Hi all,
First of all, I've been referencing this forum for a few years and wanted to say thanks to this community for all of the dedicated information and feedback present here. This forum is a gem! Okay, now for the topic at hand:
My setup:
- LG 4K monitor
- Retrotink 5x Pro upscaler
- Amiga 1080 CRT monitor (with SCART female to 9-pin male adapter)
- Shinybow 6:2 SCART Matrix Switcher
- Consoles (all RGB capable and with their own dedicated Retro-Access SCART cables):
- - NESRGB-modded USA front-loader NES with SNES-style AV multi-out
- - RGB-modded USA SNES Mini
- - Sony Playstation
- - Sega Dreamcast
In theory, everything works. I am able to run my SNES and Playstation out via SCART through my matrix switcher and out to both the LG 4K monitor (via Retrotink 5x Pro) and the Amiga CRT monitor simultaneously, which is super fun and nice. Initially the Playstation gave me some trouble, as my original cable used sync-on-luma which my CRT did not accept. However, after adding a sync stripper, the Playstation now works with the CRT via RGB as intended. The Dreamcast is its own case where most games output RGB at 480p and thus do not work with my CRT when used via RGB – no problem, as that is a limitation of my monitor and not an issue with the console or wiring.
However, where I've completely hit a wall is with my NES.
My NES outputs RGB via the SNES multi-out port using the same SCART cables as my SNES, which is accepted by my Retrotink and passed to my 4K monitor for both consoles no problem. So the NESRGB install itself is working flawlessly.
However, the NES video output will not display on my CRT. I believe this is a sync issue because when I toggle my matrix switcher back and forth between the NES and the SNES inputs, I will briefly see the NES image flash on the CRT before it quickly disperses to a black screen. I figured okay, this must be similar to the issue I had with my Playstation and perhaps I am passing the wrong kind of sync to the CRT. Since the Playstation was sending sync on luma without success, and then adding a sync stripped resolved the issue, I determined that my CRT will successfully accept csync. So, now I had to figure out how to get my NESRGB mod to send csync our of the SNES multi-out port.
NESRGB pinout: https://etim.net.au/nesrgb/NESRGB-Pinout.pdf
SNES-style multi-out pinout: https://twitter.com/Voultar/status/1356 ... 72/photo/1
Amiga 1080 pinout: https://crtdatabase.com/user/pages/01.c ... 2_6563.jpg
My NESRGB is currently wired to output Y (luma), C (chroma), V (composite video), and C# (composite sync aka csync) to the multi-out port, in addition to audio and RGB video. So I think okay, let's unwire Y, C, and V individually and see if only sending C# resolves the issue. It didn't, so I successively tried sending each video/sync signal to the multi-out to see if any of them would work with the CRT. They did not. Then I tried shorting the NESRGB Jumper 8, which in the stock setting allows the NESRGB to output TTL sync and when shorted allows the NESRGB to output 75ohm sync. I expected this would not help, since the SCART cable I am using already has capacitors on the RGB lines, making this adjustment redundant; and in fact when shorting Jumper 8 I got no video signal at all to either device.
I feel like I am so close to realizing my "dream" setup and yet at this point I am at a total loss as to how to proceed aside from brute force testing all possible wiring combinations. Does anybody here have any advice or experience dealing with this issue?
Happy to provide any additional information that may be helpful. Thank you!
