Vga-component convertion for CRT emudrivers

[Pappajhons]

Any easy solution for VGA to component convertion? Does the Chinese monoprice unit work with drivers or I need other transcoder?

[SteelRush]

Any easy solution for VGA to component convertion? Does the Chinese monoprice unit work with drivers or I need other transcoder?

You are looking for a VGA to component transcoder.  Most have been discontinued and the most direct you are likely going to find is VGA to SCART.  Then get a SCART to component like the CSY-2100.  If you go with a CSY-2100 clone you will probably have to crack it open and adjust the color pots to get the picture looking right.

[cyb]

I use the Retrotek VGACTV1 with my JVC consumer TV and it works wonderfully. You can find it on ebay. It's a little pricey but totally worth it IMO.As a test I hooked my groovymame pc up to a matrix switch and ran 2 outputs to my PVM - 1 with rgb to component via the VGACTV1 and 1 straight RGB and I could barely tell the difference between the two.

I do not recommend the CSY-2100 clone. I used to have one and I could never get the colors to look right. Spend a little more and get the retrotek or an Audio Authority 9a60 (getting harder to find now)

[Zebidee]

Any easy solution for VGA to component convertion? Does the Chinese monoprice unit work with drivers or I need other transcoder?

Use Powerstrip with a cheap, passive adapter - like I described t you in the other thread recently. Cheaper, available now, and results almost = RGB.

[Pappajhons]

The thing with using power strip is that I don't know any configurations for my CRT and I don't want to cook it

[buttersoft]

I didn't realise powerstrip could do this! That's great. Any more info on how to do this, zebidee?

Don't worry about cooking your CRT, just install everything with crt_emudriver and modes with VMM, and only use powerstrip for enabling component output. Worth a try, anyway?

[Pappajhons]

i've read that the dvi-i on my graphics card has also analog signals, but are you sure this could work, because the cheapest dvi to component cable I found is around 12 dollars which is a bit of a high price where I live,
i want to be sure if I could make this work, becuase I've had a plan of getting a vga-scart cable with a scart-component. what gpu did you try this with? and whats your config?

[Zebidee]

I didn't realise powerstrip could do this! That's great. Any more info on how to do this, zebidee?

Don't worry about cooking your CRT, just install everything with crt_emudriver and modes with VMM, and only use powerstrip for enabling component output. Worth a try, anyway?

buttersoft, yes, this is how I did MAME to CRT/TV for the *very first time*, while waiting/looking for other stuff. So that means over 10 years ago! One clear advantage was no soldering. At the time I was recovering from wrist surgery, both hands (one at a time though). Ah, so it was 12 years ago.

Powerstrip was a bit fussy to get working, but very do-able (with patience as always). Too long ago for me to remember all details, but there are/were guides on the Entech forum (so register/subscribe and look there first). It involved setting up the component TV as an extended desktop monitor, so you can play with the modes on primary VGA/LCD while observing results on the secondary component TV. There was some other arcane stuff to do in the CCC, e.g. setting up as a "TV"/component monitor, may have to set sync polarity a certain way.

Once you are happy with the modes and feeling brave, you swap monitor profile (primary <-> secondary) and Shazam! Component on primary.

Alas, once I discovered the joys of RGB-SCART, and my soldering abilities returned, I abandoned my brief affair with Powerstrip-component as I had so many nice SCART TVs to choose from then (back in the good-old days of CRT scavenging).

cheapest dvi to component cable I found is around 12 dollars which is a bit of a high price where I live

I think I got mine at a computer fair in Canberra for a couple of dollars, but yeah it would be much harder to find where I am now. You would probably have to go online. The short dvi-component adapter dongle on ebay, that I linked to before, was $3. Got to be other online sellers. The actual/normal component cables set cost a lot more (I assume you have that already?).

Here is something on Amazon for a bit more, but it has component cables built-in. Note that this is a dumb or "passive" cable designed for outputting PC->projector for presentations/videos etc. The ad states "It DOES NOT CONVERT digital to analog or vice versa". You want it to be like this because you will do the converting with Powerstrip.
https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-DVI-I-Component-Video-Cable/dp/B003L1AFBY?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003L1AFBY

i want to be sure if I could make this work, because I've had a plan of getting a vga-scart cable with a scart-component. what gpu did you try this with? and whats your config?

It was 12 years ago, your hardware is similar but a little different, but I cannot see why it wouldn't still work. Entech still support PS and PS supports all Windows versions AFAIK, and this kind of AV capability is still useful for businesses. Pay the license fee (it was about $5-10 then, no idea what it is now but that is not expensive) and prowl their online FAQs/guides/forums. AFAIK this is by far the best place to learn.

I was using Windows 2000 NT and ATI Catalyst drivers, probably 6.x or 9.x. GPU was probably Radeon 9250.

[Zebidee]

It is funny how things come around together again...

This photo is from last week, got home from hospital to find a "care" package from my old mate in WA:

[Zebidee]

Zebidee:

It involved setting up the component TV as an extended desktop monitor, so you can play with the modes on primary VGA/LCD while observing results on the secondary component TV.

pappajhons, as memories come back I just realised this might be difficult for you. Your Radeon card has dvi-i and s-video "heads" so you'd need to setup component with dvi-i as secondary and use s-video for primary/desktop, which might be challenging (hard to read details on video modes as res is so low!).

My humble apologies for that oversight, it was 12 years ago. You could still try if you have a good s-video TV, but yeah hard to read small fonts and not sure how possible it is to swap "heads" which is an essential step unless you want to keep running an extended desktop/dual monitor setup.

Cheap Radeon graphics card with VGA+DVI-I heads would be much better/easier, and that is what I had when doing it. Doing it with a monitor that accepts both VGA & DVI would be best in case you need to swap the video "heads". It would be wise to also have a cheap vga-dvi adapter handy so that you can swap TV between video heads as well (yes, that would mean a mess of 2 adapters + component cables hanging from your video port! But only temporarily).

[buttersoft]

Your Radeon card has dvi-i and s-video "heads" so you'd need to setup component with dvi-i as secondary and use s-video for primary/desktop, which might be challenging (hard to read details on video modes as res is so low!).

That's not good advice here The S-video port is only capable of 480i, and no one has found a way to break that as far as we know.

Which makes me wonder about:

It involved setting up the component TV as an extended desktop monitor, so you can play with the modes on primary VGA/LCD while observing results on the secondary component TV. There was some other arcane stuff to do in the CCC, e.g. setting up as a "TV"/component monitor, may have to set sync polarity a certain way.

The component output was coming from a VGA or DVI-I port though, correct? I do know powerstrip hasn't been updated in ages as well, so a lot of functions don't work with newer cards. It'd be an interesting experiment on, say, Win 10 and an R7 card, though.

[Calamity]

Last generation of cards I've tested with Powerstrip is HD 5xxx. I wouldn't go that route anyway, the time you're going to spend (waste?) isn't worth compared to the price of a transcoder.

[Zebidee]

Your Radeon card has dvi-i and s-video "heads" so you'd need to setup component with dvi-i as secondary and use s-video for primary/desktop, which might be challenging (hard to read details on video modes as res is so low!).

That's not good advice here The S-video port is only capable of 480i, and no one has found a way to break that as far as we know.

Yes, s-video outputs on graphics cards will only output in 480i, which makes them (next to) useless for our purposes and not much good for windows interaction (good RGB in 480i is OK, but s-video hard). In addition I have a sneaking suspicion it may prevent swapping video head profiles from secondary to primary.

Which makes me wonder about:

It involved setting up the component TV as an extended desktop monitor, so you can play with the modes on primary VGA/LCD while observing results on the secondary component TV. There was some other arcane stuff to do in the CCC, e.g. setting up as a "TV"/component monitor, may have to set sync polarity a certain way.

The component output was coming from a VGA or DVI-I port though, correct? I do know powerstrip hasn't been updated in ages as well, so a lot of functions don't work with newer cards. It'd be an interesting experiment on, say, Win 10 and an R7 card, though.

Technically the component output can come out of either VGA or DVI-I as it is the same signal specification. VGA/DVI/VGA adapters just pass the raw signal through. On DVI-I analogue video comes out of the bit to the side with the cross and 4 pins at each quadrant. Generally you can tell if a card is DVI-I or not by looking for outputs feeding this. When I was swapping heads, trying to get it right, sometimes I was getting the component out by a double-adapter and cable arrangement (dvi-vga & vga-component & component cables). You could have it (vga-dvi & dvi-component & comp cables) too if you like, that should work too. Or just have both vga-component & dvi-component as well, swap as needed. It should all work, having some simple pass-through video adapters handy would be wise. Ultimately you would want component coming from VGA head as then you get more flexbility for using another monitor via DVI-I.

I didn't know that Powerstrip hadn't been updated for some time, not good news as it is the only way I know to do certain things and I note that Calamity has made efforts to accomodate PS with ArcadeOSD etc. (Just read Calamity's post). Regardless, it is an option at least for older cards and the only option I know of (short of relatively expensive signal conversion adapters) to do Mame/arcade on component.

There is an older writeup about Powerstrip in the Monitor/Video section:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,43728.0/all.html

[Zebidee]

Last generation of cards I've tested with Powerstrip is HD 5xxx. I wouldn't go that route anyway, the time you're going to spend (waste?) isn't worth compared to the price of a transcoder.

They were using an older PC and older card, but is irrelevant as it is s-video. I would be a bit fussy about transcoders, cheap/nasty ones not good.

[Zebidee]

I now recall a way to do Powerstrip/component video out on that HD2400 with DVI-I & s-video out: via remote desktop software such as VNC. Then you would not need to buy a new video card or an expensive adapter or a new PC or whatever. Get the job done for less than $30 and it would look at least as good as anything you'd get with a transcoder.

[purity1516]

Hi,
I use this one: https://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-1061017777-novo-conversor-vga-pc-para-componente-tv-tubo-crt-_JM
It's made by an very competent engineer here in Brazil. Really good stuff. There's no lag, no scaling, no image processing.

[Pappajhons]

i found this https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.co/MCO-479025408-vga-15-pin-male-to-3-rca-component-female-adapter-_JM#reco_item_pos=0&reco_backend=l3-l7-v2p-ngrams-unified-model&reco_backend_type=function&reco_client=navigation_homes&reco_id=b80d35f6-0d67-41b0-9f4b-70b235cba2d4&c_id=/home/navigation-recommendations/element&c_element_order=1

(if you scroll down there is a description of the product in english) will this work with my graphics card?

[Zebidee]

Despite the thread subject, I thought you had DVI & Svideo from a Radeon HD2400 in the previous thread? Same card? Do you have another video card or are you planning to use a DVI-VGA adapter as well?

That adapter you linked to is an expensive version of the cheap passive adapters I linked to in the earlier thread (everything on that mercadolibre website looks expensive, where are you?). Passive adapters like that would be good for Powerstrip, if that is what you want. Otherwise, don't waste your money.

Aussie ebay example, same thing for less than $3:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/3RCA-RGB-Video-Female-To-D-sub-15Pin-Male-VGA-Component-Converter-Video-Adapter/272419107101?epid=697386515&hash=item3f6d71b11d:g:0ToAAOSwTglYlZwc

Alternatively, get one with component cables included, as cables can be expensive too:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-VGA-Male-to-male-RGB-Y-Pr-Pb-3rca-Component-Cable-TV-HDTV-adapter/142413799760?hash=item2128862150:g:z-8AAOSwQPlV9x0e

There are also DVI-component versions of the above. There is similar stuff on Amazon. Must be other places too. ebay/Amazon is not good for all parts of the world.

Powerstrip was last updated in 2012 and website claims that it works with every Windows from Win95 to Win7 x64.
https://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

If not doing Powerstrip then that Brazilian transcoder/converter, linked by Purity1516 in previous post, looks good (but it is not cheap at ~$US55), though I honestly don't know it.

[Zebidee]

Powerstrip 3.9 appears to be free now, but not supported anymore by Entech. It installed fine on my Win10 laptop, recognises the onboard video as HD4000! Makes me wonder about giving this tired, 6-year old laptop a higher purpose (ie MAME/arcade) once I update it.

[Pappajhons]

 I live in Colombia.  And those things listed cost a lot thanks to shipping. That's why I try to find something reasonable un Mercadolibre.

[Paradroid]

I live in Colombia.  And those things listed cost a lot thanks to shipping.

How good are you with a soldering iron?

[Pappajhons]

I've built circuits boards before but I don't think I can handle this. Nor i can get the components

[Pappajhons]

And thanks to even national shipping. Even if a friend helps me and I find the components. I could get the dongle for less of a price

[Zebidee]

You know, it might just be that RGB modding your TV is the way to go. Once you find out what you need to do it'll be less complicated than building a VGA/component adapter circuit, and your outcomes will be better (RGB vs component). Then all you'll need to do is run software, cheapest option yet as long as you can get your hands on a few resistors and capacitors.

Paradroid is the man to ask about RGB modding. They are doing it over on the Shmups forums.

Z.