My MIMO Genius Box is cursed...
The Genius Box was originally sold in Florence, Italy by MIMO Enterprises. The unit I bought was distributed by the US company East Coast Amusements under the badge Amusement Technologies. Apart from the label, it is a Genius Box through and through. The Genius Box can input and output 15kHz, 24kHz, and 31kHz RGBHV. It's successor, the Genius 2, was more robust in adding upscaling capabilities to output up to 1080p through HDMI, and input composite video through RCA. Although fairly bare-bones, this scaler *should* have all the necessary tools to downscale VGA 640x480 to 240p. However...
When I hooked up the scaler to a multi-format CRT, the output was whack! Even with no input, the OSD was a fuzzy mess. I was blindly navigating the menu until kitty666cats on shmups pointed me to the original manual, which was also rebranded under a generic name: CGA to EGA to VGA Converter (Multi) ID 425. The manual had the recommended factory settings depending on the input to output combination, however no settings could make the Mimo Genius sync. The manual states that some menu items should not be altered without authorisation from the factory, leading me to believe the Genius Box is ultra sensitive to even minor adjustments. Raising the 'Sync Adj' made the OSD solid, but then it would not display any input, so it was a very small win. The sync voltage output always remained adequate at sub-5v, and the issue seemed to arise within the Genius Box *before* the output left the device. I focussed my efforts to search for a hardware defect...
Several capacitors were out of spec, and there was a 2.3ohm resistor connected to the 4MHz crystal oscillator which appeared charred. I changed the bad capacitors, resistor, and crystal oscillator to no improvement.
I connected the Genius Box to the OSSC Pro to gain some insight on the output signal, and interestingly the horizontal frequency and vertical size displayed on the OSSC Pro's OSD and LED were jittering. I thought I could use the OSSC Pro's sync reading to guide me to alter the Genius' OSD values in raising/lowering the horizontal frequency and vertical size, but they always jittered on the OSSC Pro. Fudoh also seemed to have trouble with the Genius Box as written in Hazard City's MIMO Genius Box 1 + 2 review: retrogaming.hazard-city.de/mimo.html
Soo I am at a dead-end with the Genius Box. The most I could ascertain from my testing was that it has VERY low lag at essentially ZERO when downscaling 480p to 240p. I have no clue if this scaler decimates or blends lines when downscaling. It makes me wonder what went wrong in the later Genius II, which had drastic variation in lag which caused noticeable frame skips. We will have to wait for a *functional* Genius Box to fall into the hands of the CRT/Retro Gaming Community to find out.
Links:
MIMO Genius Box Manual (thanks to kitty666cats for digging this up):
web.archive.org/web/20071014012537/www.converters.tv/manuals/cga_to_ega_to_vga_converter_multi_425_143.pdf
Web Archive (Another thanks to kitty666cats):
web.archive.org/web/20071014012537/www.converters.tv/manuals/cga_to_ega_to_vga_converter_multi_425_143.pdf
Shmups discussion:
shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44510&sid=59159ab25a03252bea57d0db26b4c315&start=60
MIMO Enterprises official site:
www.mimoenterprises.it/genius-box/?lang=en
Hazard City's review:
retrogaming.hazard-city.de/mimo.html
#retrogaming #crt #tarantella