, however, is the one that really interests me because it not only includes a pure digital signal, but digital audio as well. So I may look into getting it, but it got me wondering, seeing as the FPGA for this mod line-doubles 240p to 480p (PS1 games), might it be possible to see this ported to the PlayStation 2? Or what about the SNES?

[BuckoA51]

SNES is difficult to impossible thanks to the way the graphics processor works. PS1/PS2 is a maybe though?

doing everything I can to get HDMI Gamecube back on the market

[Seraphic]

SNES is difficult to impossible thanks to the way the graphics processor works.

Ah, that's too bad. What makes the graphics processor so difficult?

PS1/PS2 is a maybe though?

My original "Fat" PS2 stopped reading PS2 games (PS1 games still work though) awhile go, so I have a "Slim" PS2 now.
Which would probably be too small to install the FPGA, no? Might the same FPGA be able to be used with just modified code?

doing everything I can to get HDMI GameCube back on the market

I already have a D-Terminal cable modified to output RGBHV over VGA for the GameCube.
So I am not sure how dramatic the picture quality might be. But again, the digital audio is what interests me while the pure digital signal is a nice added bonus.

[Unseen]

might it be possible to see this ported to the PlayStation 2? Or what about the SNES?

The PS1 and PS2 could support a similar mod, although soldering it to the system will be a lot of work - 24 digital video lines, available only on the pins of the graphics chip or video encoder, both 0.5mm pitch TPFQ. I suspect that a flex PCB with contacts reaching to the side will be the best option for that, but I have no experience with designing for non-rigid PCBs.

For the SNES, a different approach is needed because it does not have a digital video bus internally. A Linedoubler for it would need to work like a classical line doubler which first digitizes the analog video signal before processing it and there are lots of devices available that can already do that. One of the more interesting ones recently is marqs DIY linedoubler that has a thread in this forum.

[Guspaz]

The NES and N64 mods also include digital audio, and there is a digital audio mod for the SNES (outputs via TOSLINK optical).

Don't expect much of a difference in audio quality. Might get a bit less interference. I suspect that the difference will be larger on the NES (which seems to have noisy audio), and imperceptible on the GameCube.

[CkRtech]

Don't expect much of a difference in audio quality.

The difference is rather subjective. If you have a good audio system with a decent DAC, the difference - at least on the SNES in my experience - is amazing.
Also note that the digital audio output of the SNES (or any other system such as PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast) doesn't have to be optical.

[Guspaz]

The SNES SPDIF board doesn't seem to support anything but TOSLINK (and it has a TOSLINK port on it and nothing else), but even so, digital coax ports are quite rare these days, while TOSLINK is still pretty common.

[CkRtech]

The SNES SPDIF board doesn't seem to support anything but TOSLINK (and it has a TOSLINK port on it and nothing else), but even so, digital coax ports are quite rare these days, while TOSLINK is still pretty common.

Oh? I thought they were fairly even in number still - albeit reduced on the whole in favor of fitting more HDMI ports on the back of your typical receiver. I haven't shopped for a receiver in awhile, though.

I built my SNES spdif out to use digital coax and will probably go the same route for PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc, whenever I finally get around to doing those. Easy to switch and the parts cost less.