XRGB-mini Framemeister

[noonan2678]

At any rate, the SNES profiles do work great for NESRGB, but I'm now working on a new profile that shows all 240 lines of the NES. This can only be done by maxing ZOOM_SIZE to 100, lowering the V_WIDTH (in VISUAL_SET menu) to 31, and then using ZOOM_OVERSCAN to adjust the image size. It may not be possible to get uniform integer scaling this way, but this profile will be good for games like Legend of Zelda, where the game doesn't look right unless you can see all 240 lines.

Can't wait to check it out - really appreciate the work on these!

[FBX]

New profiles added:

Code: Select all

NESRGBOS:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output. This profile is for viewing all 240 lines of NES graphics and fills the screen from top to bottom. Although this is not an integer-based size for the NES graphics, scrolling artifacts are not very bad. This mode is great for games like Legend of Zelda that use the overscan area for important graphics. Suggested screen size: Full Pixel.


NESRGB4X:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output, and scales the image to 4x the original 224 vertical res. Note that couple of the top and bottom lines of graphics are cut off from view. This is normal for the original Nintendo, and in fact even more image data was typically cut off from the top and bottom on a CRT display during the prime years of the NES's life. Suggested screen size: -1.


NESRGB5X:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output, and scales the image to 5x the original 224 vertical res. This mode is great for games like Castlevania, where no image data reaches the top and bottom of the screen. This mode isn't recommended for games like Legend of Zelda that contain important graphics extending to the extreme top and bottome edges of the screen. Suggested screen size: Full Pixel.

I went ahead and made individual NESRGB profiles like this because I found the NESRGB output looked better with 25-10-2 COLOR settings on the Framemeister. Also note that the NESRGBOS profile's ZOOM settings mimic "STANDARD" in the SCREEN_SET menu. The point of the profile is of course saving the color settings, and making it easier to jump to different profiles without having to manually change anything.

[Bobster]

New profiles added:

Code: Select all

NESRGBOS:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output. This profile is for viewing all 240 lines of NES graphics and fills the screen from top to bottom. Although this is not an integer-based size for the NES graphics, scrolling artifacts are not very bad. This mode is great for games like Legend of Zelda that use the overscan area for important graphics. Suggested screen size: Full Pixel.


NESRGB4X:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output, and scales the image to 4x the original 224 vertical res. Note that couple of the top and bottom lines of graphics are cut off from view. This is normal for the original Nintendo, and in fact even more image data was typically cut off from the top and bottom on a CRT display during the prime years of the NES's life. Suggested screen size: -1.


NESRGB5X:

This is for the Nintendo Entertainment System with the 'NESRGB' mod installed for RGB output, and scales the image to 5x the original 224 vertical res. This mode is great for games like Castlevania, where no image data reaches the top and bottom of the screen. This mode isn't recommended for games like Legend of Zelda that contain important graphics extending to the extreme top and bottome edges of the screen. Suggested screen size: Full Pixel.

I went ahead and made individual NESRGB profiles like this because I found the NESRGB output looked better with 25-10-2 COLOR settings on the Framemeister. Also note that the NESRGBOS profile's ZOOM settings mimic "STANDARD" in the SCREEN_SET menu. The point of the profile is of course saving the color settings, and making it easier to jump to different profiles without having to manually change anything.

You're making me really jealous of your modded NES! I've been eyeing up a couple AV Famicom listings on eBay considering whether I want to attempt to mod one myself lol.

[FBX]

You're making me really jealous of your modded NES! I've been eyeing up a couple AV Famicom listings on eBay considering whether I want to attempt to mod one myself lol.

Since my modding skills aren't that good, I found the best route was to buy a pre-modded front-loader from Yurkie (Todd Scheele) over at AtariAge. It was $279, and after it arrived, I replaced the pin interface socket with a brand new one that works perfectly. So this saved me a little bit of money compared to the $400 price tags on those top-loader modded decks on ebay.

[Bobster]

You're making me really jealous of your modded NES! I've been eyeing up a couple AV Famicom listings on eBay considering whether I want to attempt to mod one myself lol.

Since my modding skills aren't that good, I found the best route was to buy a pre-modded front-loader from Yurkie (Todd Scheele) over at AtariAge. It was $279, and after it arrived, I replaced the pin interface socket with a brand new one that works perfectly. So this saved me a little bit of money compared to the $400 price tags on those top-loader modded decks on ebay.

That's not too bad. Still more than I'd like to spend. Also, it's a nice learning process for me. Guess we'll see which way I want to go. Glad you're happy with yours though!

[FBX]

You're making me really jealous of your modded NES! I've been eyeing up a couple AV Famicom listings on eBay considering whether I want to attempt to mod one myself lol.

Since my modding skills aren't that good, I found the best route was to buy a pre-modded front-loader from Yurkie (Todd Scheele) over at AtariAge. It was $279, and after it arrived, I replaced the pin interface socket with a brand new one that works perfectly. So this saved me a little bit of money compared to the $400 price tags on those top-loader modded decks on ebay.

That's not too bad. Still more than I'd like to spend. Also, it's a nice learning process for me. Guess we'll see which way I want to go. Glad you're happy with yours though!

What I plan on doing after I finish my custom palette work and get Tim to flash it onto a NESRGB board is to mod a top-loader deck myself, then likely sell off the modded front-loader for a reasonable price if everything works out.

[TheShadowRunner]

Alright!
Firmware ver. 2.00a is out:
http://www.micomsoft.co.jp/xrgb-mini_download.htm
and supposedly fixes "RGB Limited" output...
Guess they still do read emails ^^;

Edit: Now comes with 3 profiles..
DEFAULT.BIN (??)
SELLOPHA.BIN (Cellophane mode?)
XEVIVX2.BIN (??)

[eightbitminiboss]

^^^^^^
I'm pretty sure those profiles were in 2.00 already.

New beta firmware (2.00a) is out.

Micomsoft Twitter account mentions a bug fix when Output Range is set to Limited if the machine translation is to be believed.

Edit: and beaten

[TheShadowRunner]

And..... YES! SUCCESS!
The LIMITED setting is now outputting what it should
Super glad to see Micomsoft fixed it proper, bye bye black crush on HDTVs that expect RGB limited on their HDMI inputs.
A couple pictures:









(Colors on these pics are WAY off compared to what it looks like in reality, only meant to emphasize the difference in RGB color range)

The PLUGE now shows up, and at what appears to be correct values
One little letdown is that the OUTPUT_COLOR setting, like the Scanlines, isn't remembered in the Profiles.
While my PS2 (connected via RGB) desperately needed LIMITED, my SFC doesn't (yes, big mystery there..), but oh well it's nitpicking at this point. xD

Edit: feedback sent to Micomsoft, asking them to consider saving *all* current settings (including SCANLINES ON/OFF state and OUTPUT_COLOR setting) in the profiles.

[blizzz]

Does it also fix the problem that only YCbCr output has the correct colors?

[FBX]

Interestingly, I found I could stash my profiles in the proper EEPDATA folder of the firmware update package, and the Framemiester will update and immediately detect the profiles. Of course it's probably just because the profiles aren't actually 'installed' per se, but rather stored in the proper folder as usual on the microSD card.

The only change in this new update appears to be the fix to the HDIM output color range issue.

[12345]

Nice to see that Micomsoft did indeed solve the issue with the LIMITED mode rather quickly.

[CkRtech]

Whenever they adjust how things operate, it is quite possible that profiles created under previous firmware(s) will no longer achieve the same result & need to either be tweaked or recreated. They are also still labeling this firmware as "beta," so they could even completely change the file format/etc for firmware profiles in the future.

[TheShadowRunner]

Does it also fix the problem that only YCbCr output has the correct colors?

RGB always has had the correct colors here.. not sure what you mean ^^;

Interestingly, I found I could stash my profiles in the proper EEPDATA folder of the firmware update package, and the Framemiester will update and immediately detect the profiles. Of course it's probably just because the profiles aren't actually 'installed' per se, but rather stored in the proper folder as usual on the microSD card.

Yes that's of course because they were present in the proper folder.

Nice to see that Micomsoft did indeed solve the issue with the LIMITED mode rather quickly.
DISCLAIMER:
After some short testing though I found that they obviously didn't only change the way LIMITED works but also seem to have tweaked the FULL mode since I get visible black crush on areas where I got none on the previous firmware, using my calibrated profiles.
Seems like we have to start this topic all over again...

I noticed absolutely no change whatsoever to FULL.
But I've always used all default color settings. Don't forget when updating the fw, _everything_ is reset to default.

[12345]

Damn it, just ignore what I said before. Apparently I forgot to consider the mini's failsafe mechanism when switching back and forth from RGB to AUTO, while doing the testing, so my results were flawed. Sorry for the misinformation.
I think it's save to say that profiles used on FULL on the previous firmware can also be used on 2.00a, using FULL. Maybe I'll reconsider calibrating with LIMITED if we ever get a stable release, but so far I'm happy with FULL.

Other thougts: If Micomsoft gets quicker at solving issues and continues listening to E-mails, do you think other flaws like the horizontal scaling bug or resolution timeout might also be adressed in the near future?

[12345]

Damn it, just ignore what I said before. Apparently I forgot to consider the mini's failsafe mechanism when switching back and forth from RGB to AUTO, while doing the testing, so my results were flawed. Sorry for the misinformation.
I think it's save to say that profiles used on FULL on the previous firmware can also be used on 2.00a, using FULL. Maybe I'll reconsider calibrating with LIMITED if we ever get a stable release, but so far I'm happy with FULL.

Other thougts: If Micomsoft gets quicker at solving issues and continues listening to E-mails, do you think other flaws like the horizontal scaling bug or resolution timeout might also be adressed in the near future?

@TheShadowRunner
I think blizzz means that especially greens were/are crushed on certain sources when using RGB instead of AUTO.

[TheShadowRunner]

Other thougts: If Micomsoft gets quicker at solving issues and continues listening to E-mails, do you think other flaws like the horizontal scaling bug or resolution timeout might also be adressed in the near future?

I'm not sure, I was really only after proper RGB LIMITED output and didn't mention any of these.
Maybe fudoh did? I've no clue.
By resolution timeout, do you mean the 3 seconds it takes for the Mini to switch between 240p <> 480i?
It'd make sense the limitation is hardware for this case so I don't have much hopes.

I think blizzz means that especially greens were/are crushed on certain sources when using RGB instead of AUTO.

Ah you mean this http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 1#p1095801
Yes clearly his RGB pic is off on the green, I don't experience this at all on my end though.
Here RGB is pretty much exactly like YUV. I do see the 3 shades of green in the bush very distinctly when using RGB. Maybe it's blizzz's capture device or display that doesn't play along 100% well with the Mini?

[Borg1982]

I'm new to the XRGB Mini and things have been mostly okay except 1 situation.

As seen here at 21 minutes, 40 seconds of this video, http://www.twitch.tv/borg1982/c/6842039 , there are wavy black horizontal lines in the middle -- if you look closely its especially easy to see on that white background that the storyline provided.

I notice the waves on multiple video game consoles, and I'm not sure why:

- PS2 Using Component Cables INTO the XRGB Mini.
- SNES Scart CSYNC Cable INTO the XRGB Mini.

The XRGB was plugged directly into my TV or into my capture card, and the waviness is there in both situations.

Does this have to do with the power cord for the XRGB?? I can't find other people with my situation.

Thanks for anyone who can help!

[Fudoh]

I think that's your typical A/D conversion artefacts. You can get rid of these by alterting the A/D level (Special > A/D Set > A/D Level), but eventually you're just moving them to other colors.

[Ace9921]

Got a bit of a problem with the XRGB-Mini's Composite input, in particular with the following:

-Sanyo Wavy2 MSX computer
-Any Genesis or Genesis hardware clone when playing Master System games

With the Wavy2, the video signal keeps shifting downwards for about half a second before snapping back into place and there are some instances of the signal dropping out, but the frequency at which this happens is completely inconsistent. It can sometimes be non-stop or not happen at all. With Master System games on a Genesis or Genesis hardware clone, it's even worse. While most of the time, the picture is stable, it tends to jitter, do the aforementioned half-second downward shift and on certain hardware clones, there is rampant signal dropout. These all work fine directly connected to all my TVs (but the Wavy2's Composite output is dreadful, it looks horrible), a standard Electrohome 27E510 27" 4:3 CRT TV, a Sony KV-30HS420 30" 16:9 CRT HDTV and a Sharp LC-32LB261U 32" LED TV. Any suggestions to fix these video problems?

[BuckoA51]

Both of those systems output RGB, do they not? Don't want to state the obvious but....

[Ace9921]

The Wavy2 is an MSX with a Toshiba T6950 VDP, so its best form of video output is Composite (and it looks even worse than a TMS9918, which I have inside an NTSC-converted Philips VG-8020/00 - that one works fine). If it were an MSX2 or later, I'd have just used RGB.

In regards to the Genesis and Genesis hardware clones, I do comparisons of hardware clones which are incapable of outputting RGB out of the box, sometimes even at all (S-Video is the best I've seen some clone chipsets output). For proper reference, if a clone outputs Composite or S-Video as its best output, I will record video from the Genesis (and Master System if the clone is compatible with Master System converters) in Composite. For normal gameplay, I use RGB on original Sega hardware, but for these comparison videos, I have to use Composite (only exception is the RetroN5 since its only output is HDMI, so for this particular console, I record reference clips from the original systems using RGB wherever possible - I say this as the NES can't output anything better than Composite without mods).

Something else I'd like to note: when I use the HDMI pass-throughs, I see a vertical black line on the left side of the screen. What exactly is this? I see it both when I upscale an HDMI input and when the HDMI inputs are set as direct pass-throughs. I would like to make use of these inputs and not have any anomalies in the video output.

[Tomdominer]

Japanese Super Famicom: This console never gets perfectly in sync and always has v-sync issues. It seems most stable at around 22hz I guess. I'm using an official nintendo gamecube euro scart cable.

The DOL-013 cable has a series 220uF capacitor on the composite video line that if bypassed, should fix your sync issues. I've had to perform this modification on my own DOL-013 cable as I don't have any PAL consoles. SNES pin 3 is also wired in the cable - 12VDC on PAL, CSYNC on NTSC consoles. Alternatively, you can remove the 220uF cap and move the SNES pin 3 wire in the SCART plug to where the negative leg would be connected to give you CSYNC output. However, the cable won't be safe with PAL consoles if you modify it for CSYNC, as feeding 12VDC to the XRGB-mini could damage the unit!

Hey Mr RGB. Could you perhaps link me to a guide to bypassing this capacitor? I'm going to try this at home. Wish me luck!

Also, would this be causing a similar problem on the rgb megadrive cable with the framemeister? Link

[psychosync]

Hey

I bought the FrameMeister and have been toying around with it for about a week now. It is awesome of course but i have a question, here it is:

My display is a projector with a native resolution of 1024x768. So for 240p games i use the Smart_x2 option to keep the pixels as square as possible. I wish there was a Smart_x3 setting so that would give me a bigger image without having to use the projector's manual zoom. And at 768p, having 3 times the resolution fits (720 into 768) leaving only 24 empty pixels at top and bottom.

So question is, can i reproduce the Smart_x2 with the zoom option? I mean is there an undisclosed number in between 0-100 in the zoom option that is the same as Smart_x2?

I'm sure you understand why i'm asking this, i want to maximize screen space keeping a perfect aspect ratio. At first i was using Standard instead of Smart_x2, it looked good but i quickly realized that in diagonal lines some pixels were thicker. And with the 240p suite it's obvious.

One last question this time about 480i/p games. Now with my 1024x768 resolution i cannot use the Smart_x2 option as it does not fit into 768 pixels. I can however use higher resolutions than my projector's native resolution, i really don't like it though as the projector's scaling is ugly and that is even more evident on an 90" screen! But i tried changing the FrameMeister's resolution to 1280x960 so that the Smart_x2 option would work to see how it looks, but it still said "unsupported"? It should be working as doubling 480p is 960p. Anyone knows why it's not working?

Thanks!

[Fudoh]

You can always recreate something like x2 or even x3 by hand. By adjusting the zoom options by hand you should be able to achieve a tripled 240p output (224 to 672 or 240 to 720).

[FBX]

You can always recreate something like x2 or even x3 by hand. By adjusting the zoom options by hand you should be able to achieve a tripled 240p output (224 to 672 or 240 to 720).

And since he has a display 240 test suit, he can use that to ensure a perfectly dialed in 3x scale. It just takes some trial and error, and sometimes ZOOM_OVERSCAN has to be juggled in there to get it just right. The SNES and Genesis ones for 4x in 1080p required a combo of 97 and 86 for the size and overscan respectively.

[dkarDaGobert]

use the invert option to change the overscan area colour from black to white. Its perfect to see the free space while setting up the zoom level.

[psychosync]

Ok i've been playing around with the ZOOM and OVERSCAN settings a lot. I prefer using the ZOOM_WIDTH option instead of the OVERSCAN though, i don't know if shouldn't be using this instead of overscan but it gives me more fine tuning.

Anyway, i can't find a perfect X3 setting and one thing i find strange is that at Smart_X2 it almost looks as if the resolution was trippled?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qib1sedobcn58 ... m.jpg?dl=0

You can see on that next pic in a lighter gray the edge of the projected screen, and the start of the XRGB output. I can fill the entire screen with the zoom of course.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y9lcmqcio8av4 ... M.jpg?dl=0


In 1024x768, i found some ZOOM vs WIDTH settings that are close to being pixel accurate but there is always a pixel line either in the middle of the screen or at top or bottom that is too thick, or 2 pixel lines too close. These settings are:

ZOOM WIDTH
100. 38
99. 35
98. 34
97. 32

And so on...

[psychosync]

Also, one more thing...

I tried setting up my projector in 800x600. With the xrgb at Smart_X1, the sega genesis almost fills the entire resolution. It looks like 720x480 inside of 800x600. Smart_X1 should be 1:1 and should be small inside 800x600 right?

Status info from the xrgb tells me it is receiving 720x240p.

[Fudoh]

the "x1" applies to the line doubler's output (before the Marvell), so, yes, it means 480p.