Video Cables For Retro Devices
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
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Making video cables is time consuming and error-prone, but sometimes you just have to do it. Let's go over how to do it while I build one I needed.
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Panavise Junior amzn.to/3laLxov
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Solder amzn.to/3mP5Yb6
Hakko cutter amzn.to/3yCSX76
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Chapters
00:00 Why build cables
03:03 Video signals
07:24 Sponsor
08:58 Extra signals
10:03 Planning
16:20 Soldering
19:27 Testing connections
20:27 Testing video
22:14 Assembly
22:46 Potential problems
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The pinout isn't for a female connector, it's from the "solder side", the side you are meant to attach wires to. It drives me up the wall when diagrams don't say what perspective they are from, they act like there's a standard when there isn't.
Yes, it can be super confusing! You often have to think about what context they're talking about.
@@NoelsRetroLab : They often don't make that context clear, especially when they're actually using someone else's picture.
Great video, Noel, with some very good advice. At about 17:50, you mentioned being careful not to leave the soldering iron on the pins of the connector for too long when you're soldering the wires into them, because it can cause the housing to begin to melt and the pins to move out of alignment. If you have a spare connector available that mates with the one you're soldering (e.g., a db-9 socket for db-9 plug), you can plug them together before you start soldering. The other connector will help to hold the pins in place and conduct away some of the excess heat - especially useful if you're using a soldering iron that isn't temperature-controlled.
I also found that this sometimes makes it easier to hold the whole assembly in position while you work - you can clamp the other connector (which can have its cover/shell on) in the vise, rather than trying to clamp the one you're soldering.
Great point, Richard! I'll definitely do that next time.
Another tip ! If using heat shrink tubing, for insulating pins, is too much of a hassle, I often use a glue gun to insulate the pins that are too close to each other ;-). Then close the connector.
The thing about the TI-99/4a is actually really smart. It uses the TMS9929A which does not output composite video directly but has Y'UV component out. To get a PAL signal from Y'UV you simply modulate U and V into C and combine the result with Y into composite. This was not done inside the machine because of the French market. With the raw Y'UV on the connector you could connect the machine to an external box that either combined it to PAL and modulated it in the system the country in question used or it converted it to RGB and use SCART if you are in France. This was more effecient than building several versions.
And that's why the signal is not that compatible. It's not Y'PbPr as most TVs expect but Y'UV which uses a different color model. This leads to wrong colors on screen.
Even if I have no plans of building my own cable, that was a nice history and overview of the different basic video formats common to 8 bit computers. Very interesting.
I used to make custom cables starting back in the 70 for audio equipment and later in the early 80's I bought some SCART connectors from a TV repair shop who laughed and said that I wouldn't be able to wire one up because they were too complicated, they were one of the easiest and simplest ones that I had ever tried.
I'm impressed by how closely you've replicated the old lab!
You start with an excellent point about buying rather than making - but sometimes you need a cable there and then and need to knock something up in a hurry and that's where advice like this comes in really handy. Of course it's not always just a case of connecting A to B! Great video as always. 😁
I like the idea of making a cable for each monitor that has a near connector matching the monitor's port(s) and a far end that is a superset of all possible i/o lines for all known/supported monitors and devices (scart might be a good a/v "interlingua", so to speak). Then for each device, make a similar cable with near connector(s) matching its port(s), e.g. (composite OR s-video OR rgb OR component) AND (mono OR stereo audio) and far end using the opposite-gender superset connector. That way you always just keep the cables plugged into the monitors and the cables plugged into the devices and do the connecting in the middle with your "interlingua" connectors.
I always begin with cutting the cable and using the actual colors of the wires to create the schematics. This way I only need to look at the plug picture when soldering, not at the whole schematics.
What would also be a good video Noel, would be to look at power supplies to retro computers as the one's they were bought with now are ageing and likely to fail.
Yes, excellent point. I should cover that too. Thanks!
When I got my C64 It made a buzzing sound. Everything pointed to crappy cables. That's when I found this really nice breakout box. It plugs into the DIN connector and then has RCA outputs and standard S-Video. I LOVE IT! So much better than having a special cable. It doesn't even stick out that far from the C64.
I like that you showed using a soldering filter fan. I've found I can really smell the difference when I started using 959T flux.
Yes, I have a whole video about that coming up!
I love the smell of flux
Yes, the number one problem I have in pinouts is figuring out which side of the connector the diagram is looking at.. Such as the expansion bus of the Timex Sinclair..
99% of all online diagrams assume (you know) which end (they were looking at) when they wrote up the pinout..
The other one was a 15 pin D (game port) connector on a joystick, that I wanted to make a USB/MIDI adapter for...
My most successful effort was reverse engineering a daughter board for a 24x8 LCD display.
(Hyundai HG12603-A 8x24 LCD Panel)
I found the pinout of the connector that connected the 2 boards together.
I then added all of the connectors into KiCad and pains-takingly beeped out every trace from point to point.
The hardest part was trying to figure out where it was getting the (-9v) from.
I found out it got the -9v from the on-board RS-232 chip.
Now I have a KiCad version of the daughter board, that helped me connect it to a esp32/esp8266..
From that I was able to redesign the board so that it had the esp8266 on the same board.
Interesting topic! I've soldered all my video cables by myself and most of them worked on first try. What sometimes is error prone is the SCART switching voltage. Fortunately your display doesn't require it. But I mainly use old LCD TVs with SCART input or one of those cheap square SCART2HDMI adapters and all of them need to have the switching voltage of 1 to 3 V on pin 16 of the SCART connector. Lately I was building an RGB cable for the TMS-RGB I've fitted to a PAL TI 99 4A using your video as a template and ran into the problem that you didn't supply the switching voltage and I couldn't use the original monitor port which is DIN 6 bacause RGB, Sync, Audio, GND and switching voltage are 6 signals... And sometimes the computer can provide 5 V but as I said the input is expecting 1 to 3 V. Maybe you could cover this in a followup video?
I made an Amstrad CPC 464/6128 scart RGB lead. BBC plug works perfectly!
I made the exact same cable a few years back for my 1084s-d, but I tied all the grounds together as you are never sure which if one or all of them have been correctly wired up.
Also made a second one with a built in sync-stripper, that also allowed it to work with consoles like the MD and the snes.
you can get a nice board that fits in a scart header, but they do need the voltages from the switch pin.
I bought an Amiga to SCART cable. It was fine, but I made a better quality one later using a VGA cable with the ends cut off. The pre-made one just used normal wires in a multi-core cable, where the VGA cable had 3 or 4 mini-coax cables inside it, to individually shield each cable, for a better signal. Since the Audio end on the Amiga used a pair of phono sockets, I just used a dual-coax cable with Phono jacks, cut one end off, and wired it and the VGA cable both into the SCART connector, then put a DB25 with part of it cut off on the other end of the VGA cable.
Great video. For my everyday use I buy cables but recently have ordered some breakout board connectors to make test cables. Figured it was an easy way to do some preliminary troubleshooting if there is a video problem.
Yeah, breakout boards can be great for that!
Some good tips on cable making here. I'm sure we've all made some mistakes when making cables. I sure have! 😅
A fully equipped scart cable can also carry S-video and composite as well as stereo audio
Oftenwise i do what you did in the video modify something i've bought in/already have. I do this because the lengths of premade cables are often inconvenient, but i dont find homemade jack/phono leads have good strain relief. So a phono to phono or jack to jack cut in half and soldered onto a nice din or XLR or the generic scart works for me.
Yeah, SCART Connectors are Bi-directional. There's only one set of RGB, so the connector itself is typically labeled, like on a VCR, they'll be labelled as TV and something else like Input.
The TV SCART socket will have RGB out, while the Input socket will have RGB in. Other than that, and a couple of other negotiation signals, like blanking signal, everything else has an in wire and an out wire, EG everything for Composite and Audio. This is to allow for example, to have your TV set to the VCR 1 channel, then set VCR 2 to the the TV SCART channel, and record the image and sound from the TV over Composite, even though VCR 2 is also sending an RGB signal to the TV.
Keep a lookout for the Philips 8833 monitor because it has a Scart connector at the back 🙂
Glad to see you uploading some videos! Always enjoy your content
I actually shuddered at the end when you closed the scart connector. All those loose floating *tinnned* wires... Cut them to different lengths so they dont interfere at least! Youve earned a "Harrumph"! :)
Good point! I left them like that thinking of making some changes later in the video, but I should have cut them flush to the level of the sleeve.
A SCART switcher is also handy.
Yes, and a good quality one especially. A lot of SCART switchers introduce noise with multiple connectors at once.
If you are soldering a DB-9 the first picture of the DB-9 is correct, if you are seeing it from the end you are soldering it from. It can be very confusing 😊
Great video, nice methodology, one of the best you've ever done.
Really great breakdown of the types, time period of use, and regional differences for all the AV cables, people have it easy now lol. That's what I found in NA AV history, a model of kicking and screaming towards RGB. O_o???
Cracking video! I enjoyed your explanation and theory, the benefit of your experience, and especially that you pointed out the common traps by stepping in them (I think, deliberately). I loved the bit where you highlighted putting on things like the sleeves before soldering... oh yes, been there, and it is annoying! Thank you for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it! The mistakes I made were actually genuine. As a matter of fact, I had to edit out a section saying "You don't always get the cable right in the first try, but here are some of the things that could go wrong." Haha.
Best retro videos out there; thank you Noel!
My pleasure! (that was the first appearance of the Atari you gave me BTW--which works fine minus the keyboard membrane).
For most ready-made cables, even for "use the other end from it", I personally SO hate that they are absolutely crap in quality... say for example your average scart or VGA RGB signals, they should have the signal-wire and then the signal ground, think of it as very miniature 75ohm coax, that's why there exist "individual" ground pins for A signal wire in connectors.. but no... straight cables all in same bunch... This is why I tend to make all special cables myself, to guarentee I get best possible image quality I can. Ofcourse separately if there is need for "whatever works" then it is up to hack whatever available :)
Great video! I recently made a VGA-to-SCART cable for a MiST FPGA and it was a total nightmare! Also now I know because my image looks brighter than normal... I guess the outputs are out of range as said in the video.
Nice instructional video Noel. Cheers.
Glad it was helpful! 👍
Damn I used to have that exact Sony TV in the 90’s. Bought it brand new for a Dreamcast.
RF decoder - Any run of the mill VHS VCR, also works in reverse for composite to an RF only TV.
Good point. I didn't think of it because even though I'm surrounded by old computers, I haven't seen a VCR in a long time 😃 But that's a good option.
4:00 The chance a new TV has RF today is 10 times bigger than the chance it has composite input. Even those 8K OLED's prefer RF above composite. Thing is a modern TV most likely has a DVB-T2 tuner or a DVB-C tuner. Both run over coax. And the chipsets decode analog RF along with the digital formats.
Excellent. That picture of your Amstrad with the wrong sync reminds me of my recent fun trying to connect a Tandy 1000 TL/2 to a 1084. I bought a cable made for CGA/RGBI/C128 to 1084 and figured it would work perfectly and it should have. However it didn't because Pin 7 on a 128 and the Tandy is for Monochrome. On the Tandy it is TTL but on the C128 it is Composite. The cable had Pin 7 connected through, much like any serial DB9 cable would. This should not have mattered as according to the 1084 manual, pin 7 in RGBI mode is not connected. Well, the manual is wrong as it is and the 1084 did not filter out that signal in RGBI mode and caused the rolling video. I had to disassemble the cable and clip the wire going to Pin 7 and then the picture was perfect. The short version is even pre-made cables can be imperfect and the seller in this case was probably just selling regular serial cables and calling them C128/CGA/RGBI cables. So if you have a 1084 and want to connect a CGA/Tandy Graphics or 128, make sure your cable does not have Pin 7 connected.
Oh wow! How interesting! I didn't know that about the 1084. I wonder if it's all of them across the board or only some models (this one in particular is a PAL one). I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
@@NoelsRetroLab It could very well be different from one to another because Commodore did use different makers for the 1084. Mine is a NTSC 1084-D and I think that means Daewoo? Some are Philips and I think there was one or two others If my memory is correct? (It might not be LOL)
That bug @5:08 just hid under your TV!
Hahaha! I missed that! I had just rotated the TV to get to the connectors, so I must have disturbed it :-)
Very interesting stuff Noel. I kind of want to make myself a cable now 🤔
Having fun is a great reason to make one. It'll make you appreciate well-made cables even more! 😃
One handy thing with TVs today most have USB ports so with 5v it’s easier to add a short cable to the USB port for that pin16 these days no more external power.
I’ve got stuff ready to make a Atari STe cable myself, been sitting there for some time not gotten around to it, planning to combine the v & h sync for pin20 to see if I can get a really good picture than what I get now
One thing that I want to try in the future is to generate a more-or-less steady 2V signal from the sync signal with some capacitors and diodes. That would be super convenient.
Have you seen the QL Pico VGA project? It should be made workable with most any RGB outputs. On the QL, Peter Graf (creator of the Q68), has made one with the RP2040 to make it fit inside the cover of a DB15 plug.
It's an open source project called video_if_ql_vga on the hub of git
No, I hadn't seen that. Very interesting! I'll have to check it out.
I was thinking lately to go another way, design a small PCB with the console plug on one side and regular scart on the other side. It would be much quicker and easier to solder and then I could sell these adapters for couple €
I bought a huge box of 5m bandridge (fancy HQ brand) cables for 1€ each, add 8n the plugs and I get highest quality cable for like 3€
not often have question about an Ad, at 7:40, your bank will not let you into your account from an out location, that they must be tracing to no that, but are very happy to just connect you up using VPN, block all to location data, and they have no idea apart from login details, of course never get compromised ever do they, and the same location data is now being spoofed and the are happy with that, I think you need to have change bank pronto, or at least get them to fix there broken system pronto, (P.S. which bank chain do you back with, just to check it not the one I back with?)
Dude, please make a follow-up video to show how to make an RGB cable that requires some resistors.
Was the cable shielded at all? It probably doesn't matter for low res display, but hires video would benefit from properly shielded cable. The best cables have individually shielded wires for RGB and sync. Using the right materials is important, so the build won't end up in disappointment.
I don't think the individual wires were shielded (the overall cable was though). I've never seen it matter for these kind of signals. Once you get to VGA-level frequencies it probably matters a lot more though.
Twisted pair network cable is a good modern standard, the energy is transmitted outside of the metal wires after all.
@@NoelsRetroLab Actually a lot of higher quality SCART-Cables used shielded lines for R,G,B. This is actualy the reason for the pinout: 5-blueGND, 7-blue, 9-greenGND, 11-green, 13-redGND, 15-red. As uneven is on one side, this pinout alows to solder shild/signal/shield/signal/shield/signal.
Many VGA-cables use shilded R G B (and maybe sync). So I wouldn't start an SCART to 1084-9pin dsub cable with neither a SCART not a serial cable, but always build it from scratch, using an old VGA cable with individual shilding. Also always only build the lengh you need, as analog video quality goes down a lot with increased length. While f.e. a 3 meter Amiga RGB cable is quite nice if you are in a testing setup (disassambled Amiga on your working bench, Monitor at a distance to be save from all your tools like soldering irons etc.), a short cable with shilded cables is the best for productive use in the original configuration. Also you do not want multiple adapters in a chain.
Video cables can be a mine field. :)
Great Video. Surprised that you did not have to join all the grounds of the scart connector. When I make the RGB mod to the sega genesis consoles I have to put them all together to make it work.
I was wondering the same, will it work? with only one pin connected to ground ?
It's DE-9 not DB-9 (learned this earlier this week) :-)
A great and informative video. Does the length of the cables make any difference ?
Thanks! I haven't seen any difference in cable length for "normal" cable lengths (up to 1 meter or so). I haven't tried anything much longer than that.
Shout out to Ian Priddey at the Retro Computer Shack - he makes some excellent cables at reasonable prices. I have many of his cables for my Commodore machines but he makes 'em for many different makes and models. I'd drop a link to his eBay shop and website but don't want to get put in UA-cam comment moderation jail. ;P
Lol, dropping a bunch of cables. Missed the opportunity to drop a OSSC or RetroTink on top of it all at the end with a big *whump*.
hey noel. thanks for upload!.... this theme its a very difficult for me. i have a c65 and no monitor can process this signal correctly....waht is the problem? Do you have a hint for me?..PS: the computer goes with a scart adapter corretly..
i wish a nice time and thanks for your clips on youtube..! (sorry for my bad english!)...your fan from germany
what is that box below the monitor ?
Hey Noel, great videos! I've been watching them for a while by now. I've also built sometimes my own cables, last one was for spectrum +2 and it was a pain indeed, so better buy sometimes. By the way, I'm looking for cabinets/organisers for parts like yours for my lab. Are those the raaco cabinets? Saludos desde Alicante. 👋
Thanks! Are you talking about the organizer for the small parts in the background? I have no idea what brand they are. I bought them in a state sale from an engineer who was selling everything. So they're pretty old, but they work great.
@@NoelsRetroLab Oh I see, that's pretty cool. Not such luck here in terms of finding ex-engineers state sales :( thanks for replying tho. Saludos!
Just a note - the Atari XL series actually did not have S-Video connected.
buy cables - agreed. I HATE making cables.
In the video you create a cable that goes from SCART to something that looks like a CGA type RGB connector?
Would it be possible to create a cable that goes from SCART to a VGA type connector? Assuming that the SCART output is the RGB sort, as it is here.
It's definitely possible, but I think most VGA-style monitors require higher frequencies than the analog RGB one. So that won't be very useful I think.
@@NoelsRetroLab I purchased a modern low-end computer monitor that supports FreeSync and still has a VGA input. It is, and I am, very happy with the signal from an Amiga 500 through an adapter cable. I don't know if this is how the standard is supposed to work or if I just got lucky.
done that before 18:24, and not just cables, must of done it at least once with cables, hoses, pluming pipes, the list just goes on?
❤👍
What about Sinclair QL cable?
What I'm needing desperately is something to connect my 286 video output to a VGA monitor, due this old video output is like a serial port and I don't own any old monitor.
Is that 286 outputting video in VGA format I imagine? If so that's a digital video so I think you just need get some kind of a converter (like the OSSC).
Could be CGA?
@@NoelsRetroLab No, I think it's an EGA output. It's a Toshiba T3200. The problem with it is plasma display seems not to work so I wanted to see the output thru it's DB9 output connector, that AFAIK is an EGA.
@@andreslb151 mce2vga or similar
@@andreslb151 you'll definitely need a scaler, as that video output is most likely only 15kHz.
Look into RGBtoHDMI or maybe a GBS-8200.
The downside to using a serial cable for this is that while it's shielded, it will not have coaxial video signal lines like a "proper" cable would.
Sure it will work, but it will lose image integrity and quality.
What does a coaxial line look like? Signal and ground for each pin? But wouldn't that be lost in the final connector anyway since they just have a common ground? Or is there another reason for that? Honestly curious.
@@NoelsRetroLab I'm far from an expert here, but each coax would have its own ground.
I'm not sure if they all all get commoned up internally though, I imagine they would, but there must still be a benefit to doing it this way.
But the coax is important for impedance matching.
I do not think that Commodore Vic-20 had s-video output.
And the C64 one was non-standard with too high voltage.
Right. The standard didn't exist back then. But the idea of splitting it into luminance and chrominance was there. It's like the Spectrum outputting too high voltage for RGB out.
I’ve had to deal with cable where the wires were the absolute thickest size that the pins/cups were listed for, don’t do this! It makes every a massive pain in the ass
The Dreamcast did not output any kind of YPbPr component. It supported Y/C (S-Video), RGBS (RGB + Composite Sync), RGBHV (VGA), RGB+CVBS (Sync on Composite Video), etc, which are technically “component” video. CVBS (Composite Video) is the only one that isn’t technically “component.”
The mainstreams systems with official component cables are:
PlayStation 2
XBOX
GameCube (from the digital output)
XBOX 360
PlayStation 3
Wii
Wii U
You're right! I obviously don't have those cables, but I thought I had read that during my research. But now I just see the formats you mentioned. Thanks for bringing that up.
@@NoelsRetroLab Yeah, the long-delayed HD Retrovision RGB to YPbPr component cables have been a teased for several years and they were recently beaten to market by RetroGamingCablesUK. So, yeah, “component cables” for Dreamcast have been in the news recently, though the console itself is still using RGB. Those conversion cables are probably the ones you’ve been hearing about. :)
The main option is "because is the worst option".
Why we use old computers with worst graphics, worst processor, worst keyboard instead a new computer? Because it is fun.
So why on earth will you buy a cable if you can build it wasting more time, more money, more efford and the result will be worst?. Because it is fun; buy things done is boring.
As long as it's fun, that's great 😃
Also be aware of those male connectors which defines themselves as female! :-D
Ha ha, let’s make fun of trans people. Wow 🎉