Questions that do not deserve a thread

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bobrocks95
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by bobrocks95 »

Has anyone used any flashing hardware from RetroStage (the Retroblaster) or InfiniteNESLives (INLRetro Programmer/kazzo) for single-game flash carts? What was the quality like on either?

I am peanut-brained and like owning a separate cart for everything, and I won't be using them much anyway (just for some hacks, maybe a couple translations) so it's a cheaper investment for me than proper flashcarts for each console it supports.
PS1 Disc-Based Game ID BIOS patch for MemCard Pro and SD2PSX automatic VMC switching.
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Lux
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Lux »

Anyone using the Game Boy Interface HF presets here ? I'm trying to use the Super Game Boy palette option but all I get when doing the button combination as explained here is black and white. I tried with a few palette numbers.

EDIT : the answer is that you have to run the GBI through Swiss
Last edited by Lux on Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mantis128
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Mantis128 »

Can RetroTINK's RGB2COMP pass through component? Like if I ran YPBPR through a SCART cable into it would it attempt to convert the signal?
nmalinoski
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by nmalinoski »

Mantis128 wrote:Can RetroTINK's RGB2COMP pass through component? Like if I ran YPBPR through a SCART cable into it would it attempt to convert the signal?
As far as I can tell, it's a straightforward circuit; so, yes, it would assume the incoming YPbPr is RGB and do its thing.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

I'm using a DVDO with an xbox 360 and wondered if I should set the xbox to 720p or 1080p. I searched and found a few people say that 1080p can cause screen tearing in some games.

Right now I am using 720p and scaling it to 1080p through the DVDO and it looks good.


I'm also still having an issue with brief OSSC sync drops on PS2 when the screen transitions. I'm going to do some more testing but if anyone has any tips or advice about it that would help.
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Fudoh
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Fudoh »

XBox360 720p vs. 1080p: some games perform a little worse when the system is upscaling to 1080p. There are only a handful of titles that really support native 1080p output and unless you want to play these utilizing their full resolution, there's nothing wrong with using 720p output.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

What's the best monitor/TV still available for unscaled/unprocessed 720p gaming?
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Fudoh
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Fudoh »

720p displays are incredibly rare, but on the majority of displays 720p to 1080p scaling is really nothing you have be afraid of.
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vol.2
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by vol.2 »

Because of the low res, this is mostly the territory of small hobbyist displays at this point. This kind of display is 720p, https://www.adafruit.com/product/1033

It's only 7" diagonal though, so it would have to be for a small setup of some kind.
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orange808
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by orange808 »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:What's the best monitor/TV still available for unscaled/unprocessed 720p gaming?
You're asking for a native 720p display that is still in production? The only possibility is a DLP beamer. I think there are still high end Barco or Christie projectors (marketed for simulation) that you could get brand new. Properly installed, those would offer pretty good image quality and suitably low latency. I know TI did make DLP chips that were truly native 720p. Most of the consumer 720p beamers didn't bother with including low latency.

That's probably the only option for a brand new high quality native 720p gaming display. It's not worth it.
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vol.2
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by vol.2 »

orange808 wrote:
That's probably the only option for a brand new high quality native 720p gaming display. It's not worth it.
NEC also makes 110" digital signage in 720p still: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/product ... a019i2-110

Might be kind of cool, but costs 40K USD :P
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orange808
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by orange808 »

vol.2 wrote:
orange808 wrote:
That's probably the only option for a brand new high quality native 720p gaming display. It's not worth it.
NEC also makes 110" digital signage in 720p still: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/product ... a019i2-110

Might be kind of cool, but costs 40K USD :P
A person could build a large 720p wall for considerably less. :mrgreen:

(Although, it's never going to be worth the expense.)

An LG C9, an OSSC Pro (720p linex2), and an Extron HD HD 4k A should be the preferred option next year for guaranteed pixelated/blocky 720p. The scaling will be nice on a large pretty panel.
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ajdesmarais
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by ajdesmarais »

Okay, so I figured out a sync issue on my PVM, it was an IC, 1377C, to be exact. Upon firing the ol' girl back up, the display looks like this:

Image

Now I haven't touched anything or even looked at the service menu yet, and it's not in 16:9 mode, but the geometry wasn't like this at all before I replaced the chip. I also removed the neckboard and replaced the handful of caps on that, since I had them handy. Is it possible I bumped something on the yoke that could have screwed this up? I'll mess with the menu tomorrow, but I feel like that's not the proper solution here. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: I tried messing with the menu today. Adjusting the settings for V-size does nothing at all, but the other geometry controls are fine. Very strange.
Last edited by ajdesmarais on Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

Fudoh wrote:XBox360 720p vs. 1080p: some games perform a little worse when the system is upscaling to 1080p. There are only a handful of titles that really support native 1080p output and unless you want to play these utilizing their full resolution, there's nothing wrong with using 720p output.
Thanks, I think I will keep it at 720p.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

Thanks or the answers, guys. I was afraid of confirming that there're not current decent/affordable options for native 720p. It's a real shame - many 2D games there which you can't display as they should be. I wonder how they'll look on a 4k display with a scanlines filter, in the case that the forthcoming OSSC can do that...
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orange808
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by orange808 »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:Thanks or the answers, guys. I was afraid of confirming that there're not current decent/affordable options for native 720p. It's a real shame - many 2D games there which you can't display as they should be. I wonder how they'll look on a 4k display with a scanlines filter, in the case that the forthcoming OSSC can do that...
Good luck with that. :) Not sure what 2d games were ever natively programmed to run at 720p, anyhow. Seems like an extreme edge case.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

Yeah, I know. I think I read it was not totally impossible, though? It kind of baffles me the little demand for such a feature on this forum, anyhow.

There're lots of 2D games natively designed for 720p, from the uncountable fighters by Arc System Works, French Bread and many others, to the 1st person perspective RPGs and AVGs from Japan which populated the PS3 era, without forgetting classic stuff like Hard Corps Uprising or Monkey Island 2 Special Edition. They're still being made, believe it or not. Anyway, having 2D graphics is not really the point - if a game was designed for 720p as the native mode, a 720p panel is its natural display. The problem is how to find a decent one - was there even a Vewlix one "decent" enough?
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

I just tested an HD Box outputting 480p to an OSSC via the vga port and was surprised to see it actually does prevent the sync drop problem on PS2.

Unfortunately the picture quality is not the greatest (not bad though) and it ruins scanlines for some reason. I went back to 480i line4x and it's much better.

That got me thinking, is there a device with good 480i pass-through? It seems all of my scalers can only output 480p minimum.

It seems like locking the output to 480p is what prevents the drops in the first place but I'm looking for a way to achieve 480i line4x without drops though maybe that is not possible.
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maxtherabbit
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by maxtherabbit »

The ossc can do 480i passthrough no problem
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

maxtherabbit wrote:The ossc can do 480i passthrough no problem
The OSSC has sync drops on PS2 so I mean some other device that outputs 480i to connect to the OSSC that might be able to prevent the sync drops.
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Kez
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Kez »

Guile wrote:The OSSC has sync drops on PS2
This is not normal behaviour. If the light is going off on your OSSC then many you need to look at your cables. If the light is staying on then the OSSC is not dropping sync.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

Kez wrote:
Guile wrote:The OSSC has sync drops on PS2
This is not normal behaviour. If the light is going off on your OSSC then many you need to look at your cables. If the light is staying on then the OSSC is not dropping sync.
I've been searching for a solution to this problem for a little while now. The light does turn red and the image is lost for 1 to 3 seconds while it resyncs. It seems to be related to resolution switching and happens when the screen transitions on loading.

I've found several posts by people who have the same issue. It doesn't happen in every game but I can confirm it definitely happens in Klonoa 2 and Tony Hawk 3 for PS2.

It does not happen with other scalers like a DVDO I have so my cables should be fine.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Kez »

Ahh okay, yeah sounds like resolution switching. The OSSC can't really do much about that, when the signal changes it responds quite quickly.. It might just be that your TV is a bit slow to pick up on the new signal. You could experiment with feeding the OSSC Line4x signal into other devices and see if they handle it better.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

I have a bit of an emergency with my OSSC. I was trying out different scaler combinations with the VGA input and something has gone wrong. The image is now way too bright and overblown and looks slightly greener than it should on the YPbPr AV2.

I tried resetting settings and restarting, I tried reinstalling firmware 0.88 but the issue is still there.

I checked my cables as well and they seem fine, did a component get damaged or something? This is pretty upsetting as it ruins the entire image and I cannot fix it.

Edit: Well it seems like it was my new component distribution amp that is maybe bad. I tried my old one again and it looks good again on the OSSC so maybe the new one is sending out a bad signal though it looks fine on a crt and looked fine before.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by nmalinoski »

Guile wrote:I've been searching for a solution to this problem for a little while now. The light does turn red and the image is lost for 1 to 3 seconds while it resyncs. It seems to be related to resolution switching and happens when the screen transitions on loading.

I've found several posts by people who have the same issue. It doesn't happen in every game but I can confirm it definitely happens in Klonoa 2 and Tony Hawk 3 for PS2.

It does not happen with other scalers like a DVDO I have so my cables should be fine.
This is normal for line multipliers like the OSSC; unlike the DVDO, the OSSC doesn't have a framebuffer, so it can't cache entire frames in order to do things like framerate conversion, sync correction, or smooth video mode changes. It can only buffer maybe a couple lines at most; this is why the OSSC can operate without perceived lag, while your DVDO likely introduces at a minimum 1 frame of additional lag.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by strayan »

nmalinoski wrote:your DVDO likely introduces at a minimum 1 frame of additional lag.
Half a frame.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Guile »

What are some of your preferences for handling 480i? I really like line4x with scanlines on the OSSC if only it wasn't for that annoying sync drop in some games.

Every time I try the DVDO again I realize that I underrate it and it really does do a good job, just a little softer than I'd like and I think I see ringing on fast motion with lines.

Those are probably the best two options I've tried but some random scalers also do well with not dropping sync and decent deinterlacing.
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Kez
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by Kez »

The GBS-Control is quite nice with deinterlacing, and as a bonus it handles 240p/480i switching with no dropouts whatsoever. I will check Klonoa 2 on it at some point but I suspect it will handle it just as well. I confirmed the OSSC dropouts with Klonoa 2, but my TV resyncs pretty quickly so it's not a big problem for me.
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by 6t8k »

ross wrote:What is the current state of Super FX/SA1/complex enhancement chip emulation like on the latest Krikzz flash carts? I know the FXPAK PRO touts support for those chips, but is the implementation fully accurate to an original cart?
With regards to the SD2SNES/FXPAK PRO, off the cuff, the following inaccuracies spring to mind that were thematized at least during the last ~1-2 years, let me know if you need sources:

* There was an SA-1 address line issue that caused graphical corruption in Super Mario RPG. I believe this is fixed now in the official firmware.
* The CX4 implementation is (still) inaccurate, I believe there might be some noticable consequences in the Mega Man X games under certain circumstances.
* I believe there was also something with regards to the DSP-4 chip (only used by Top Gear 3000) where some calculations were off
* The 'Pilotwings crashing plane phenomenon' revolving around the S-DD1 chip. [1] [2] Although not an inaccuracy per se, it's noteworthy, and I'm not sure currently what revision is emulated by the SD2SNES or FXPAK PRO.

There are probably more, but whether you actually notice them during gameplay is a different kettle of fish. I guess time will tell if there are any more (noteworthy) ones, chances are that there are. Although it requires a lot of effort, decapsulating and imaging the die under a microscope, then carefully retracing and reimplementing the logic would go a long way towards preservation, for software and hardware emulation alike.
クリスチャン wrote:Are scanline filters simply overlays that mask existing pixels or do they generate new pixels beneath or above the original pixels? Does this depend on the scanline filter? If so, how does the OSSC behave?
There are various ways to generate faux scanline effects; 'simply' overriding pixels as a post-processing step (which the OSSC Classic does, but the new pixel values are carefully calculated), replacing every other video field with blackness while employing weave deinterlacing, and generating them as part of a raster graphics scaling process by using an appropriate interpolation filter, are some.
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vol.2
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Re: Questions that do not deserve a thread

Post by vol.2 »

ross wrote:Bit of an obscure question, but does anyone with an NTSC-U/C PS2 know whether black is output at 0 or 7.5 IRE over composite/S-Video? It was the latter in the case of the NTSC-U/C PlayStation, which is kind of unique in the world of retro consoles, but I’ve heard conflicting statements on the PS2.
I can't give you a definitive answer, but I looked into it years ago when I was getting cables for my PS2, and most of the anecdotal evidence I found pointed to Zero. Most accounts I remember from the time were that PS2 was too dark and generally had to be cranked up (which would indicate a zero source on a 7.5 display). Sorry I can't say for sure, but I have subjectively found the PS2 to be darker looking on my own equipment so I believe it. Without actually doing a measurement (or finding a source who has done one) I don't think there's any way to know for certain.
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