CRT tv-out

[wilch]

i'm just about ready to start building a VGA to RGB scart cable, but i'm curious about my options..

i have both radeon HD 5870 (DVI) and radeon 9250 (vga, DVI & s-video) cards. my OS is windows 7 & XP dual boot. I have a european PAL (60hz NTSC compatible) CRT TV.

can i run both cards in my system simultaneously? that way i can use the newer card in windows 7 and the older card in win XP for emulation. if not, then can i use the custom RGB cable in the newer card using a DVI-VGA dongle?

so far, i've tested the older card in win XP with s-video using soft 15hz & quickres. i'm planning on running many emulators as well as MAME. the image is ok with s-video, but i have black bars at the top & bottom of the screen regardless of resolution. is this normal? will MAME make use of the full screen?

thanks for any advice you can give!

[apfelanni]

check sailersats soft 15 k compability list for ur graphic card. if its not listed as tested and working , solder a scart to vga cable and find out . a dvi 2 15 pin sub d should work , coz the dvi plug carrys the analog rgb signal .

soft 15 + svideo ?=    how do u come up with such disgusting ideas ? try rgb input on ur 50-60 hertz tv man . at least the 9200 + 9250 are doin fine.

black bars .. hm .. maybe ur tv doesnt switch from 16:9 to 4:3 . try it via remote. otherwise find out how 2 enter the osd/factory - service mode and adjust the vertical size .

if u set the resolution to original the games will run at fullscreen . sometimes u have to resize the pic in the osd and - or cut off overscan . a common problem is to get the pic 100 %  2 fit with vertikal games on a vertikal screen . u may notice a missing scorecounter on the top or ur " ship " will be off screen on the bottom .

[wilch]

i'm only using s-video for testing before i build the cable.

the tv is definately in 4:3 mode. i've always had this problem with tv out, thick black bars at the top and bottom, but they are not present when i have the xbox (running xbox media centre).

i thought that maybe it's due to the TV being european (720 x 576) but the image displaying 720x480 and not filling the exta space, but now i think that's complete rubbish... i hope the image fills the screen using the RGB scart otherwise its just a waste of time and i may have to use the xbox for mame

and i can't find a soft-15hz compatibility list

thanks

[apfelanni]

i dont know if the cards are listed in the 48 page sticked soft 15 thread.

u may check it here :

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=7925


maybe ur video output is ntsc with bars . solder the rgb cable and u should be fine .

[wilch]

ok the region was set to PAL. i turned on overscan which enlarged the image to remove the black bars, but in doing so i lost some of the image at the sides. i switched to NTSC and the image squashed slightly so now it fits perfect, but there is extreme flicker at the very bottom of the image, only in NTSC

time to stop putting off this cable i think!