Help with PS2 to arcade monitor setup

[KNagle04]

Hello all, I'm having some troubles with my setup and was hoping someone might be able to help me sort this out.

I'm attempting to connect a PlayStation 2 to my WG 39K7601 to play Police 24/7 and possibly a few other lightgun games and am having trouble with the picture.

I started with a cheap PS2 SCART cable and a tiny sync stripper circuit, but when I hooked it all up the quality was terrible and the picture jumped around like crazy. I chalked it up to the cheap cables and a potentially less than perfect solder job on my part, and since I was already frustrated enough at that point I just broke down and ordered a SCART cable from Retro Gaming Cables.

The cable I got is the Packapunch Pro CSync cable with the Guncon port. According to the site the cable has a built in sync stripper and outputs the clean sync signal on pin 20. I am tapping the R, G, B, ground and sync signals directly off the pins on the male end of the SCART cable, and running to the corresponding pins on my monitors board (sync going to the Horizontal (COMP) pin.

When I initially fired it up, my PS2 was already in component mode (which I know I don't want) and the picture had a heavy green tint, but was otherwise rock solid. I've read a bit about the whole Sync on Green thing, but I thought that it only used that mode when the PS2 outputs 480p and up (and here I am still at 480i in the menus)?

Anyways, into the menu to switch over to RGB mode, and as soon as I do the colors switch to seemingly perfect, but the entire picture immediately distorts.

The best way to describe it is that each individual line in the picture decides it might shift itself and inch or so either right or left, while simultaneously jittering back and forth. On the main PS2 menu, the corners and the menu item you currently have highlighted in the center are garbled and practically unreadable, but an option one or two clicks down looks crystal clear and is rock solid.

I clicked my way through OPL (whose loading screen was 90% perfect) and launched Police 24/7 (the PAL version forced to NTSC using GSM) and I noticed that one of the initial screens, which is just black screen with a few lines of white text in the center that faded in, looked perfectly crisp the entire time it faded in, but as soon as it faded in completely it became garbled. It seems to do this everywhere as I then noticed it in the PS2 menu as well, when leaving the options menu the distorted screen will start to fade out and then snap to rock solid and perfect just before it completely fades and transitions to the next screen, which is then distorted.

I have a Jamma board of Zero Point 2 that syncs up and looks perfect connected to the same pins, as well as a GBS-8100 that converts VGA to CGA RGBs, to which I've connected multiple laptops that look great. This is a dual res monitor and I have the jumper in the 15khz location.

I'm hesitant to make any adjustments to the H or V hold settings because:
     A - My other inputs have great looking pictures. And,
     B - I don't actually know where these adjustments are at, (I believe I've found that this monitor is a modified version of the U5000, but one of the differences is these settings being removed from the control board where the others are, and are on the main board somewhere, and I can't see in there well enough to get a real good look), however the PS2 is top priority here so I will make those adjustments if that's what I have to do.

All the comments that turn up when I look into 480i are warnings to people that the PS2 only outputs 480i in the menus when it boots, and that that could be a problem for them on setups using VGA monitors and 480p output. I don't care about any of that however, as I don't need p, only i.

I'm at my wits end here and could really use some help. Does anyone have any ideas? Am I overlooking something or missing some piece of the puzzle here? I really hoped that buying the premade cable with the sync stripper integrated would be the end of my struggle, but here we are.

Sorry for such a long message but it's been a long journey for me. I'd really appreciate any help or advice anyone could offer. Thanks!

[KNagle04]

Well I figured I should at least follow up for posterity, and as another attempt at assistance or info someone might be able to give. What's happening here isn't making any sense to me and I'm on the verge of having to scrap the entire project over something seemingly simple.

I confirmed with RGC that they're "CSYNC" cable does not pull the sync signal from the composite video pin like it says on the website, it instead takes it from the Luma pin. They sent me a "Sync on Luma" cable in an attempt to troubleshoot, but it produced even worse results.

Thinking this was the issue, I opened the PlayStation AV end of my "CSYNC" cable, and after verifying the sync stripper circuit was indeed being fed with Luma (pin 5), I moved it's input wire over to Composite video (Pin 6).

I reassembled the cable, connected everything up, double checked the connections, and fired it up. It behaves.... EXACTLY THE SAME!?!?!

In component mode the picture is synced rock solid, absolutely perfect, but its heavily tinted green (and maybe a dash of blue, but no red).

In RGB mode the colors look great, but the picture is heavily distorted (which varies based on what's being shown on screen, but 98% of everything is unrecognizable).

Is there something on my monitor I need to adjust? Something too high or too low? I wouldn't think so since it syncs perfect when the PS2 is in component mode (as well as with other devices I've connected), but I'm clearly missing something here.

My brain is seriously scrambled here. I'm desperate for some assistance and don't know where else to turn. I've been back and forth with RGC a few times but that hasn't yielded any results.

[RandyT]

Have you tried making adjustments to the monitor?  The interesting thing is that the bright outputs lose sync, and the thing which makes those bright things bright is the contrast adjustment.  It may be overdriving the intensity and causing a sync loss.

FWIW, when I connected mine to a 36" industrial RGB monitor, I ran RGB and Sync directly from video output chip inside the unit.   I'm sure this isn't the only way, but it only cost me a few wires, some of my time and some old, unused BNC cables.  I may be mis-remembering, but I feel like I had a similar issue when the monitor image was not properly adjusted. 

[KNagle04]

I've tried making every adjustment that's available on the external control board (Contrast, brightness, h&v size and position) as well as the brightness on the flyback itself, none of which have any affect on the scrambled image.

The H and V hold dials are located deeper on the motherboard itself on this monitor. I was able to locate a diagram showing me where they are, but being they aren't very accessible, and also the fact that the sync is fine in component mode and with several other devices, I was hesitant to even mess with those.

Does this possibly sound like something that the H or V hold settings could dial out? The picture doesn't roll top to bottom at all, only distorted and shaking left to right.

Thank you, I really appreciate the help.

-Kevin

[RandyT]

Does this possibly sound like something that the H or V hold settings could dial out? The picture doesn't roll top to bottom at all, only distorted and shaking left to right.

The horizontal hold adjustment definitely could be the culprit.  The current adjustment could be sitting on the very edge of a stable image.  At this point, you have little to lose, so long as you are very careful not to come into contact with dangerous voltages.  There are plenty of resources out there to educate yourself on best practices for safely handing CRT monitors, so make sure you understand them before shoving your arm deep into the chassis.

I think that the thing you really need to ask yourself in this situation is why the lower grayscale (which is an even combination of the RGB signals at lower intensity) lines look good, but when these levels are higher, the sync is lost.   Figure that out, be it cable crosstalk, signal level adjustment or a monitor issue, and that will be solution to the issue.

[RandyT]

Something else I have done with some success in the past is to use the Composite Video output connected directly to the composite sync input of the monitor.  You might also want to give that a shot to see what happens.

[KNagle04]

Unfortunately using composite video as sync didn't work, the image wouldn't sync at all.

Although avoiding tiny soldering was part of the reason I bought this RGC cable in the first place, I wouldn't be opposed to tapping RGBs right off the board somewhere if I'll get better results. I'll look into this a bit more.

It does seem like there's something that comes through too strong and effectively blows out the image once it reaches full intensity, however as I mentioned earlier dialing back all the adjustments had no impact on the distortion.

Looks like I'll be taking a peek at the hold adjustments and seeing if that makes any difference. I may actually have to saw out a small window in the back of the cab to access these adjustments.

At this point I'm considering switching to a PS3. I'd lose PS1 game compatibility, but would gain actual VGA out (not the Sync-on-Green that the PS2 puts out in VGA mode) that I can pipe into my GBS8100 which I know works well with this monitor. I have a dual setup for TC2/3 that I can use for PS1 if I need to. It all comes down to the PS3 supporting the camera I suppose.

[RandyT]

I just thought of something else....check all of your ground lines thoroughly.  I had a sync issue once that I just couldn't figure out and eventually did.  The issue was a broken solder joint on the monitors sync input terminal ground connection.  The same thing can happen if the sync ground wire is poorly connected or partially broken.

It might not be what your problem is, but ground issues are sometimes overlooked.  A poor ground reference can cause signal levels to not be what they should.  If you have ever seen a trailer with dim lights, that's a bad ground...it's connected well enough to make them light up, but not enough to get their full output.  Same principle can apply to a monitor connection.