GBS 8200/8220 CFW Project

[casuais_play]

What else have you tried aside from the Wii and which outputs?

Here I have SNES, NES in RGBs and Mister FPGA with scart output. They all work perfectly, only the Nintendo Wii (I tested with two different models USA and EU, both by SCART and Component) has this problem. The screen randomly jumps for one frame.

An example with Wii NES emulator
​
https://user-images.githubusercontent.c ... ebb8d1.mp4

[orange808]

The Gonbes has no proper framelock. That's the root of the tear lines and other oddities.

All the same, I wouldn't use an emulator to demonstrate issues. I'm not familiar with Wii emulation efforts, but my first suspicion is the NES emulator. Are you certain that's not the emulator?

[casuais_play]

The Gonbes has no proper framelock. That's the root of the tear lines and other oddities.

All the same, I wouldn't use an emulator to demonstrate issues. I'm not familiar with Wii emulation efforts, but my first suspicion is the NES emulator. Are you certain that's not the emulator?

The same thing happens with Wii and Game Cube games.

[kitty666cats]

So for my setup I'm mostly only using DB15 cables from retro-access fed into the VGA port and then audio going into the component stereo jacks, I dont seem to have that problem with the left channel but perhaps its a scart input problem? I can check with my PS1 scart (this is the only scart cable in my setup anymore, I do plan to replace it with a PS1 DB15 cable when retro-access is up and running again). What I have noticed though is the audio is "loud", I know its a simple case of "turning it down" on my TV but I dont know if its peaking to the point of "losing quality".

Also yeah, I get tearing with everything too, more especially widescreen content set to 720p, if I set my OG Xbox to 480p widescreen its especially bad, even if I set it to passthrough mode. I haven't tried the VGA output, my capture card at least has VGA input but ultimately I'm probably going to invest in a retrotink eventually, one of the main reasons I went with GBS was the VGA input is extremely convenient for my setup, with the 5X I can only find like one adapter that will convert it to scart, I really wish it had a VGA port on it.

I wouldn’t count on Retro Access being up and running for a LONG time. If you check their Twitter they’ve gone completely gone off the rails and can’t seem to manage to be function as a member of society right now, let a business owner. It would probably be responsible of RetroRGB Bob and all these other places to stop listing them as one of the top go-to cable sellers… it’s a one-person operation that was always very slow with a poor business model/poor service - and now it’s not looking much like they’ll be back into the swing of things anytime REMOTELY soon, if ever

[Cyber Akuma]

Is the wiki over at https://ramapcsx2.github.io/gbs-control/ still being updated?

I noticed that it hasn't had much changes in a while, and still lists the OLED Addon as still being a work-in-progress and has just some barebones examples of how to set it up, meanwhile all of the pre-made GBS-C units that have been popping up everywhere tend to have an OLED screen as default. Feels like the DIY version is being neglected now with all the pre-made versions that have appeared, bit of an annoyance since I ordered the parts to build one a while ago. Are there any more updated bui;d/mod guides than the one at the ramapcsx2 github? All my searches just gave me pre-made ones from Ali or old tweets from a few years ago.

[NoAffinity]

I wouldn't say it's being neglected, there just isnt anything that rama will be adding to his github. He has said hes not doing anything more with the project in order to focus on other projects.

If I were to build another diy gbs, I would build it the same as the one I've had for years. But that's me, I'm fine using the web ui as opposed to an oled.

[xybots]

Hi guys wonder if any of you can help me I have a gbs 8200 v4 I done the gbs mod, but when I plug it into the
Tv I get a picture of the game sync on the screen but it’s pink.

I have tried the rgb header to scart on a fully working gbs control I built and it’s fine, so my question
Where would I start to look for a fault or have I damaged something

Thanks

[NoAffinity]

Hi guys wonder if any of you can help me I have a gbs 8200 v4 I done the gbs mod, but when I plug it into the
Tv I get a picture of the game sync on the screen but it’s pink.

I have tried the rgb header to scart on a fully working gbs control I built and it’s fine, so my question
Where would I start to look for a fault or have I damaged something

Thanks

You can undo your mods and test as a stock gbs. You dont need to resolder the rgb pots but be prepared it will be overly bright. Easiest testing of stock configuration will be via component or vga input, but you can also test with an arcade board.

But to confirm, in it's current state, does the issue occur for all inputs?

[gumbo]

Apologies, noob here looking for some guidance from the experts!

I used the gbs control aio kit from retroactive and am having trouble with the preset output resolutions.

I have it connected to a sega naomi cab running a sanwa 31k 640x480p crt.

Trying a few different random jamma boards via a jammafier adapter and using the gbs control to convert the 15k 240p video to 640x480p.

The problem is the "480p" preset in the menu is applying 720x480 according to the debug output. I can't see how to do 640x480?


At first I was getting a stuttering slide show. Then I turned on the physical "STRIP" switch and the screen looked great running smooth! But unfortunately it was fleeting.

In 480p mode with STRIP enabled, the screen appears for a few seconds a bit squished with black bars either side (but still looks great) until.......it loses sync. If I go to the gbs control Web portal and tap "pass through" and then tap back to "480p" again it displays for a few seconds before losing sync again.

When it goes into 480p mode, Debug says:

"Preset applied ntsc 720x480" (notice its not 640x480?)
"Source hz 57.41, new out 53.42" (even though I have the option "frame time lock" enabled?)


With the STRIP switch off (stuttering slide show) debug mode prints a stream of text over and over that corresponds to the stutters:
"ign. Lenght: 0x64"

Even if there was a way to hold sync in squished 720x480 mode I could at least adjust the monitor width with the crt remote board pots.

So as you tell I am completely stuck unable to play jamma games on my naomi cab due to this and am looking for help please

Thank you!

[NoAffinity]

Gbs control 480p profile is 720x480. No changing it unless you know how to code. Sounds like your monitor doesnt like the 720 pixels wide.

For a test, you can remove all mods and try the stock gbs. I believe it provides a 640x480 option.

Also if you have another 720x480 source you could test that too. Gbs' and especially the add on parts for modding are not always the most reliable so your issue could be a faulty component.

[gumbo]

Thanks. I quickly tried it there with a sega mega drive and that's working fine with the STRIP switch set to on or off. Plus it's the full width. It actually looks exactly like a 15k 240p image on the 31k 480p crt once the scanline option is turned on. Fantastic.

I guess it's the arcade pcb's Ive tried so far are just not compatible for whatever reason?

[kitty666cats]

Thanks. I quickly tried it there with a sega mega drive and that's working fine with the STRIP switch set to on or off. Plus it's the full width. It actually looks exactly like a 15k 240p image on the 31k 480p crt once the scanline option is turned on. Fantastic.

I guess it's the arcade pcb's Ive tried so far are just not compatible for whatever reason?

Yup, lots of arcade PCBs put out weird 50-something Hz refresh rates that the GBS isn't gonna be compatible with. That's where the OSSC / OSSC Pro shine. If you need to scale arcade stuff do to a 480p CRT you could use one of those with a HDMI to VGA on the output.

[gumbo]

I just got it going with the arcade pcb! The trick was to use the "disable the external clock" option, reboot and flick the STRIP switch to the ON position. Looks to be working fine at the moment.


Does that mean the external clock module is faulty? Am I losing any features with it disabled?

Thanks for the tip on the OSSC.

[NoAffinity]

If it worked with the mega drive, with the clock gen turned on, then doesnt seem like the clock gen is faulty. But easy to test with whatever sources you have, and outputting to different monitors if you have more than one.

Its probably what @kitty666cats said - arcade pcb putting out a signal that isnt compatible at some level.

[gumbo]

I tested upscaling on a flat panel and that works fine for super nintendo and mega drive. So that confirms it's just the arcade pcbs it doesn't like. I tried a few data east (bad dudes), capcom (sf2 and ssf2) and midway (mk3) and they all lose sync after a few seconds.


I had a look at the source code and there is a block of code that handles the sync and also header files for the presets. It has me curious. Right now all I see are random numbers hard coded. I'd say someone like calamity could turn this into the dream crt or vrr capable lcd/oled scaler:

Imagine being able to upload your vmmaker.ini file with all the timings for your crt / vrr monitor and having the gbs control choose the most appropriate refresh rate and resolution on the fly? Maybe even with super resolutions for uniform judder free horizontal width/scrolling.

[LittleTV98]

I have not had any luck with these boards, i have had two units (v4) that have the bouncy broken image. See this github issue for reference.
https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control/issues/510
4th video
I am not sure if these latest revisions are just faulty. I have failed attempts trying to do the SoG mods by burning pads or making no difference which i suspect bridging the contact points? Any ideas?
I don't want to buy a kaico pre-built if they have the same issues.

[NoAffinity]

I have not had any luck with these boards, i have had two units (v4) that have the bouncy broken image. See this github issue for reference.
https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control/issues/510
4th video
I am not sure if these latest revisions are just faulty. I have failed attempts trying to do the SoG mods by burning pads or making no difference which i suspect bridging the contact points? Any ideas?
I don't want to buy a kaico pre-built if they have the same issues.

Is this the SoG mod you're referring to?

https://ramapcsx2.github.io/gbs-control ... ments.html

If so, it is unneeded and could be causing your problems if you applied the mod.

[lukk]

No sync issues on a Kaico unit I got a few weeks ago. I had some strange glitching when using launchElf on PS2 + the brief white screen sync loss thing, but both of these issues are gone now.

Wifi has been problem free, updating the firmware to the latest official one worked with the older 1.8.19 Arduino, and my unit seems to look the best with the blue pot turned slightly clockwise.

Got to say this thing really shines for 240p. Saturn and PS2 arcade ports in particular look sublime with scanlines on a VGA monitor. Can't get the picture completely full screen on PS2 when using VGA out tho, doesn't stretch all the way horizontally without some glitching on the right edge.

[Josh128]

No sync issues on a Kaico unit I got a few weeks ago. I had some strange glitching when using launchElf on PS2 + the brief white screen sync loss thing, but both of these issues are gone now.

Wifi has been problem free, updating the firmware to the latest official one worked with the older 1.8.19 Arduino, and my unit seems to look the best with the blue pot turned slightly clockwise.

Got to say this thing really shines for 240p. Saturn and PS2 arcade ports in particular look sublime with scanlines on a VGA monitor. Can't get the picture completely full screen on PS2 when using VGA out tho, doesn't stretch all the way horizontally without some glitching on the right edge.

What does the blue pot do?

[LittleTV98]

I have not had any luck with these boards, i have had two units (v4) that have the bouncy broken image. See this github issue for reference.
https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control/issues/510
4th video
I am not sure if these latest revisions are just faulty. I have failed attempts trying to do the SoG mods by burning pads or making no difference which i suspect bridging the contact points? Any ideas?
I don't want to buy a kaico pre-built if they have the same issues.

Is this the SoG mod you're referring to?

https://ramapcsx2.github.io/gbs-control ... ments.html

If so, it is unneeded and could be causing your problems if you applied the mod.

Yes this is the mod, but same issue even before the mod.
i commented on a github issue: https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control/issues/510
The OP posted a video of some problems, the last linked video is the exact issue i have.

[lukk]

What does the blue pot do?

Makes it more/less blue, B in the RGB pots.

[2mg]

Quick question - legit good item or snake oil?
Seems to have every input and HDMI out, none of which are "native" to GBS, dunno if it forces HDMI out to 16:9 (buffer/input lag)...

Shop link

Spoiler

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/10050050 ... pt=glo2vnm

[kitty666cats]

FWIW I’ve heard the ones with composite and Svid input are pretty dookie. Though I can’t remember if this one looks the same or could be a different one…

That forced 16:9 out sounds really stupid!

[Razzlin]

Hey I just spent some time reading through various data sheets and snippets of the code. Would anyone happen to know if it’s possible to sample vertical and horizontal resolution at different scales? From what I can tell, the gbs is upscaling by oversampling by a roughly integer factor, and then outputting the samples as new pixels at a higher resolution. For example sampling 640x480 at 2X oversample on each axis gives you 1280x960. I noticed the blanking also seems to be doubled. I’m not sure how this interacts with the different output resolutions of consoles (ex: 320x240 vs 256x240).

Back to the question - on a 640x480 signal would it be possible to sample vertical at 3x and horizontal at 2X? I wanted to see if there was a way to squeeze out 1440p and it looks like, if the different sampling can be done, it may be possible to connect an HDMI 1.3 compliant transmitter IC to the digital output (I saw there was some issue with the digital out. Something about 1 pin already being used for something else?) and then use HDMI’s pixel repetition to double the horizontal resolution. If my math is right, I believe this would hit the sampling clock of 162Mhz and the end (active) resolution would be 2560x1440, and even with the excessive blanking, it would still come in at ~9.5Gbps which stays under the 10.2 GBPs limit of hdmi 1.3. The aspect ratio would be too wide but I think setting a tv to 4:3 would fix it just fine.

Could anyone check me on this and also let me know if the digital out problem got solved at some point?

[Razzlin]

I looked a bit more at old posts. It seems like the issue was that the digital output pins double as a test bus. Rama was using Pin11/VB3 to receive SOG data and it had to be Pin11 because all other test bus pins are floating. Is it possible that the same test bus info could be read from one of the green pins instead? Rama mentioned that all processing is done in 4:2:2 anyway, and outputting 16-bit digital data doesn’t require any of the greens. I don’t see much value in trying to maintain 4:4:4 if the native signal is 4:2:2. That frees up the green pins for the test bus and then the 16-bit digital out is undisturbed. From what I can tell, the only requirement for switching to the green pins is cutting the trace to Pin 11 and routing a wire from the new test bus location to the debug pin.

[Myshra]

Hey community

Let me explain the bunch of problems Im having, introducing myself and the recently purchased GBS C unit into the next madness.

First of all, this was a gift from my wife and because of that, I am not very familiar with the system.
So, after unboxing and plugging the system by 5V, my first console to test was the Dreamcast, by SCART, had perfect audio by HDMI but a grey faded screen for the Video, unable to see the video image correctly. After connecting the yellow connector directly to the Composite green plug, hada white signal but somehow not working properly.

After that, I connected the Gamecube, by SCART, having a perfect image and being able of upscaling or changing the resolution on the OLED with the rotary encoder. All was ok with the Gamecube system.
So, after this "mini" victory, I did a comeback to the dreamcast, having the same impossible to play situtation, as explained before.

AND NOW, comes the problem. I get the excellent idea of "updating" the firmware of the GBS C by following the paper printed manual, page 14:
1) First step downloading and installing the Node MCU py flasher
2) after finding the official GBS CONTROL MASTER zip, flashing the gbs-control.ino into the system having the following message:

esptool.py v3.0
Serial port COM3
Connecting....
Detecting chip type... ESP8266
Chip is ESP8266EX
Features: WiFi
Crystal is 26MHz
MAC: 08:f9:eXXXXXXXXX
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
Configuring flash size...
Auto-detected Flash size: 4MB
Warning: Image file at 0x0 doesn't look like an image file, so not changing any flash settings.
Compressed 428340 bytes to 85687...
Wrote 428340 bytes (85687 compressed) at 0x00000000 in 7.6 seconds (effective 452.8 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.

Leaving...
Staying in bootloader.

Firmware successfully flashed. Unplug/replug or reset device
to switch back to normal boot mode.

The result is the following. NOT working anymore, system seems to stay blocked or damaged. No blue led, not WIFI network, not upscaling or being detected while plugged to the TV like before. System appears to be KAPUTT

Understanding that the vast knowledgments of you all, could help me, I have to say thank you to anybody which could help me to exit this situation. And after putting the unit to work again, any tip for the Dreamcast could be very useful too.

In advance, thank you for your reading and help.

[Jiimboo]

Hi!

Can someone help me modifying the VGA-HDMI converter to receive the 5v from the VGA connector?
I saw a spanish video showing that, but no info to how to.

He says that needs to mod the GBS and the VGA-HDMI converter.




Thank you and a happy new year to all retro players!

[NoAffinity]

@Razzlin I can't be much help but I'm standing by eagerly to see where you go with this.

@Myshra
1) you should use arduino ide to flash the esp. There's a how-to on the github showing how it should be configured for the esp8266.
2) For dreamcast - did you try a 480i and 480p game? I don't think there's a limitation on the GBS C scart input, but worth a check
2a) Do you have a vga cable for dreamcast that you can test with
3) The component inputs on the GBS do not accept composite video

[Razzlin]

@Razzlin I can't be much help but I'm standing by eagerly to see where you go with this.

@Myshra
1) you should use arduino ide to flash the esp. There's a how-to on the github showing how it should be configured for the esp8266.
2) For dreamcast - did you try a 480i and 480p game? I don't think there's a limitation on the GBS C scart input, but worth a check
2a) Do you have a vga cable for dreamcast that you can test with
3) The component inputs on the GBS do not accept composite video

Unfortunately that’s about all I can do for now. I lack the equipment and resources to do much testing. I might be able to poke around the code a bit, but not much in my skill set haha hopefully this will at least be some inspiration

[lukk]

Hey community

Let me explain the bunch of problems Im having, introducing myself and the recently purchased GBS C unit into the next madness.

First of all, this was a gift from my wife and because of that, I am not very familiar with the system.
So, after unboxing and plugging the system by 5V, my first console to test was the Dreamcast, by SCART, had perfect audio by HDMI but a grey faded screen for the Video, unable to see the video image correctly. After connecting the yellow connector directly to the Composite green plug, hada white signal but somehow not working properly.

Where is this yellow connector coming from? You sure it's an RGB SCART cable, instead of composite->SCART where you plug three RCA's in an adapter or something along those lines?

Dreamcast works fine on my GBSC (both VGA and SCART) but the DC video output is weird with it's pillarboxed DTV signal and whatnot. There are also a couple of games that straight up won't do RGB, like Skies of Arcadia.