8bitgasm wrote:nmalinoski wrote:Where AV port strain is a concern, you could add a 2 to 3 inch (~6cm) dongle, just long enough so the SyncBaby can rest on a sturdy surface instead of hanging from the AV port.
Thought about this as well, but with it comes extra costs, tooling, etc. I really believe the current design alone has no long term "issue", and the new design proposed above would further improve any concerns bringing the whole assembly closer to the connector. I would however consider doing a standoff from the underside of the board to the tabletop if it didn't look too tacky.
Thinking about this more, a dongle design could very well reduce overall costs by potentially letting you standardize on one or two board designs that could be used with pretty much any console, so long as you have the requisite adapter.
Looking at BeharBros again, just about all of the products they design have a standard 5x2 or 6x2 input header (I forget how many pins, exactly), and I know they have dongles that fit both the Dreamcast AV port and VGA cables, so you can use just about any RGBS/RGBHV source with any of their devices, so long as you have the correct dongle. For example, if I had the VGA dongle, I could use my Toro as a generic sync combiner and/or VGA to SCART converter.
If you were to apply this two-component formula to the SyncBaby, you could pick a connector to standardize on (Enough to transmit, for example: R, G, B, Sync, Left Audio, Right Audio, Digital Audio, and Common Ground), then split development between the dongle and the SyncBaby.
The dongle would be responsible for taking the outputs from the console and putting them on the correct lines that the SyncBaby expects. A custom console connector could be used that can include components, like the 220uF caps for the original PlayStation. I don't recall whether it was Retro Access or Retro Gaming Cables, but one of them was working on something like this that had a compartment to allow required components (caps, etc) to be correctly placed at the console end of the cable, as well as a lid secured with screws for easy access and modification.
Then the SyncBaby would consist of the common connector, the port breakouts, the sync stripper/combiner, and the requisite configuration switches (RGBS/RGBHV/Passthrough mode selector, mainly).
Or maybe don't do any of this; my ideas are not always simple or practical.
As for the standoff, what does it matter how tacky it looks? It's going to be behind the console, where no one will see it. Just make sure that, if you're going to develop a variant for N64s with RGB boards, maybe see if you can design it so that it won't block the Mini HDMI port if the console is also fitted with an UltraHDMI.