XRGB-mini Framemeister

aoiddr · Post by **aoiddr** » Tue Apr 07, 2015 8:08 am

Anyone know if it's possible to hook a Sega Chihiro up through an XRGB-Mini? It's a VGA-based system that has a really funky signal (like the Original Xbox). If so, what type of cables would I need to use to convert it to work correctly?

BuckoA51 · Post by **BuckoA51** » Tue Apr 07, 2015 9:56 am

Same as Dreamcast, VGA to Extron interface then BNC to SCART into the Mini.

Grimakis · Post by **Grimakis** » Tue Apr 07, 2015 1:09 pm

aoiddr wrote:Anyone know if it's possible to hook a Sega Chihiro up through an XRGB-Mini? It's a VGA-based system that has a really funky signal (like the Original Xbox). If so, what type of cables would I need to use to convert it to work correctly?

http://www.beharbros.com/#!kenzei/cvhd

I think one of these would work as well. VGA to SCART Sync combiner.

aoiddr · Post by **aoiddr** » Wed Apr 08, 2015 1:23 am

Thanks for the suggestions.

Grimakis · Post by **Grimakis** » Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:33 pm

So I was looking for a small dedicated solution to demodulate RF for use with the Framemeister, and I found this....
Something about it's design seems ODDLY familiar.

https://www.cablewholesale.com/products ... -30200.php

TheShadowRunner · Post by **TheShadowRunner** » Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:57 pm

Bwahah indeed, good find

blizzz · Post by **blizzz** » Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:47 pm

The case wasn't made specifically for the Framemeister. It's used in many other products.

Grimakis · Post by **Grimakis** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 2:39 am

blizzz wrote:The case wasn't made specifically for the Framemeister. It's used in many other products.

Which is unfortunate, because the AV ports on the front are incredibly awkward. That design choice was probably to accomodate a low cost enclosure more than anything else. One of my largest complaints with the unit thusfar.

pyrotek85 · Post by **pyrotek85** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 2:43 am

Grimakis wrote:
blizzz wrote:The case wasn't made specifically for the Framemeister. It's used in many other products.
Which is unfortunate, because the AV ports on the front are incredibly awkward. That design choice was probably to accomodate a low cost enclosure more than anything else. One of my largest complaints with the unit thusfar.

Yeah it's a weird design alright. It's even worse when I've got a scart device hooked up, since that cable and adapter is even more awkward.

austin532 · Post by **austin532** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 3:00 am

Seriously, why even have A/V ports? I think I've only used them once and that was out of curiosity to see if they were working correctly. I would trade those for a VGA port instead any day. With S-Video I can see why it's still useful for people who don't have modded systems for RGB or don't have a RGB cable. I suppose adding a VGA port would have greatly increased the cost though.

Grimakis · Post by **Grimakis** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 3:08 am

austin532 wrote:Seriously, why even have A/V ports? I think I've only used them once and that was out of curiosity to see if they were working correctly. I would trade those for a VGA port instead any day. With S-Video I can see why it's still useful for people who don't have modded systems for RGB or don't have a RGB cable. I suppose adding a VGA port would have greatly increased the cost though.

I mean, I use S-Video with my N64. Its the best signal you can get from a Commodore 64, its the best signal you can get froman Atari 2600 and 7800(with mods). If you want to leave all those consoles behind in the dust, you can leave off A/V. However, the Framemeister wouldn't have been useful enough for me with just RGB, HDMI, etc. I use it as an all-in-one solution, and even crappy composite looks way better through the Framemeister than straight into my TV.

VGA would be nice, but 31khz is already accepted through RGB in if you use a sync combiner so its less of a deal breaker for me.

pyrotek85 · Post by **pyrotek85** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 3:10 am

austin532 wrote:Seriously, why even have A/V ports? I think I've only used them once and that was out of curiosity to see if they were working correctly. I would trade those for a VGA port instead any day. With S-Video I can see why it's still useful for people who don't have modded systems for RGB or don't have a RGB cable. I suppose adding a VGA port would have greatly increased the cost though.

I like having them just in case personally, just not their location on the box. Especially since I'm using a computer monitor, without this box I can't hook up anything that's not hdmi or vga lol. I can see why you wouldn't need it you were using a TV though, since even though S-video has been mostly phased out composite still remains.

But yeah I avoid using it at all costs because of the quality, and if they were missing it wouldn't be a deal breaker if I were trying to decide on what to buy. It's just nice to have the option.

Coryoon · Post by **Coryoon** » Thu Apr 09, 2015 9:36 pm

Hi,

Thought I would post my experience re compatibility / synch problems;

I bought my cables from retrogamingcables.co.uk.

One was the basic replacement for Euroscart (STD).
The other was the one with the built in passive Synch Stripper (SS).

Device;___________STD___SS

RGB Saturn:________Y_____N
RGB (ext) PC Engine:_Y_____Y
RGB Neo Geo (HCS):_Y_____N
RGB Sigma AV5000:__N____Y Picture stable only at Synch level 26 (auto synch off)

As you will see it seems only my supergun required the stripper cable, and even then I had to fiddle around to find the best synch level.

The saturn would not generate a valid signal at all using the SS cable, but my external modded Core Grafx (via the expansion port with amp) seemed produce a good result on either, although I think the picture was better with the basic cable.

Given that it seems my supergun RGB requires an SS, I wondered if I would get a better result through a powered SS cable (that has a daisy chained +5v from the PSU). With that said, after a bit of tweaking it seems to work fine with the passive one.

I want to try a few more pcbs with the supergun (my MVS mobo and CPS3 in particular), to see if I get any variances. Also, when I first tried the supergun two days ago I couldn't get a stable picture at all, although I suspect that I was at 24 or the top setting 30, both of which cause the picture to bounce.

juji82 · Post by **juji82** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 3:15 pm

Hello there!

Today I tried to use the mini with my cps3 board using a Sigma Raijin supergun with a RGB cable . Everything is good except picture looks like.. to bright? Can somebody enlight me if i need to change some settings or it is cable problem? With S-Video colors are normal.

Fudoh · Post by **Fudoh** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 3:57 pm

With a CPS3 as your source the Sigma's RGB levels are too high. You need to add resistors to the RGB lines. Use variable ones to be flexible.

Pasky · Post by **Pasky** » Fri Apr 10, 2015 6:42 pm

Anyone know why this is? I have my super gun RGB outputs going to my frame meister with the atomiswave (in 30hz and 15hz mode) and I get no picture. If I send it to my rgb monitor and send the passthrough to the XRGB I get a picture. It's only the atomis wave that does this. Anyone know what's up?

juji82 · Post by **juji82** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 12:27 am

thanks fudoh. can i add those resistor within the rgb cable?

Mekei · Post by **Mekei** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 11:27 am

Howdy

I've had my framemeister for the past few weeks now but I've just got the Scart to RGB convertor today. Worked fine with my Snes and Saturn scart adapters, but when I tried it with my Genesis 2 model the colors were messed up for every game I tried out.

http://i.imgur.com/XSM9r7U.png

I opened it up and to the untrained eye it seems like its the correct pins in it, and i've definetly used this with a scart to y-u-v box before.

Would I be able to swap pins on the layout or would it just be best to contact the cable seller.

micro · Post by **micro** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 4:19 pm

kel wrote:
micro wrote:Hey guys, it's me again, the guy from page 240.

Remember, I've made an oscillator with two different selectable frequencies and installed it into a PAL Megadrive 2 (PSX and NeoGeo MVS too) to resolve some issues with the Framemeister.

In case one of you guys wants to rebuild this oscillator, I've finally finished the firmware and Windows GUI for the programming device. Everything can be found on: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5744.0

Over and out!
Great work micro, thanks for releasing it. I would love to give this a try on the PSOne, I never did get around to buying an NTSC PSOne.

Some other ideas also come to mind for it like making a more accurate clock for the Gamecube digital audio mod to get rid of the jitter or maybe toy around with the NTSC SNES clock to bring the framerate down to 59.94hz instead of 60.10hz just to see if it is possible out of curiosity. Maybe games like earthbound would benefit with the obvious framerate stutter or maybe not but it would still be interesting to toy around with.

Any chance you could also add the schematic to that thread please so that people can design their own boards around other uses?

Yes, I will also release the schematic (although it's not very complicated or sophisticated ^^).

I'll make two new designs soon: A 5V version with the metal can oscillator form factor and a 3.3V version. It seems the crystal I've picked is not a good fit for the CDCE925 clock generation IC. Also, I think it's better/easier to use the s0 input of the clock generation IC to switch between different frequencies. This allows to use the cheaper CDCE913 (1 PLL) instead of the CDCE925 (two PLLs). Also, the buffers won't be neccessary anymore (at least for the 3.3V version). The 3.3V version will be significantly cheaper and easier to assemble than the current DFO...

So I've checked the output rates of my DFO-modded Megadrive 2 and PSX again, here are the results:

Megadrive 2:

59.91 Hz on 60 Hz and 49.70 Hz on 50 Hz mode. Although these output rates are off, it seems genuine, unmodified PAL and NTSC Megadrive consoles have the same output rates. Can anyone confirm these rates?

PSX:

Now this is interesting: 59.94 Hz & 50 Hz output rates are only achieved in 480i & 576i games (Tekken 3, Dead or Alive, Rapid Racer, etc). Games running in 240p & 288p cause output rates that are quite a bit off...

blizzz · Post by **blizzz** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 8:36 pm

Mekei wrote:Would I be able to swap pins on the layout or would it just be best to contact the cable seller.

The red and blue wires are connected to the wrong pins. It's a trivial fix if you can solder, just swap them.

BuckoA51 · Post by **BuckoA51** » Sun Apr 12, 2015 10:30 am

Now this is interesting: 59.94 Hz & 50 Hz output rates are only achieved in 480i & 576i games (Tekken 3, Dead or Alive, Rapid Racer, etc). Games running in 240p & 288p cause output rates that are quite a bit off...

Very interesting, I wonder could you design something in the DFO firmware to compensate for this, without adversely effecting the console?

I am still waiting for the first batch of DFO to come in, sadly it doesn't look like I'll be able to provide a fitting service at least not initially.

GohanX · Post by **GohanX** » Sun Apr 12, 2015 11:29 pm

Pasky wrote:Anyone know why this is? I have my super gun RGB outputs going to my frame meister with the atomiswave (in 30hz and 15hz mode) and I get no picture. If I send it to my rgb monitor and send the passthrough to the XRGB I get a picture. It's only the atomis wave that does this. Anyone know what's up?

No clue, man. I can tell you that the Atomiswave works connected directly to the minis rgb input in both resolutions though.

hypermuffin · Post by **hypermuffin** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:18 pm

Hi guys, I recently modded my n64 to output RGB and I just wanted to know what are your XRGB-mini settings for this console.

Picture is obviously better than when I used composite now but the games, which are 240p most of the time, still don't look as good as when I played them on my CRT. I have my Gamecube hooked up to my XRGB-mini and the games look flawless but my n64 games look like they're being played on a potato.

Any help is appreciated

eightbitminiboss · Post by **eightbitminiboss** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 8:21 pm

hypermuffin wrote:Hi guys, I recently modded my n64 to output RGB and I just wanted to know what are your XRGB-mini settings for this console.

Picture is obviously better than when I used composite now but the games, which are 240p most of the time, still don't look as good as when I played them on my CRT. I have my Gamecube hooked up to my XRGB-mini and the games look flawless but my n64 games look like they're being played on a potato.

Any help is appreciated

I recommend the settings listed for 240p content: http://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php/XRGB ... 0p_sources

Use 720p with scanlines which benefits the N64 immensely.

It's going to still look like a potato, but not as bad.

12345 · Post by **12345** » Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:36 pm

hobbla wrote:I'm using a Framemeister with 1.11 firmware and FBX's settings from his pixel purist site (Thanks FBX!)

For testing purposes I'm using SCART to RGB in on a Gen/MD. I don't have pictures to prove it, but on my calibrated Vizio e500i-b1 I have to use YCbCr on the Framemeister to get accurate colors. With RGB out (regardless of deep color enabled or not) I have way over saturated greens.

I used a Colormunki, ColorHCFR and the 240p test suite on the Genesis, and found the following (with some rounding b/c I'm writing this from memory):

RGB Deviation from reference luminance:
R: -30%
G: +30%
B: -30%

YCbCr Deviation from reference luminance:
R: -3%
G: +3%
B: -3%

Gray scale had a dE of <3.0 on both RGB and YCbCr though. So it specifically has to do with colors, not grayscale. Could just be the brand of TVs?

Sorry for digging this up but I find this very important.
Apart from the color settings you changed, which level of A/D, BRIGHTNESS, GAMMA and BLACK did you use?
Have you tested any other system with your reference levels? If so, did you use the exact same values?

Edit: Speaking of the YCbCr deviation: Does this mean lowering GREEN in the Framemeister's settings by 1 or 2 will solve the deviation?

Konsolkongen · Post by **Konsolkongen** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:06 pm

micro wrote:Hey guys, it's me again, the guy from page 240.

Remember, I've made an oscillator with two different selectable frequencies and installed it into a PAL Megadrive 2 (PSX and NeoGeo MVS too) to resolve some issues with the Framemeister.

In case one of you guys wants to rebuild this oscillator, I've finally finished the firmware and Windows GUI for the programming device. Everything can be found on: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5744.0

Over and out!

Hi micro, I saw your circuit on NFG, but never got around to ask you if it can be adjusted to work for Neo Geo AES and NGCD as well? I'd also like to see your install on a MVS, as I have a 4-slot I'd like to perform this mod to myself

Any idea if a proper 60Hz modified AES with a MVS converter, will make the scaling glitches that occur when using a converter, worse or possibly better? I've always wondered if the difference in timing between the two systems were the reason for these ugly scaling glitches...? If that's true, then perhaps a similar mod is needed inside the converter?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:19 pm

Konsolkongen wrote:Any idea if a proper 60Hz modified AES with a MVS converter, will make the scaling glitches that occur when using a converter, worse or possibly better? I've always wondered if the difference in timing between the two systems were the reason for these ugly scaling glitches...? If that's true, then perhaps a similar mod is needed inside the converter?

Very interesting...I didn't know about this at all. In case anybody is wondering about the back story, it looks as if the arcade system's signal is derived from a 24MHz clock, whereas the AES has an extra crystal to get precise NTSC timings.

Still that's all in rendering time, and the programs are still identical across both releases. Doesn't seem to be access time related glitches, apparently early converters for the Neo Geo are quite simple and extra chips are just provided on other converters in the case that extra hardware / pin connections are needed. Additionally, some converters have had scaling glitches and so the issue seems to be related to pin connections / multiplexing / etc., not system speed.

eightbitminiboss · Post by **eightbitminiboss** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 9:41 am

Just spotted this on Micomsoft's twitter. FW 2.00 is out!

http://micomsoft.co.jp/xrgb-mini_download.htm

Note that it is marked as beta.

Fudoh · Post by **Fudoh** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 9:56 am

Finally

Functions to save and load global settings to/from SD card. More scanline tweaking. Shorter 240p/480i switching times. Selectable HDMI output range. New 3-level menu structure.

Would love to try this right away, but I won't have the time till next weekend. I expect some thorough testing by you guys!

And this is very neat and useful: http://micomsoft.co.jp/XRGB-mini_Ver200_OSD_E.pdf

Shining · Post by **Shining** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:15 am

Aw yiss! Will try this after work. Maybe the "overlay" mode is some kind of masking setting?

shmups.system11.org

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