XRGB-mini Framemeister

[shaurz]

I have not been able to get my SFC working on the Framemeister. Most of the time it just displays a blue screen. Occasionally it will lock on and display the image for a second or two, and then loses it again. I'm using an official Nintendo RGB SCART cable. My Mega Drive works great without any problems.

[fagin]

You best sell your meister to me for £50 then!

[TurboCro]

I have not been able to get my SFC working on the Framemeister. Most of the time it just displays a blue screen. Occasionally it will lock on and display the image for a second or two, and then loses it again. I'm using an official Nintendo RGB SCART cable. My Mega Drive works great without any problems.

I'm having similar issues. My original SNES gets the same results as your SFC. My backup works alot better, but still drops out and shakes. I'm using Jap 21 RGB cables and my SCART cables didn't work with an adapter. I'm going to try switching cables first, and if that doesn't work switching systems (there is a SNES discussion a few pages back).

That said, Thunderforce III never looked so good!

[RGB32E]

http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2

I'm tempted to order one of these to see if the ADC conversion makes the Wii look any better with the mini (component -> HDMI -> mini). I'm also thinking of using this with my Intensity Pro, as 480p is supposedly only supported via HDMI. Any thoughts?

[acem77]

Update.
go the RGB 3do working by adding a LM1881 circuit based on a suggestion below.
Don’t know why the xrgb2 plus worked without it but problem solved.






did a bit more testing,

My rgb 3do does not work
the screen will flicker a little but not long enough to show an image...

3do still works great on the xrgb2 plus, is there a mode on the mini that should mimic the xrgb2 plus more?

so close as i have test and got everything else working....

hope all my hard work in making a 3do rgb mod did not go to waste...

[RGB32E]

Which DAC IC did you use for the 3DO RGB mod? Have you tried processing the sync?

[Fudoh]

My rgb 3do does not work

all incompatibilities with the Mini (no matter which source) could be cleared so far by adding a sync stripper in line with the sync signal. It doesn't matter if you use composite video or raw sync already. I'm sure this will solve your 3DO issues as well.

I'm tempted to order one of these to see if the ADC conversion makes the Wii look any better with the mini (component -> HDMI -> mini). I'm also thinking of using this with my Intensity Pro, as 480p is supposedly only supported via HDMI. Any thoughts?

The Mini's A/D conversion is very good. What do you expect from going HDMI instead ?

[RGB32E]

The Mini's A/D conversion is very good. What do you expect from going HDMI instead ?

Primarily for capture with the intensity pro.

[Fudoh]

Can't you do what I initially wanted to do for my review, which is using the Mini as a capture interface with 720p output ? Problem with the initial FW was the output couldn't be unlocked, but that should be fixed by now (or not?). You can capture using 720p output from the Mini, set the scaling the Smartx1 and just cut away the black borders after capturing. Should give pretty nice results.

Problem with the YUV2HDMI converter on the BMD is that this only works if the source outputs perfect NTSC refresh rates. Using a video processor in between which unlocks the frequency is usually the better option.

[shaurz]

Hmm. I've now discovered problems with some Mega Drive games. Sonic and TFIII work flawlessly, but Aero Blasters flickers every few second and Monster World IV flickers and sometimes loses the picture completely. I have a Sync Strike but at the moment I have no way of connecting the DE-15 connector to the Framemeister, so it might be a few days before I can buy or make up a cable for it.

[Hamburglar]

Maybe my eyes are different than yours but me and everyone else I know thinks the SNES Mini has the best video ever. Way sharper, no faded vertical stripe, much better color. I've honestly never heard anyone say they like the older SNES' chip better. Here's an entire thread that disagrees with you:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthr ... ES-Model-1

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm genuinely amazed someone would say the SNES Mini has a poorer picture than a GPM-02 SNES.

What I'm saying is that 1CHIP and mini has better quality due to the new GPU (inside the 1CHIP) not because of the video encoder.

My RGB-02 as the older GPU and the new RGB encoder and the RGB output is "grainy". My GPM-02 has the same GPU but with the older video encoder and I don't have that grainy effect in the picture. But the picture is darker however. So between RGB-02 and GPM-02 I prefer the GPM-02 since I can just use the brighness setting to fix that. But both has that horrible vertical bleeding effect which is due to the GPU.

BUT the bleeding effect of the old GPU is way more annoying than the "grainy" effect from SRGB encoder. So I do prefer the 1CHIP base board. In fact that grainy effect is less notifiable with the 1CHIP than with RGB-02 board.

I'm confused because I thought the GPM-02 was NOT a 1CHIP, and that the 1CHIP was in the model number SNS-1CHIP-CPU-01. Yours is SNS-GPM-CPU-02? I thought that means it is NOT a 1CHIP then? So confused.

[darthcloud]

Maybe my eyes are different than yours but me and everyone else I know thinks the SNES Mini has the best video ever. Way sharper, no faded vertical stripe, much better color. I've honestly never heard anyone say they like the older SNES' chip better. Here's an entire thread that disagrees with you:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthr ... ES-Model-1

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm genuinely amazed someone would say the SNES Mini has a poorer picture than a GPM-02 SNES.

What I'm saying is that 1CHIP and mini has better quality due to the new GPU (inside the 1CHIP) not because of the video encoder.

My RGB-02 as the older GPU and the new RGB encoder and the RGB output is "grainy". My GPM-02 has the same GPU but with the older video encoder and I don't have that grainy effect in the picture. But the picture is darker however. So between RGB-02 and GPM-02 I prefer the GPM-02 since I can just use the brighness setting to fix that. But both has that horrible vertical bleeding effect which is due to the GPU.

BUT the bleeding effect of the old GPU is way more annoying than the "grainy" effect from SRGB encoder. So I do prefer the 1CHIP base board. In fact that grainy effect is less notifiable with the 1CHIP than with RGB-02 board.

I'm confused because I thought the GPM-02 was NOT a 1CHIP, and that the 1CHIP was in the model number SNS-1CHIP-CPU-01. Yours is SNS-GPM-CPU-02? I thought that means it is NOT a 1CHIP then? So confused.

Their is 6 versions that use the older GPU (PPU1 and PPU2 separated in two chip): SNS-CPU-01, GPM-01, GPM-02, RGB-01, RGB-02 and APU-01.
What I'm saying is that between those 6 versions the best looking one to me is the GPM-02. Because I can see that the three later one using the SRGB A chip add a grainy effect in the picture. But all those 6 versiosn suffer from the vertical bleeding with black to white transition.


But I do find that the 1CHIP-01 (and probably the mini too) beat then all. Since it do not have the bleeding issue.


So my point is just that the GPM-02 look to be the best looking one between the 6 first SNES version using the separated PPU1 & PPU2.

But the 1CHIP-01 look better than the GPM-02.

Hope it's clear.

[Hamburglar]

Makes sense now, thanks. I am just very surprised the RGB-02 considering it has the same chip as the mini is not as nice as the 1CHIP.

Anyway, I have decided to go for it and get an XRGB Mini Frame Meister. I have a DVDO Edge but I can't put up with the ringing in the image.

Is Solaris still the recommended place to get it? Do I need to buy anything else with it to get it working properly since I am in the US? I know Japan's voltage is 100 and ours is 110. I don't want to fry anything. Suggestions? I am mainly doing this for my SNES.

[darthcloud]

Makes sense now, thanks. I am just very surprised the RGB-02 considering it has the same chip as the mini is not as nice as the 1CHIP.

Anyway, I have decided to go for it and get an XRGB Mini Frame Meister. I have a DVDO Edge but I can't put up with the ringing in the image.

Is Solaris still the recommended place to get it? Do I need to buy anything else with it to get it working properly since I am in the US? I know Japan's voltage is 100 and ours is 110. I don't want to fry anything. Suggestions? I am mainly doing this for my SNES.

Like I said the better quality of the 1CHIP is not related to that new video encoder. It's the 1CHIP output by itself that is better.

I have 5 devices using Japanese 90V AC adapter plug in 120v 365 day a year for like ~5 years without any issue. So I guess you should be fine too.

[RGB32E]

Can't you do what I initially wanted to do for my review, which is using the Mini as a capture interface with 720p output ? Problem with the initial FW was the output couldn't be unlocked, but that should be fixed by now (or not?). You can capture using 720p output from the Mini, set the scaling the Smartx1 and just cut away the black borders after capturing. Should give pretty nice results.

Problem with the YUV2HDMI converter on the BMD is that this only works if the source outputs perfect NTSC refresh rates. Using a video processor in between which unlocks the frequency is usually the better option.

Yeah, that was something I was considering. I'd imagine 480i GCN games will capture just fine. I'll have to connect the mini to the Intensity for some capture tests in the future.

[Seraphic]

Did anyone who purchased a mini from solarisjapan also buy the below cable with it? Wanted to know the picture quality. I only have one analog device that is YUV component (that would be a PSP), but I could also purchase a Sony D-Terminal cable.

http://www.solarisjapan.com/products/D% ... le%29.html

[Konsolkongen]

I bought that It works great, I saw no quality loss compared to the D-terminal adapter that came with the XRGB-3.

[Fudoh]

@shaurz: I have the same issues with my MD. Many games worked fine, but a few still had dropouts. The Sync strike will solve this and most likely your SNES will also work with it. You might want to make a direct connection between the SS's output and the Mini's MiniDin8 input.

[Seraphic]

I bought that It works great, I saw no quality loss compared to the D-terminal adapter that came with the XRGB-3.

The sony psp cable is like $25 more then that adapter cable...

Fudoh, since you're online, did you/have you doing any testing with the Optoma or Mini when it comes to upscaling 3D games or mostly stuck to 2D stuff?

[darthcloud]

I bought that It works great, I saw no quality loss compared to the D-terminal adapter that came with the XRGB-3.

The sony psp cable is like $25 more then that adapter cable...

First party stuff is more expensive because you pay for the brand, not higher quality.

[Fudoh]

OutRun2SP is my standard benchmark for any initial processor test. Problem with 3D upscaling is that different people might expect different results (and like different scaling methods). On the Mini you have both, depending on the scaling settings you chose you can have the blocky pixel-based scaling (similar but not quite as good as on the Optoma) or you can chose slightly blured, interpolated video scaling (much more like DVDO's scaling).

[Seraphic]

Thinking about ordering a mini... but I was looking over the XRGB-3 thread and noticed a link about the XRGB-Edit Tool (below link).
Micomsoft isn't coming out with a XRGB-3plus are they? If so, wouldn't that be direct competition with the Mini? Or is 3plus WAYYY off from now (2013)?

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=37992

[Konsolkongen]

I don't think you have to worry about that. It took over a year from when they announced the Mini and till it got released, so I think it's a safe bet that they won't be making anything similar or better for a while.

Besides the Mini is really nice and in my opinion money well spent

[Seraphic]

I don't think you have to worry about that. It took over a year from when they announced the Mini and till it got released, so I think it's a safe bet that they won't be making anything similar or better for a while.

Besides the Mini is really nice and in my opinion money well spent

I see... Well, I was thinking of going with an XRGB3 since I have an Optoma HD3000 and could feed the xrgb into the 3000 for scaling 240p. However, decided to go with the Mini.

[Retro Access]

Guys, bit of advice needed here, this info about the sync cleaners is great, but right now all I have is the EL1883s I use in my sync strippers for the RGBS to VGA boards.

Anyone tried those as opposed to LM1881s? Got a couple buyers with this exact issue, I've been helping people with XRGB Mini issues a lot lately.

[Seraphic]

...and you get a mismatch in the black offset (elevated black levels) with the PS3...

Is this an issue when using HDMI for PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 or every game source v.i HDMI?
Does this occur when the color space is set to Limited or Full or both?

[Fudoh]

it's been a long time, but as far as I recall: PS1 games only, via HDMI, output set to limited range RGB.

[acem77]

I am now running in to stability issues.
It happens to all systems and while on any input, rgb,dterm.
I will get these corrupt processing video flashes randomly.

Standby and power cycling did not help.
So far I have played with a lot of settings it seemed the 1st thing to work was to change the output to dvi. While in dvi I set the resolution things seemed stable.
I then put the output setting back to hdmi and the image still seems good and stable.

Here is a video of the issue, some cheesy ps1 intro good for a smile. near the end about 12-13 sec
http://vgsrepair.com/download/rgb/mini_issue.mp4

[Fudoh]

seems to a cable/HDMI/bandwith handshake issue.

Which output resolution do you use ? 1080p ? Are those problems gone if you go down to 720p ? Why don't you keep DVI output mode ?

[RGB32E]

seems to a cable/HDMI/bandwith handshake issue.

Which output resolution do you use ? 1080p ? Are those problems gone if you go down to 720p ? Why don't you keep DVI output mode ?

So you think it might be best to keep the output mode to DVI if you're not using HDMI audio from the mini? I've encountered a bug of sorts where if I power on the mini and don't have the corresponding HDMI input selected on my TV, the output is usually set to limited (16-235) instead of full range. Will setting the mini to DVI output mode always guarantee full range (0-255) output? I suppose I could test this to draw a conclusion, but...