New MAME build; having trouble getting s-video to work

[edhalsim]

Hi,

I had a old MAME cabinet that I build more than ten years ago.  It got fried by lightning despite having a surge protector.  As a result I've build a new PC:
 - ASRock A320M-HDV mobo
 - AMD Ryzen 3 2200G
 - 2x4 GB RAM

My TV is an old 27" Sony Trinitron that accepts s-video input.  My PC can output video as:  VGA, DVI, and HDMI.

First I tried a VGA to s-video converter box by Fosman I got off Amazon.  I couldn't get that to work at all.
Next I bought a dongle that takes HDMI in and outputs s-video.  That at least gives me a picture, but it's not centered on the screen and worse, it flickers to the point where it's not really usable.

It's frustrating because my old build just worked;  no video issues at all.

What's my best option for getting the flicker to go away and get the Windows screen to show like it's supposed to?  If someone could point me to a description of how s-video works and which resolutions it supports vs. VGA and why you can't just convert one to the other that might also help me.

Thanks for your time.  Hope to hear from you soon.
 - Ed.

[buttersoft]

Your best option in terms of picture quality is to add a $20 Radeon 5450 to that build, install crt_emudriver 2.0 and get a J-rok S-video converter. I would recommend looking into this; it's a bit of reading and a bit more work to get going, but it's all covered here (although a lot of other things are too):
https://www.aussiearcade.com/showthread.php/87668-A-guide-to-connecting-your-Windows-PC-to-an-SD-CRT-TV-PVM-or-Arcade-Monitor

As regards your current woes, i presume your previous setup used S-Video out of an old gpu? If so, you were using 480i. S-Video is not normally used for signal formats with a higher scan rate than that (read, higher resolution) - nothing prevents it save quality issues, but it just wasn't done. And an old SD CRT TV wouldn't have been able to handle much higher anyway.

To troubleshoot: What shows up when you plug the Fosman into your PC, does Windows recognise another display? If not, enable the VGA-port in display properties. If Windows can see it, but nothing is showing up on the Sony, try changing resolutions a few times. If none of this works, can you test the composite line from the Fosmon to the Sony? Can you test the Fosman with an LCD TV, and the Sony with a different composite/s-video source? If the Fosmon doesn't work with anything else, I would guess that's it's faulty.

Your HDMI dongle is probably just crap, no offense. Section g) of that guide I linked to above might cover why, though i'll admit the flickering is new to me. 480i(nterlaced) is always going to flicker, but you'd think a converter box would have the a bi/trilinear filter in place to mitigate it.

[edhalsim]

Thank you very much for your reply!  It'll take me a while to digest everything in that link.

To answer your question yes, I was using an old ATI Radeon 7xxx AGP video card that had VGA and S-Video connectors.  The beauty of it was all I did was plug the s-video cable from this card to my TV and everything worked great!  Excellent picture quality (even if it is 480i) no flickering, just plain-old MAME32UI, no extra setup.

If I go new video card, would one of these work and, if so, which one do you think would be best?  My motherboard only has one PCI Express slot.
https://www.ebay.com/b/ATI-Radeon-HD-5450-AMD-Computer-Graphics-Cards/27386/bn_2773693
Also, how would that impact performance since my CPU has on-board Vega graphics for 3D?  Would this new card override/mess that up?

I looked on jrok.com for an s-video converter and all I see is RGB->S-video/Component.  Is that what you mean?  All of the cards listed above seem to have DVI connectors so how would I hook that up?

Would this be a possible option?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Durable-VGA-to-RGBS-CGA-AV-S-Video-Converter-Board-Arcade-Game-Multicode-Wire/312034857773?hash=item48a6ba132d%3Ag%3AROwAAOSw4GFbT~96&_sacat=0&_nkw=vga+to+rgbs&_from=R40&rt=nc&_trksid=m570.l1313

Thanks again for your time.

[buttersoft]

Any of those 5450's should work fine. Google says there's no problem using a discrete GPU with that Ryzen 3 CPU, so you shouldn't have a problem. Both the DVI ports on those cards should be DVI-I, which does the VGA signal and the DVI-D signal through the connector. So you want a little DVI-to-VGA adapter, and a VGA cable.

That converter you linked to doesn't look great, it's basically one of the cheap converters i describe in section g) of the guide, working roughly the same way the TV-out port of a GPU does. It's not really any different to the converters you have that are giving you trouble, which are in theory the easiest way to connect your PC to a CRT TV, though something seems to be wrong with one of yours.

There's a thread on the j-rok used for this purpose here - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,156915.0.html
I know it's designed to take the RGB signal from an arcade board, which is RGBS, or RGB+composite sync. VGA is RGBHV, or separate horizontal and vertical sync. Crt_emudriver 2.0 beta 13 and up can be made to output composite sync through the VGA connector, over pin 13. You will have to cut the far end off a VGA cable, and test which wires is which with a multimeter (the cheapest one you can find is ok for this, or just beg/borrow/steal one) and connect up Pins 1, 2, 3 & 6 (R,G,B & ground) and also pin 13 for composite sync, to the j-rok somehow. Google can find the VGA pinout, and remember that all the ground/return lines are the same so it doesn't matter which one you use. As i noted before, this is all a bit more work. I like tinkering, and to my mind the results would be worth it, but if you don't want to do this you'll have to look at another option like one of the plain converters you have (but a working one )

Before you settle on a decision i'd recommend reading through the guide carefully and googling for anything you want to find out, and seeing what you think.