I have parts on hand for I think 9 kits of these to be made, maybe a few more than that of the adjustment shield. I’ll make a small tweak to the adjustment shield and get more PCBs ordered for kits, but it’ll be around Xmas before they arrive I’d bet. Hopefully I’ll have the kits listed on the site by tonight, but when the first 10 or so get sold I’ll have to take the listing down until I get more in stock.
Knock yourself out; I did this just as a distraction from real work. This had all of the challenge of a sudoku puzzle, something to entertain me while avoiding harder stuff.
I’ve got 9 of the mainboard kits together, and 6 of the adjustment shield, both will be put up on the site shortly. I’d suggest just hanging tight for that, unless you need an assembled one. If anyone does, let me know, I dont need to hang on to the one pictured. My guess of $12 for the mainboard and $9 for the adjustment shield was accurate, so if anyone wants that assembled one for $25, they’re welcome to it.
The tweaks to the board are done and about to be ordered. They are completely compatible with the ones pictured/about to go on the site, but since I dont need one of the header connectors, might as well take it out so its cheaper to make. I’ll put together a proper welcome sheet when those go up. Another bright note: because the tweak, the board is once again bi-directional. It doesn’t matter which end is the video source or which is the video display, it’ll work either way. You can ignore the ‘IN’ and ‘OUT’ labels on the shield.
“your scanline generator is alot cheaper than the other one… Is yours a more streamlined version?”
This question and ones like it are probably gonna pop up a bunch, so might as well try to address it in one go and hopefully avoid these in PMs in the future if I can.
Hey, let’s compare. Comparisons are against the 48.95EU ($66.20 USD) pcb only version.
Pro’s: Why mine is better
SLG3000 is limited to 480 horizontal lines. Any higher and the scanline effect isn’t noticable; the overall screen just appears darker. Flip the switch on mine to ‘Wide’ and you’re set with visible scanlines even at 1920x1080.
SLG3000 uses two female VGA connectors. Mine uses one male and one female. This one may not make much sense as a plus until you start thinking about what all it will be plugged into. Dreamcast VGA boxes have female VGA connectors on them. The common and cheap RGB->VGA boards used by retro game fans have female VGA connectors on them. If you want to plug in the SLG3000 to them, you have to shell out for either a large VGA cable, or a large size gender changer that they’ll happily sell you for another 5 EU ($6.76). Can you use the tiny gender changers like this:
Nope. Those gender changers flip the plug upside down; your SLG would have to be upside down on the table in order to work! None of this is a problem with mine; just plug it in directly to your VGA box or RGB->VGA converter. Everything is right side up, without requiring additional parts.
Got a cable type connector like for an Xbox360 VGA cable? With an SLG3000, you’d plug the cable into the SLG3000, and plug a VGA cable into the other end. With mine, you can skip the VGA cable entirely; just plug the Xbox360 cable into the T-SLG, and the other end of the T-SLG directly to your monitor. If you want to use a VGA cable, no problem, just use one of tiny gender changers shown above.
Finer scanline control. Adjustment of scanlines on an SLG3000 is done all at once. My adjustment shield allows control of the R, G, and B values individually for warmer or cooler scanlines.
-Ease of use: Mine has a single slide switch with three positions: Even, Off, and Odd. SLG3000 uses two DIP switches for the Even/Odd selection, and don’t come with an Off switch; either wire one up to the screw terminals, or remove it.
-Cost.
Reasons the SLG3000 is better:
Comes pre-assembled; mine is a DIY kit.
Has an optional plexi top and bottom available for an additional 15 EU ($20.20)
One knob, wait, scratch that, one metal pole for controlling the scanline brightness, versus three on mine. Knob isn’t included.
PCB is black in color versus my green.
Do I know why his is selling for almost 50 EU? No, frankly I don’t. But I expect you’ll see that price drop pretty soon. I also expect you’ll see a new version with the wide scanline support like mine, once they realize how I did it and slap themselves for not thinking of it first. The core tech of the two is the same, so performance is identical between the two on 480p displays (well, I think mine is capable of just slightly darker scanlines, but not by a humanly noticable amount) but I have the edge on higher resolution and of course, cost.
I’d love to buy one, seriously but I have no idea how I’m gonna hook everything up yet. Is there such a thing as an RGB splitter (or is it switcher, whatever you understand) and if so are we talking lag increase with said splitter? Could I take one of these put it by the splitter and use one switch for everything?
I’m very interested in making all my oldies workable on my new TV, right now everything looks like shit using composite video.
If you’re really planning on doing component only, you could give it a whirl. 360/PS3/Xbox/PS2 will go directly in with component. For anything else (including Saturn), you’ll need a SCART to Component adapter, which will probably run you a few bucks. The price is low enough on this guy to make it worth trying.
The Ebay ones do need power. 5V 2amp, center positive, 5.5mm. If you can’t find one local, eBay is littered with the things.
Both that monoprice one and the ebay one will require a power supply.
And you’re not the only one, Im almost out.
Board dimensions are 2.5" by 2.02" (2500 mil x 2020mil)
If anyone wants to do the plexi type pieces for it, the corners are rounded with an 90 degree arc centered 200mil from each edge. each mounting hole is also centered 200 mill from each edge, and is a minimum of 140mil in diameter.
Potentiometers on the top have a maximum diameter of 6.2mm. Potentiometer knobs are at positions (1344,1010), (1344,1650), (1344, 370) in mils
I dont have a height measurement on me. Please allow me to get back to you on that one.
hey toodles did you get my pm about the thread ?
now if you mange to develop a sync cleaner/scart adapter in the future to have full line of video devices
That way if we choose we can stay way from some peoples products
Im not that peaked about the LM1881 sync cleaner, and we don’t really have SCART anywhere in the US (except for some retro fans, granted). Its just not really a priority at the moment, and the idea of doing it just to aggravate arcadeforge isn’t a valid reason for me.
Hey here is a question I got on the other forum
Do you happen to know if your T-SLG can work with the HDFury 2’s VGA output ? The SLG3000 is not compatible with the HDF2’s sync polarity configuration
