Ultimate mini arcade monitor for Raspberry or mini PC

[Classicgamer]

I've been looking for something to do with an old Zotac mini media pc so I picked up this 5.7" Accelevision 480p vga and video monitor. The project is to build a portable arcade (or lap-cade) in an old aluminum camera case (a mini metal briefcase essentially). The form factor is a small laptop with a full arcade joystick control panel instead of a keyboard.

The screen was so awesome for this purpose that I thought I'd share in case anybody is looking for a screen for a PI project etc.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rJrubnv7CEc

The video shows standard mame running in 640 x 480 VGA with no shaders or effects. The easy scaling from 240p to 480p makes the image look good without any smoothing so you can do more with weaker hardware.

I have only tested 480p so far but I know it can definately handle 480i as it has composite video in as well as vga. I suspect 240p from Groovymame will work just fine via vga.

So far, the only low res 4:3 screens I have seen for the Raspberry are 3.2" which is too small, even for a handheld imo. This 5.7" screen is just better. It even comes with a remote which is odd as you would have to be very close to use it. It has touchscreen functionality too.

I paid $15 used on eBay.

[donluca]

Lovely! Do you have a link to the ended auction? I'd love to build myself a vertical mini-cab for shmups.

I wonder how much the refresh can drift from 60hz for a groovymame use...

[Classicgamer]

Lovely! Do you have a link to the ended auction? I'd love to build myself a vertical mini-cab for shmups.

I wonder how much the refresh can drift from 60hz for a groovymame use...

If you search for "Accelevision 5.7" LCD" you won't have any problems finding one.

When I bought mine, there were plenty of others on eBay. They weren't all at a great price but enough were. My one was listed for $35 delivered and I put a low-ball offer in that got accepted.

Realistically, there is a limited market for mini 480p 4:3 monitors outside of vintage gaming fans so most will let them go for very little cash.

If there is a specific game you want me to try with Groovymame to see if it works, I can give that a go. I doubt it would be worth it though. Even if the monitor accepted a 240 x 384 res with a non-standard refresh rate, the LCD would still have to scale it to fit it's native 640 x 480 pitch.

To get an image that looked like 240p on a CRT, you would need to output 480 lines and add fake "scanlines" to black out every other line. If you output 240 lines, the monitor would just scale it to 480 and it might even look worse than just outputting 480p. If it didn't you'd get a 320 x 240 image that only took up 1/4 of the screen....

[donluca]

The idea was to linedouble the picture by setting a fixed 2x integer scale on the vertical size and fractional scaling on the horizontal to achieve a 4:3 ratio and use scanlines (I prefer 50% to 75% opacity, not completely black).

I was more interested in the refresh rate if it can, say, go down to 59Hz or up to 61Hz. Most LCD are generally able to drift a bit from perfect 60Hz.
Recently, by pure accident, I discovered that my professional monitor which I do critical photography on actually accepts 15Khz signals and in the menu it correctly recognizes them, so who knows.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, and thanks for sharing, I'll be heading to ebay hunting down one of those micro monitors!

[Classicgamer]

I think most of that happens automatically, and no matter what you do, on a 480p LCD.

In other words, it will look the same on that screen no matter what you start with as long as it can accept the res. I.e. You could set mame to output 240p or 800 x 600 but you would still end up with that 640 x 480 4:3 image.

I suspect that the same applies to refresh rates. What they accept and what they display are not always the same on a flatscreen. I know that on others that I own, they will accept a 58hz signal but display it at 60hz.

It would be interesting to see if it is possible to avoid tearing without vertical sync like it is on a CRT.

[Xyga]

What about a mini CRT ? http://youtu.be/GBSV8OjXa9A?t=10

[Classicgamer]

What about a mini CRT ? http://youtu.be/GBSV8OjXa9A?t=10

That would obviously be a better playing experience but they aren't so great for portability. There are some awesome 6" and 8" rgb capable crt monitors and they are still fairly easy to find but even the smallest of them are heavy and long (deep). There is no way you could put one in something you'd want to carry on a train and you'd need an enormous battery.... There is a reason why even old handhelds like the PC Engine Gt and game gear used an lcd....

Every time I look into buying a PVM 8", I come to the same conclusion. They are too heavy to take out the house and, if I was at home, I'd just use my 25" crt arcade monitor.

I know there are some people (not me) that enjoy travelling in mobile homes but, I think I'd want a 14" crt for that kind of thing. Travel is the only reason to put up with a 6" or 8" screen imo.

[Xyga]

I would carry a backpack generator and articulated front arm holding a mini CRT, then walk splitting the crowds of smartphone and lcd handheld peasant like I a lord.

On-the-go gas-powered analogue, the ultimate 20th century dad swag.

(tho honestly even just for a walkman people goggle like wat dis paleolithic tool)

[donluca]

(tho honestly even just for a walkman people goggle like wat dis paleolithic tool)

And they can cordially go and fuck themselves in the ass, as I rock my minidisc player on the beach, relaxing and listening to my favorite mixtapes (well, actually mixdiscs) like a boss.

for real, I bought back into minidiscs, I love them, they have the best of the cassettes world and CD technology

[Xyga]

for real, I bought back into minidiscs, I love them, they have the best of the cassettes world and CD technology

yeah, had two MDs during the 90's and early 2000's, they sure were freaking awesome and classy, but soundwise I have antique flagship Sony cassette walkmen that still work - wich is already incredible - and still beat all DAPs ever owned. not resolution-wise of course, but in every other area: depth, stage, extension, separation, etc. most powerful natural sound ever in portable. problem is there are no blank cassettes anymore, so they're practically useless bricks now lol. I should put them on ebay but that'd break my heart

[Classicgamer]

I would carry a backpack generator and articulated front arm holding a mini CRT, then walk splitting the crowds of smartphone and lcd handheld peasant like I a lord.

On-the-go gas-powered analogue, the ultimate 20th century dad swag.

(tho honestly even just for a walkman people goggle like wat dis paleolithic tool)

I know what you mean. I tried to explain to my son how we used to watch movies on video tapes and rewind them at the end. His first question was "what's a tape?" Followed by "what does rewind mean?". He's never seen a tape, CD or disc of any sort.

The thing that is strange to me is that, in many ways AV tech has been getting worse over the last 30 years instead of better. A CD has better sound than an IPod and crt monitors could literally switch resolution instead of scaling everything like LCDs. They had better contrast too. New tech is only just recently catching up to where CRTs and CDs were decades ago.

On the flip side though, I can remember when I was young, my dad brought home from work one of the first "laptops". It had a tiny built-in amber crt monitor and this thing was like a large suitcase. It weighed a ton and you were lucky to get 30 minutes from a full charge. There is no truly portable crt.

My child mind thought, why would anyone make a monitor that was only capable of displaying orange? My adult mind agrees with the child....

[Xyga]

Depends on what you look for, we've had plasma (CRTs couldn't get this big nor take so little room) and now we have contents that make use of HD and higher resolutions (for which CRTs can't be usefull and certainly not match the sizes), so it's not like it got worse in all aspects, just not-so-good tradeoffs overall. But yes if I could buy a couple brand new quality CRTs I wouldn't think twice. :p

I think maybe if flat panels had come a decade or two later (like today instead of 2006) we might have witnessed more refined CRT tech, I would have loved to see that.

Regarding sound, we can have lossless and raw, whatever, rather it's all the SOC and compact electronics that struggle to compare to the old high end stuff (had the opportunity to listen a very expensive DAP+amp rig once and wasn't impressed at all, perfect-sounding but lifeless) I guess some components, manufacturing services, and know-how simply have vanished.

[donluca]

yeah, had two MDs during the 90's and early 2000's, they sure were freaking awesome and classy, but soundwise I have antique flagship Sony cassette walkmen that still work - wich is already incredible - and still beat all DAPs ever owned. not resolution-wise of course, but in every other area: depth, stage, extension, separation, etc. most powerful natural sound ever in portable. problem is there are no blank cassettes anymore, so they're practically useless bricks now lol. I should put them on ebay but that'd break my heart

I won't derail the thread, but there are several blank cassette makers which make new ones using modern technology and are able to achieve results which were obtainable only by the very best standards back in the days.
And they are not cheap.

[Classicgamer]

Depends on what you look for, we've had plasma (CRTs couldn't get this big nor take so little room) and now we have contents that make use of HD and higher resolutions (for which CRTs can't be usefull and certainly not match the sizes), so it's not like it got worse in all aspects, just not-so-good tradeoffs overall. But yes if I could buy a couple brand new quality CRTs I wouldn't think twice. :p

I think maybe if flat panels had come a decade or two later (like today instead of 2006) we might have witnessed more refined CRT tech, I would have loved to see that.

Regarding sound, we can have lossless and raw, whatever, rather it's all the SOC and compact electronics that struggle to compare to the old high end stuff (had the opportunity to listen a very expensive DAP+amp rig once and wasn't impressed at all, perfect-sounding but lifeless) I guess some components, manufacturing services, and know-how simply have vanished.

I won't disagree that progress has been made in the available form factors for larger displays. I also won't disagree on the benefits of plasma TV's but, to me, that is part of the story of tech going backwards. I.e., we had plasma with it's nice contrast and awesome refresh rates and they discontinued it in favor of LCD which is inferior.

And... look at what the Sony G90 (which I consider to be the pinnacle of crt tech) can do. It can switch resolution to anything between 15khz and 150khz while modern displays are stuck with one res and (usually poor) scaling. It's contrast levels are superior to any LCD (and most Plasmas). It can produce screen sizes up to 300". It uses replaceable input cards so it can accept any type of input including HDMI and DVI (as well as older analog formats). It can display refresh rates up to 150hz.


With that in mind, it's hard to say we have made much progress with display tech. OLED is certainly a step forward with contrast levels but we have also lost of lot of the functionality we had with CRT. Backwards compatibility being a major one. I.e. Having 240p and 1080p look great on the same display.

[Xyga]

You know, we're the weird ones wanting to display contents several decades old over current tech.

Full-HD displays make sense for movies, and beyond that WQHD for anything PC and now 4K slowly replacing it as GPUs and consoles get more powerful.

If anything it's as you underline the poor options we have for better motion and scaling, which could be significantly better but manufactureres have segmented the market pushing features popular in marketing terms instead of the rational.
Again there they're not dumb, they know what the bulk of customers will buy, and most people certainly don't care about elementary performance and quality specs (of which they don't even realize the importance like indeed motion and scaling)

Our dissatisfaction is due to market reality, droves buy TVs to watch sports, any kind of broadcast, and casual films/netflix, and current gen console gaming, huge sizes, 4K, and HDR are perfect gimmicks for them; besides all that WE are a niche, WE don't make sense, even in regards to gaming segment. The situation hasn't changed much since flat panels were introduced, input delay got better and that's it.
If you tell people "displays got worse" probably over 9/10 will be like "are you high?", with that put yourself in the manufacturer's shoes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I won't derail the thread, but there are several blank cassette makers which make new ones using modern technology and are able to achieve results which were obtainable only by the very best standards back in the days. And they are not cheap.

Lol didn't realize because I gave up many years ago when new ones were too rare or overpriced packs over eBay. browsed a bit for it and indeed there are 'new' produced tapes of all types, but prices vary enormously indeed and I don't know what to think of the products, I'll go and visit some ancient forums if they are still around, see if I can gather more info. Thanks.

[Classicgamer]

It is certainly true that most people don't care about image quality and would usually choose cheap over good. On the other hand, the people who spend the most on AV kit usually demand high quality.

There is also a growing number of classic gamers out there. While not all of them are AV enthusiasts, enough want their old games to look how they remember for nostalgia.

It's a shame that tv manufacturers don't seem to understand the growing importance of backwards compatibility. There are a lot of people who still watch DVDs and have zero interest in 4K or 8k. My wife doesn't even know what 4K means.

It is no wonder that most of the large TV manufacturers are struggling to persuade people to upgrade. I think that a new display tech that could look good with any content from 240p up to 4K (like CRT could) would be an easier sell than trying to push 8k TVs (with no 8k content).