Badass, can we get a cable that’s VGA on one end and SCART on the other?
Dunno. I use an RGB SCART cable on my DC anyway, since it goes into a SD CRT. It’s like DanAdamKOF said: it’s the same quality (15khz out of the VGA or RGB SCART).
Fine but if the game supports the VGA mode then there’s something to gain with this, right?
Less cable switching, in theory, I guess.
Isn’t the modded VGA box the best for convenience and picture?
Convenience depends on your use. Regarding picture, if you strictly mean “15khz RGB from a modded VGA box will look better than 15khz RGB from a SCART cable plugged into the multi AV jack”, then it shouldn’t look different at all. If you mean “31khz games will look better than 15khz games” then that’s a given, but not at all what I’ve been talking about.
Dreamcast isn’t really something I know super well. I gathered 15khz games will look the same but 31khz games will look better if we use mistahsnart’s modded VGA box and a VGA to SCART cable right?
I think you’re mixed up somewhere. I’m gonna generalize here.
31khz games run at 720x480 on the DC. For games that support it, this will make them look sharper, since you’re basically going from 480i to 480p for the same image.
15khz games run at 480i or 240p. Not all DC games run at 31khz, or you may have reasons for running them in 15khz anyway, and your modded VGA box would let you flip a switch to use these games in the same 15khz RGB you’ve been using for your other consoles, via the VGA lead on the VGA box.
You can’t do 31khz games at all through the SCART RGB output from the Multi AV jack, that’s what the VGA box is for. (in theory there’s a mod to basically DIY your own VGA box internally in the DC but let’s keep things simple)
For simplicity’s sake, if you cannot mod a VGA box yourself, and you cannot obtain one, your quickest plug-and-play method of hooking up your DC would be to get a SCART RGB cable for 15khz stuff, then unplug that and plug in your VGA box for 31khz stuff.
I’m not getting into how you’d hook up the VGA box to the scaler/your TV/your capture card since I’m not sure if your scaler can take in a 31khz signal, but it shouldn’t be hard to find that out.
Fascinating read, I’m sure that just like the N64 mod I can find someone to send my DC VGA box to fix up for me and post his/her info on the first post for others to do the same, my only question is how do I get a cable made for this? More modding? Who would do this stuff for money?
I have 2 basic rules here:
Cable switching bad
Spend that money and make it work (to a point)
I’m wondering how you’d do this without switching cables, switchboxes I guess. Like if your scaler won’t accept 31khz RGB, you’d need to route it directly to your TV and capture card, necessitating at least one switchbox to go between 15khz into scaler and 31khz as-is.
I’d assume you’d want to use the usual VGA out of the VGA box, assuming your scaler takes it in then you’d need an adapter with VGA on one end and JRGB on the other. This is disregarding the sync stuff you mentioned before, which is something you should probably have a concrete answer on.
Did you miss why I ressurected this like a multi-colored man in a thing? My scaler is gonna be the Framemeister, and as I learn about it and test it all out I’m gonna add it tot he first post in it’s own “you have too much money” section.
The idea of modding the VGA box and getting the double ended cable came from the shmups forum. There’s some new info here: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33450&sid=c0b4e147de51b498551e42f4372121e4&start=2520#wrapheader
Should explain where I stand right now, need that thing done to a VGA box and then I need to get the cable he describes. There’s this one big post with all the details actually.
Fudoh can clarify, but his writeup on the Framemeister seems to imply it can accept 480p. Not only that but it looks like it has its own (DIN8) RGB input connector, not specifically a JRGB connector like earlier models, so your DC wiring could in theory be:
VGA box output -> VGA cable -> small box with VGA connector input, sync combiner circuit, DIN8 output -> Framemeister
and skip the need to have a SCART (assuming you’d get a SCART->JRGB cable for your existing systems) or JRGB output from your DC’s VGA port. If I confused you about that earlier, my bad, but I’ve mostly been going off of assumptions based on old info I’ve had (and admittedly never paid much attention to) about the XRGBs.
EDIT: hmm, unless he figured out otherwise, it looks like you cannot do 480p via the RGB connector:
again I’d make sure to find out
I know it seems like I’m not touching this but I’m actually doing the research, so far it seems like everything is pretty freaking cake except 3 things:
Finding Gamecube component cables (low priority but still)
Finding a good SCART switch at a reasonable price
The DC VGA solution is something I’ve just started to wrap my head around but I have no idea how expensive it’ll be.
DC VGA boxes are readily available. They’re all pretty much the same thing. It’s not hard to understand: 31khz for games that support it, for games that don’t, flip it to 15khz. THE ONLY ISSUE would be that if the thing you’re plugging into doesn’t support 15khz via VGA input. You will need to determine this yourself. Many devices DO NOT expect a 15khz signal coming in via the d-sub (VGA) port, so it may not be documented if it works or not.
Skip the grossly expensive Gamecube component cables and just use a Wii with backwards compatibility. Same image quality, but much cheaper. Bonus: you can play Wii games.
SCART switch… make friends with someone in the UK and have them send you the dusty one they have in their closet.
I understand that aspect of it, what I’m after is this mod that works just like the VGA box with a small switch at the side that’ll allow the user to switch between “VGA mode” quality and RGB quality 240p all through one SCART cable, think of the switch between composite and VGA outputs on an unmodded VGA box only now it’s all through one SCART cable and you just need to flick the switch if you play one of the 10 games that won’t support VGA mode.
I want Gamecube for Gameboy, it’s low priority but eventually I’ll want to have a set and I’m willing to spend if all of this works out and that’s all I’m missing.
Introduce me to your friends! I’m a huge fan of the Madcatz ones, unpowered, stackable and no loss or lag whatsoever.
Eh, I got GC cables at a reasonable price, but it took a lot of looking. Kyle here on SRK got his via an eBay auto-search-notify thingie (I’m not much of an eBay power user so I don’t know how it works).
On my old HDTV, with the Game Boy Player (primary reason I got these) I barely noticed the difference between S-Video and 480p via Component, I guess it was that good at cleaning up S-Video. Still worth it to me.
Somebody introduce me to Kyle and make him my new best friend.
All jokes aside a more personal question, will the FM’s output be able to be picked up by modern capture cards? In the end will it “count” as a modern day device on par with the PS3/360?
It should, but not having used one I can’t say for sure. I remember reading something about the Frame Meister’s V-sync and it affecting capture cards, it may have been in Fudoh’s big writeup or something I saw while browsing shmups.
That’s a pretty HUGE deal to me, I just searched the word capture on this write up http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/framemeister.html
He only mentions it once and I’m not sure how he’s capturing it.