Fudoh's ode to old display technology

[SNES_is_the_Best]

Is there any better way to emulate (including the use of an Extron Emotia) NES / SNES / Genesis / PC Engine - that's not a PC? The Wii seems pretty great aside from the issue above.

-Jim

I'll second what Fudoh said. For 3 reasons.

1. Emulation in general typically lags around 3-4 frames (almost impossible to get emulation to lag less than 2 frames)

2. Accuracy (emulator suck in this department. Not even the most accurate emulators are truly 100% accurate)

3. Support small businesses (there's alot of honest sellers on ebay who make a living doing their best to clean/refurbish these retro games with tender care for guys like us, and many even replace dead batteries)

Then again, if your dead set on emulation, the Wii is more powerful than the Xbox for emulation. Less slow-down.

[RushupEdge]

I just got a Sony PVM-20L5 shipped from a seller on ebay, and I just can't seem to turn it on. The power button is completely missing. I look inside the hole where the button that is missing is supposed to be, and it looks like there's no switch I can just short to turn the monitor on, and there is likely supposed to be a microswitch actually inside the button that is missing, like it's all one unit. I was wondering if anyone has a service manual for the PVM-20L5 or the similar L4 so I know how everything goes together behind the bezel and so I know what parts I might need to replace.

Edit:

[Ed Oscuro]

Have you tried searching out a remote, if you don't have one?

[RushupEdge]

Sort of. Can I just get any old Sony RS422 remote?

edit: nope, doesn't look like it. I'm not looking to spend another $50-$100 just to get my Monitor to work.

edit2: crap i found the plastic cap to the power switch. I could use a service manual to figure out if it's fixable with just this piece or not.

[jdubs]

I don't know if the XBox is any better (maybe?). I would recommend real hardware instead. If you don't feel like buying games, you can use flash cards for those systems.

Thanks Fudoh and I think I'll give the flash cart a try. I REALLY love the convenience of emulation (I have a ton of carts...but its pain to change them if I can't figure out exactly what I want to play) and the flash cart concept should give me that while maintaining perfect image quality.

-Jim

[jdubs]

Is there any better way to emulate (including the use of an Extron Emotia) NES / SNES / Genesis / PC Engine - that's not a PC? The Wii seems pretty great aside from the issue above.

-Jim

I'll second what Fudoh said. For 3 reasons.

1. Emulation in general typically lags around 3-4 frames (almost impossible to get emulation to lag less than 2 frames)

2. Accuracy (emulator suck in this department. Not even the most accurate emulators are truly 100% accurate)

3. Support small businesses (there's alot of honest sellers on ebay who make a living doing their best to clean/refurbish these retro games with tender care for guys like us, and many even replace dead batteries)

Then again, if your dead set on emulation, the Wii is more powerful than the Xbox for emulation. Less slow-down.

Thanks for this. GroovyMAME is definitely better than 3-4 frames of lag and is approaching real-time. I agree on your other points, though. Emulation is just too easy not to like! And with the Wii's 240p output...the games look great, too!

I think the flash cart route is the one I'm going to take.

-Jim

[cools]

GroovyUME kthx.

[jdubs]

GroovyUME kthx.

Yep!!

[blackoak]

a heads up to anyone in the sf bay area looking for a bvm:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ele/4034181187.html

SONY TRINITRON BVM-D24E1WU Video Monitor $25
SONY TRINITRON BVM-1910 Video Monitor 2@$20ea

[alamone]

Very tempted to check out the sale, are you going blackoak?
If they're in good working condition I'd def. be interested in one or two.

I've been having very bad luck with stupid ebay sellers not being able
to ship these things properly and they get damaged in transit.
My 20M2U also had the power button mashed in, bezel cracked too;
I ended up having to disassemble the unit and create a solder bridge on the
power board PCB to have it "always on", so it just turns on automatically once I plug it in.

[blackoak]

I'm tempted too--I have a good set of CRTs now, but its always comforting to have a backup given their increasing rarity and age.

[TheShadowRunner]

I am but the image quality of my Genesis and PC Engine win out. They just look better, but that does not mean that the wii in 240p looks bad per say.

I'm confused about the PC Engine part? I cannot get my wii to output 240p for PCEngine HuCards at all (PCEngine CD games on the other hand are displayed in 240p alright).
Tbh, the HuCard emu completely sucks, the image is blurry as hell, and clearly having output forced in 480i doesn't help either. :S
So hm.. is there a way to force the Wii HuCards emu to output 240p (besides the A+1+Z trick in operation guide I mean)?

[jdubs]

I am but the image quality of my Genesis and PC Engine win out. They just look better, but that does not mean that the wii in 240p looks bad per say.

I'm confused about the PC Engine part? I cannot get my wii to output 240p for PCEngine HuCards at all (PCEngine CD games on the other hand are displayed in 240p alright).
Tbh, the HuCard emu completely sucks, the image is blurry as hell, and clearly having output forced in 480i doesn't help either. :S
So hm.. is there a way to force the Wii HuCards emu to output 240p (besides the A+1+Z trick in operation guide I mean)?

Are you referring to HuCards playable via Virtual Console? Not sure about those...but the PC Engine emus for soft-modded Wiis output 240p just fine (great, in fact.)

-Jim

[TheShadowRunner]

Are you referring to HuCards playable via Virtual Console? Not sure about those...but the PC Engine emus for soft-modded Wiis output 240p just fine (great, in fact.)
-Jim

Yeah I'm talking about the official HuCards playable via VC, sorry if it wasn't clear.

[lunch_box]

Hi guys, I'm hoping someone can help me out.

I recently sold my working pvm 2054 on eBay. I have received a fair bit of communication from the buyer saying the screen pic is mainly green. Now, the buyer has bought this expecting it to be plug and play which they clearly are not.

I had no issues with a green tint when it was in my possession, could this be a cable issue?? I.e poor or non rgb scart cables??

Any help would be much appreciated

Regards

[22point8]

I think its a capacitor problem that plagues the M series PVMs, didn't know it affected the earlier 50 series (I have a December 1995 1454QM).
Tell him to adjust the red and blue gain/bias, apparently the green should be left alone as it controls the overall light level.

For example when calibrating a devices greyscale you want red green and blue to be 100% each. Green is too high, so raise red and blue.

On my 1454qm the custom white balance menu is as folows:
R Gain 733
G Gain 702
B Gain 562
R Bias 427
G Bias 350
B Bias 460

[Fudoh]

If it worked fine before, I would check everything else before. If he gets a green screen, his source (maybe a Playstation 2) might be set to component instead of RGB.

[pcb_revival]

@Fudoh

How do you access runtime information of the pdp 402?

The unit I have was manufactured June 2001 and I am using rgb input 2 - hd15 with a keene syncblaster, scart switch and PS1.

A qed scart gives a rock steady picture whilst my old regular ps1 scart invokes screen wobble near the top and bottom.


Is there a typo on the first page stating model pdp v402eu instead of v402ea.

[Fudoh]

service menu. From standby on the unit itself: on -> menu within 2 seconds.

You don't need a sync stripper on the PDP. One of the two inputs will directly accept 15khz RGBs with composite video as sync.

v402ea/eu are just packaging options. ea included likely a UK power cable.....

[pcb_revival]

Thanks I will check the hours.

Not to drive the thread off topic too much but do you know where I can get this pdf brochure as the link is dead (near bottom of page) http://www.ps2netdrivers.net/manual/pioneer.pdp-v402ea/

[Fudoh]

sorry, the other way around: press menu first and then within 2 seconds the on button.

Sorry, just got the manuals on hand, not the brochure.

[pcb_revival]

No problem you have been most helpful

[philexile]

Is there any better way to emulate (including the use of an Extron Emotia) NES / SNES / Genesis / PC Engine - that's not a PC? The Wii seems pretty great aside from the issue above.

The Wii is really great for emulation – both Virtual Console and the stand-alone emulators (if you are softmodding). Xbox1 is also good, but you need an Extron Emotia to get 240p scanlines – and there is more tweaking involved.

1. Emulation in general typically lags around 3-4 frames (almost impossible to get emulation to lag less than 2 frames)

Really? I think that may be a little excessive. I used emulators on the Xbox1 for years and it wasn't that awful. I'm sure there is some lag, but not that many frames.

2. Accuracy (emulator suck in this department. Not even the most accurate emulators are truly 100% accurate)

If using a PC, BSNES (or whatever it is called now) prides itself on accuracy. Also, Nestopia on the Xbox1 was pretty accurate as well – even on Xbox1 hardware.

Yeah I'm talking about the official HuCards playable via VC, sorry if it wasn't clear.

I noticed this as well. For whatever reason, those games are set to run in 480i and not 240p. Some N64 games on Virtual Console do this as well – like Mario Kart.

All this said, I have most of the real systems now. The more you play, the more you want the real thing again.

[Overkill]

Originaly nintendo wanted the virtual console games to be the exact same output as the originals, but most of the people was trading their CRT tvs for LCDs/Plamas at the time, and then the problems started. People using the component wii output in HDtvs started to saying there is no image displayed on the screen with the games they bought. This was just because some models don't recognise 240p signal on the component input. Then nintendo made a workaround, some button sequence to change the game video mode. But to prevent future problems, they started to make some VC games in 480/576i. PC engine have some games in original resolution (Fighting Street, Castlevania, etc), and some in interlaced. Shame on Nintendo for not keeping the original concept for Virtual console games.

[VIS9000]

Hi Fudoh, thanks for this thread

I recently got a 20F1E and was wondering: Are you able to save alignment settings for each channel? So far I can set seperate horizontal phase, bright/contrast and colour temp for each channel from the input config menu but I can't see how to set V Size, V Center etc for each channel - is it even possible?

[panzeroceania]

2. Accuracy (emulator suck in this department. Not even the most accurate emulators are truly 100% accurate)

If using a PC, BSNES (or whatever it is called now) prides itself on accuracy. Also, Nestopia on the Xbox1 was pretty accurate as well – even on Xbox1 hardware.

I participate a lot in the accuracy focused emulation community, and I'm passionate about it and think it's important for preserving how these video game systems acted in the next several hundred years.

That said the more I see, the more I understand that absolutely nothing comes close to running the real thing on hardware.

If you care about this sort of stuff the answer you'll be looking for is always a real console and a CRT. You can't ever perfectly simulate it.

[philexile]

That said the more I see, the more I understand that absolutely nothing comes close to running the real thing on hardware.

If you care about this sort of stuff the answer you'll be looking for is always a real console and a CRT. You can't ever perfectly simulate it.

Very true – which is why my setup grew to this extent:



I just feel that emulation isn't a total wash and its good for people that play casually. I still emulate arcade games with the Xbox1, which is fine for me. I know its not perfect by any means, but its preferable to a getting the boards and supergun.

[Fudoh]

I recently got a 20F1E and was wondering: Are you able to save alignment settings for each channel? So far I can set seperate horizontal phase, bright/contrast and colour temp for each channel from the input config menu but I can't see how to set V Size, V Center etc for each channel - is it even possible?

You can't save geometry per channel, but the F1 has four geometry slots (4:3 overscan, 4:3 underscan, 16:9 overscan, 4:3 underscan) which you can use to set the picture for different systems (just disregard the AR and over/underscan titles). And then you simply apply different AR presets to your channels. And usually four different sets of geometry settings should be enough for most setups.

[cyborc]

That said the more I see, the more I understand that absolutely nothing comes close to running the real thing on hardware.

If you care about this sort of stuff the answer you'll be looking for is always a real console and a CRT. You can't ever perfectly simulate it.

Very true – which is why my setup grew to this extent:

So that's what Heaven looks like...

I just feel that emulation isn't a total wash and its good for people that play casually. I still emulate arcade games with the Xbox1, which is fine for me. I know its not perfect by any means, but its preferable to a getting the boards and supergun.

For arcade games I use a pc running crt_emudriver and groovymame hooked up to my PVM-20L5. It's pretty amazing. Native resolution, smooth scrolling, minimal lag, and no sound hiccups. It's as close to owning the actual pcb as you can get imo.

I've also found that Kega Fusion and Ootake are nearly perfect replications of the Genesis and Pc engine respectively when using crt_emudriver. It's so good that my Genesis is now stored away in my closet. If I get the urge to play on real hardware I can always hook it back up but the convenience of running an emulator that can output native res to a crt with a nice frontend sure is swell.

My SNES and NES will stay hooked up, though. I haven't found an emulator worthy of replacing them. BSNES is nice but my pc is too slow to run it. Nestopia would be perfect if not for that damn input lag with vsync on.

[moshpit]

Hey everybody. I recently purchased a BVM-20F1E and have a weird problem with it. I just can't figure out how to get rid of the black bars on top and bottom of the picture. The screen is not in 16:9 mode. Both "4:3 Norm" and "4:3 Under" have those bars. All alignment settings have no effect on those bars. The picture just resizes inside that area. Switching to 16:9 just makes the bars bigger, obviously. I wonder if any owner with a BVM 20F1E/U had the same problem and was able to solve this?

edit:
ok, so, a few more details regarding the connected console. it's a PAL PS1 with a mod chip and a NTSC game is running. so when the console starts with the splash screen/bios, everything appears to be normal. but as soon as the game loads the bars appear.

I use a BNC (R/G/B/sync) to female scart cable. the sync is set to external. input signal is component > RGB.



Thanks a lot!