There's a method how you could fix the crack in the shell. Get a similar colored piece of plastic, cut it into lots of small pieces and melt it into a paste by placing it all into a jar of acetone, letting it sit until it has dissolved. You can then use the paste to fill in the crack, however you'd have to apply some pressure to the shell to keep it in place as the paste dries out, maybe also using some tape on the inside to prevent the paste from seeping too far into the shell, and you may need to level it out afterwards. I do suggest practicing on some other plastics parts first. The same method is used to fill in gaps in plastic guitar neck and body binding in guitar construction and restorations. The melted plastic basically turns into the perfect plastic glue. Since it is only a single crack it should be possible to restore it.
@@VideoGameEsoterica worst case if you don't want to do it yourself, check for a local guitar or amp repair shop specialized in restoring vintage equipment. Some of these guys can work pure magic and restore damages to the point where you have to use a magnifying glass to spot any imperfections. It might just not be cheap but at least these guys appreciate vintage equipment and know how to handle it with care. I'd just remove all electronics first in either case, so that you'll only be working with the plastic frame.
Just be careful with acetone, pure acetone is hard to get and can be quite dangerous to handle if care is not taken. People have been using acetone to smooth and hide layer lines on 3D printed ABS parts and it can also be used to fix cracked parts, the trick is using the right amount acetone as too much will ruin the part.
Great video! I bet with a VCR as an RF modulator and the composite active adapter, one could even connect their MiSTer to much older TVs. I don't have any RF only TVs, but would be cool to see. Imagine playing MiSTer on a vintage 40's or 50's TV.
Makes sense, that's how we did it in the day with rf only. Hell I talked my parents into getting a new vcr so I could have the old one to connect my turbografx-16 to an rf only TV.
Just a note for anyone finding their consumer Sony or mitsubishi sets aren't showing a signal over rgb scart. I found u will need to set the jumper to 5v and add a pigtail barrel jack to your rgb scart breakout cable if going from mister and an extron into the tv. Unfortunately this means another power adapter and cable in the set up. Don't forget u can set controller shortcuts with multi ini to swap from rgb and vga settings. Back button up, back down, back right and left can all be used on mister main menu.
Oh Wow! Thanks for the tip on the power over pin 9, I was always curious about that jumper. I will test this with my encoder board as soon as I find a proper VGA cable where pin 9 is actually connected.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I didn't have to hunt too much, I decided to check the VGA cables on some old monitors I have and the first one I've tried worked just fine. First I did some sanity checks, as my video converter board is not the same as yours, I'm using the RetroCastle RGBHV to Y/C + composite one, based on the AD724 chip. The only weird surprise I've got is that the multimeter I use the most was registering a wacky voltage on Vin, but I guess it some glitch that happens when it's internal battery is running low, as it showed a normal voltage on the USB power tester I've used to check if I got voltage on pin 9. Besides that, it worked just as it should, put a jumper cable in the 5V position on the analog board and all is well.
@@gcolombelli What happens if I don't supply 5V to the Retrocastle active adapter while using the composite output ? Will it work with less sharpness or it won't work at all ? Thanks in advance!
One thing I’ve had fun doing is putting 2 CRTs side by side with an original console like my Genesis and MiSTer running the same game and see if I can notice any differences….so far MiSTer is 100% spot on…great guide too
@@VideoGameEsoterica I find the biggest difference isn’t in how the games run it’s more the MiSTer has very clean RGB out where OG consoles even through SCART can have a bit more noise and blurriness in the picture
My unmodified AES in particular has a much rougher output, I suppose a machine made in the early 90s compared to a modern state of the art system that’s to be expected
@@VideoGameEsoterica I’m so used to the SNES’s blurry filtered output as I had mine since 1992 that I find a really clean picture hard to get used to….I’ve got a cheap Chinese clone SFC that’s got a much “better” picture than my original console, not sure what video encoder Nintendo used back in the day but it was blur city
It's been so long since I had a CRT. I miss them, especially for their motion quality. Flat panels with their sample-and-hold means of displaying frames make for some truly awful looking motion. My last CRT was a Sony 40 inch HDTV. It was massive, and weighed 304 pounds, but man it was glorious.
12:18 S-video does not need an active adapter. if you have analog io board you just need a VGA to component/bnc cable and a Svideo to RCA/bnc cable and Bob's your Uncle. also should work with direct video and a HDMI to VGA adapter but I have not verified this bc I have io board Edit: I see this was already commented and you already replied... either way I think you should have mentioned it even if it is not your preferred method. I already had all the parts needed so I could have been misled into buying an active adapter from the video
I have the A/V Pro v9.2 board and it does not have the sync on green switch. I am trying to uso compoent video with, however there's no info on how to do it anywhere on the web. I've found info on a lot of things, but this eludes my grasp.
By cherry picking a bunch of people with problems on Reddit I was able to find out how to make it work. What confused me the most was that after configuring the ini file, the system prompts me to reboot so it can apply changes, however a simple reboot does not do the trick, you'd have to completelly power off the Mister for certain paremeters to take effect. I was thinking I did something wrong before trying this.
I believe Antonio Villena’s I/O boards have audio on the VGA port using some particular pins but you obviously have to have the right kind of cable to take advantage of that. I wonder what VGA cable with audio people are using when they find there is no audio on the standard I/O board.
@@VideoGameEsoterica Meanwhile, I got his mini I/O4 with DB9 to avoid buying a USB hub board but I haven’t looked into audio on the VGA port since I’m not using analog yet. I believe there’s also something special about the video DAC he uses (4:4:4?).
@@emmettturner9452 the standard analog I/O board uses 6 bits per component as most cores don't even support outputting more colors than that. Antonio Villena makes two board models with 8 bits per component, there may be other models out there I haven't heard about.
@@emmettturner9452 You're welcome. I believe the Amiga and ao486 cores should be the ones you'd be able to exercise 24bpp, besides that, you can check if your board has 24bpp / "RGB888" output by enabling vga_scaler and pressing F1 on the main menu until you get the "spectrum" background, on 18bpp boards there will be very noticeable color banding.
I'm so happy I came across this. Your mention of SCART was great because I am trying to find a way to properly get a signal from my computer via either HDMI or DisplayPort to my CRT TV with a SCART connection and make it look good and proper and not have any delay if it can be helped. What will I need to buy in order to do that? I don't want to leave any stones unturned for this set up and sound is important for me too. I would have joined that Discord server and found one of my fellow Europeans but the link appears to be dead. Thank you again for all the info, even if I didn't understand everything as I am new to this.
2:39 “Now, they do change manufacturing sometimes so it might be possible that that switches” I don’t think you mentioned who made the cables anyway. ;) That said, composite sync when enabled should remain on the H-sync lead.
Thank you for this video, it was extremely educational and helpful! What PVM model did you use in your video? Asking because there seems to be many different models and each have their peculiarities and differences. Many of them don't have OSD and you need another device to configure the settings or even require removing the tv case to change some settings!
I wish that using the composite adapter and HDMI simultaneously was a little easier. At first using only my crt, update_all was disabled, now I can’t use the menu scripts, such as the ini settings. Do you know if it’s possible to see those over HDMI while using the composite adapter (for dual screens)?
Weird it's called sync on green when it's technically sync on luma. I get that it's the green cable, but with component the green cable is Y which is luma.
Sync on Green is also used by some weird VGA monitors. IIRC the PS2 needed a monitor with SoG support to run Linux in it. When outputting YPbPr on MiSTer the luma gets sent to the green signal pin of the VGA port, as most passive adapters will connect that pin to the color coded green RCA jack used for luma.
The only "official" one I've found schematics for is the active board (THS7374IPWR signal amplifier) for use with the Y/C cores, by Mike Simone, but not the one with the AD724JR RGB to NTSC/PAL encoder chip. If you can get the AD724 chip and the oscillators, there's even a schematic for a simple converter board on the datasheet, the hardest part is soldering the 16 lead SOIC chip, but as far as SMD chips go, this one is on the easier side... at least if the PCB has solder mask, you should be able to solder it with a regular soldering iron with the "drag soldering" technique. On the AD724 datasheet there's also another schematic for a board with an additional AD8013 signal amplifier chip so you can get simultaneous RGB, S-Video and Composite outputs.
Another excellent video! Thank you. I have the JAMMA version of MiSTer in my arcade cabinet. The CRT in my cabinet is vertically oriented so I am unable to play many cores on it due to orientation. I needed a second external CRT connected in order to play the horizontally oriented cores. My external CRT only has an S-Video/Composite connections, no RGB. I tried tapping S-Video from a few different analog connections and had mixed results. ini changes required to make S-Video work will sometimes mess up the internal CRT and vice versa and swapping ini back and forth with each core is a pain. My solution for now is to use the HDMI connector on the DE10 nano and convert that to S-Video with an external convertor. This has worked well so far but I am wondering what kind of quality degradation I am experiencing by converting HDMI to S-Video vs a native analog connection? The internal CRT in the cabinet looks slightly better to my eyes but that could just be the quality/age of the CRTs and not so much the connection. Theoretically should the raw analog out provide a higher quality signal than a converted HDMI out?
Honestly if you don’t notice much degrading in the video…does it matter? I always look at it like “could it be better? Maybe. Is this doing the job for me and am I having fun? Absolutely. So maybe I’ll just enjoy what I’ve got” :)
Truth. So, for others interested in analog connections, using the HDMI port on the DE10 and converting it to your signal of choice gives acceptable results plus you can use the flip/orientation/etc settings in the cores and it also carries the audio signal as well! Thanks again.@@VideoGameEsoterica
Watched the video, loved that you did it. 2 questions. 1. I just got the new direct video HDMI-to-Component adapter for my MiSTer. Haven't had a full chance to try it out yet. Have you or do you even plan to get one? 2. Would you be ok with doing an update to the whole "component vs. s-video" on MiSTer comparison video? I know you can't fully tell the difference via youtube but your words of wisdom would accompany it well.
Answering in reverse order; I may do that video. Sounds like a good idea. Talk about signal differences. I did it once but that may be two years ago now. First part…yes at some point I’ll do a direct video overview.
You might not be happy with dv to comp. For PS1 it's mostly good. Not sure if I see a difference. I've noticed some sync issues when trying other cores with that
Be careful with HDMI Direct Video, those can damage the HDMI port on the DE10-Nano on hotplugging and the sync pins of some SCART devices when using an adapter cable, you need a cable with an inline resistor to avoid damaging SCART devices. Despite it having a higher range than the default analog board, it's not a full RGB 24bpp color range as it will usually be reduced to 16-235 or 15-255. Another interesting option for those using HDMI displays and wanting less lag is setting the vsync_adjust option to 1 or 2, not every monitor/TV are compatible, but the ones I've tested were compatible with almost every core I've tested. The only one that glitched out for a second or two was the PC/XT core.
The composite/S-video adapter I bought actually wouldn't accept a VGA cable, but it was able to plug directly into the analog I/O board, would this work?
Hi I got the MiSTeR Pi FPGA, I'm trying to use the VGA port to connect to the component input on my CRT tv, but i understand i need to change the .ini file, however in your video you said it's also necessary to turn on the "sync on green" but on the MiSTeR Pi FPGA i don't see any switch for doing that. Do you know how to turn on the SOG for MiSTeR Pi ... i can't seem to find any info on this.
@@VideoGameEsoterica The I/O board i have from Taki doesn't have the switch like in your video. But in that same area i do see 3 bare pins with a "VGA PWR" label on the board next to the pins. Do i need to connect some combination of these 3 pins?
@@VideoGameEsoterica I got it working! In the .ini file i have to also set vga_sog=1. After i did this it worked! Also, i noticed in each of the cores, there is a "Video Region" setting, and by default it's set to "Auto", but for EUR games this means the video is displayed using PAL mode which makes the video flick vertically constantly, so you have to set the Video Region to NTSC and the EUR based games will display properly! Anyhow thanks again for your helpful tips and hope this can help someone trying to use MiSTer Pi on a CRT tv.
I just recently purchased my MiSTer and am having issues getting sound. I’m using an active yc adapter with a video out and a composite audio out as well but no luck with sound. Any thoughts? Do I need to change something in the ini settings?
I'm thinking of getting a retrocastle mister board, they have one that uses a saturn port instead of vga. which I guess is easier to do video+audio and takes less space. before I click fire on that do you think there's any "NO THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA" advice? I feel like it would work even in a pvm
@@VideoGameEsoterica where I am it's really hard to get a mister. the retrocastle basically gives you the de10, a custom io board and low profile fan, 128mb ram, 256gb sd card, usb c power supply, usb hub, a good quality case and a custom saturn output port for a bit cheaper than a mister and it's smaller form factor. maybe when I'm back in the UK I will get a normal mister too
@@AlexRoseGames Go with Retrocastle. I assume Esoterica isn't filled in on the quality issues for the MisterAddons board that have been raised recently. It is garbage quality.
If you can get the relevant Saturn video cables with the quality you expect or can make your own, you should be good to go. I've been considering buying one of their boards (and aluminum case) to have a more compact and easier to carry setup, but I confess to be a little undecided on the Saturn vs VGA out. I've been using a video converter board from them that I believe uses the same AD724 chip they use on the Saturn board, the S-Video output is almost indistinguishable from YPbPr but with composite it's inevitable to have artifacts.
Thank you for this tech, really fantastic. Question: (Sorry, I don't know your name) - I'm looking at a CRT with Component Video. However, the inputs are listed in the manual as 480i specifically. I am thinking about two scenarios: 1. Using the available Component inputs for Retro games, i.e. 240p, which raises the question of how, or even if the inputs can be used to display the native 240p without interlacing up to 480i ? I am assuming this input is consistent with DVD line voltage. Oh, I should note that I am planning on using a PC with a GPUs analog output (which is why the MiSTer VGA input is so helpful). If I can run the Component 480i in 240p, would that shrink the image on the screen? I do not see any options for aspect ratio, scaling, etc. on this TV. 2. I also want to be able to go in the complete opposite direction, running modern games, specifically FPS games, without the latency of modern flat screens. The TV does have an aspect ratio option, which I hope is achieved by simply compressing the output of the tube's electron emitter, not via digital processing. Using the same PC as the source, can I output from the MiSTer to the TV, that's now in 16x9, without introducing any latency? I apologize, my grasp on these concepts is very limited, but I am learning as I go, so please excuse the above questions. I am just now examining the TV itself and how it handles the Component Video and aspect ratio. The Service Manual is excellent, so I hope to spot any issues of digital processing if they exist, and nail down the frequency of the YPbPr. Thanks again for your excellent tutorials and additional help. Without guidance such as yours, us simps would all be screwed.
240p is just a hack on 480i, I don't think there are any CRT TVs that accept 480i but won't accept 240p. Worst case are some modern LCD TVs that will interpret 240p as 480i and you end up with some really weird artifacts, but on CRT you should be good to go. Some modern LCD and OLED TVs are able to recognize 240p signals and will avoid trying do do any interlacing processing on those signals as well. 240p Test Suite has a few tools to test if your TV is well behaved or not. IIRC both VGA, SCART, RGBHV, RGBS and YPbPr all work on similar voltage ranges... analog components are usually 0V to 0.7V, but sync may be something else. On some really old monitors it may even be TTL level on both color and sync signals, but on TVs and anything with VGA, SCART or YPbPr output, the voltage levels should be about the same. What I'm not sure is if the sync signals on luma (or green, on the rare RGsB monitors out there) still carry luma/green on 0V to 0.7V and have the sync dip bellow 0V or if if the luma/green analog signal gets shifted to a little over 0.3V and have sync be somewhere in that 0 to 0.3V range. I have heard chroma signals on Y/C SCART and S-Video has a reduced range compared to the luma signal, if this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if they just passed the signal through the same QAM encoder used in NTSC and PAL composite video systems, but instead of mixing chroma and luma, kept the signals on different channels. I wouldn't be surprised at all if chroma on composite video is transmitted on lower power than luma. IIRC the main difference between 240p and 480i is that 240p hardware will always output odd fields (or always even fields, can't remember) instead of alternating between odd and even fields. What's the difference between odd and even fields? Well, just the number of pulses that signal vertical sync on composite video. That's pretty much it. I'm not sure about aspect ratio, I've never seen an actual widescreen CRT in person and know barely anything about them besides the fact that they exist.
I can't seem to get svideo or composite to work. I updated my mister, I'm using the active adapter and VGA cable that are sold on mister addons, I have USBC running to the active adapter, I updated the ini file to the correct VGA scaler, VGA mode, ntsc mode, and composite sync settings, I toggled the switch on the active adapter, tried both types of connections, I get nothing :( If anyone knows something I can try I'd appreciate it!
@@VideoGameEsoterica well I wouldn't necessarily say I know what I'm doing, just that I think I followed your guide and the one on the GitHub page. I'm not tech savvy but I can usually follow directions lol
@@VideoGameEsotericaYeah I think I'm doing something wrong. I've noticed that I don't seem to get audio out from the headphone jack on the io board either, so maybe something isn't connected with the io board? Also, the 3 little lights on the io board don't light up. But the fan spins and the 3 black buttons work.
@@VideoGameEsoterica Its super goofy. The arcade cores display beautifully, but the console cores split the screen vertically and show the image twice --once on each side. I haven't been able to find a fix online.
You might be right. I don’t even remember where these cables came from tbh. I just ordered the ones that you suggested in the caption. I’ll keep you posted!
That's not the intended translation. "Desu" basically just means "is" so the translation is just saying "cute" or "is cute". The reason Google Translate says that is because the "Desu" is in katakana which is mostly used for foreign words, like "Death", but in this case, it's written in katakana as a method to make the language seem more cute or exotic.
@@kunka592 I like that they also use that to denote a foreign accent. Usually a "white European" accent. Like the way the King of the Cosmos speaks in Katamari Damacy.
you didn't mention RF through a VCR or misteraddons RF board... unsubscribed! I kid I kid. It's out of stock right now anyways. Thanks for this video! You should do a detailed Direct Video guide some day 😊
Great guide. Many thanks
Always happy to do it
What an excellent piece of tech art we have here. ty ♥
There's a method how you could fix the crack in the shell. Get a similar colored piece of plastic, cut it into lots of small pieces and melt it into a paste by placing it all into a jar of acetone, letting it sit until it has dissolved. You can then use the paste to fill in the crack, however you'd have to apply some pressure to the shell to keep it in place as the paste dries out, maybe also using some tape on the inside to prevent the paste from seeping too far into the shell, and you may need to level it out afterwards. I do suggest practicing on some other plastics parts first. The same method is used to fill in gaps in plastic guitar neck and body binding in guitar construction and restorations. The melted plastic basically turns into the perfect plastic glue. Since it is only a single crack it should be possible to restore it.
Ooh interesting. I’ll look into this. Sounds like a solid method because this crack does annoy me
@@VideoGameEsoterica worst case if you don't want to do it yourself, check for a local guitar or amp repair shop specialized in restoring vintage equipment. Some of these guys can work pure magic and restore damages to the point where you have to use a magnifying glass to spot any imperfections. It might just not be cheap but at least these guys appreciate vintage equipment and know how to handle it with care. I'd just remove all electronics first in either case, so that you'll only be working with the plastic frame.
Nah sounds like a fun project for some random day when I have extra spare time :)
Just be careful with acetone, pure acetone is hard to get and can be quite dangerous to handle if care is not taken. People have been using acetone to smooth and hide layer lines on 3D printed ABS parts and it can also be used to fix cracked parts, the trick is using the right amount acetone as too much will ruin the part.
Like any chemical…there is a ratio and it’s almost never 100% lol
good morning Mr. Esoterica
Morning. Did you bring coffee?
@@VideoGameEsoterica 6 cups of a dark roast Guatemalan to be precise.
Ooh I only touch the light roast haha
Excellent video!
Glad you enjoyed!
Amazing details thank you
Glad you enjoyed
Great video! I bet with a VCR as an RF modulator and the composite active adapter, one could even connect their MiSTer to much older TVs. I don't have any RF only TVs, but would be cool to see. Imagine playing MiSTer on a vintage 40's or 50's TV.
Yes you can def do rf
Makes sense, that's how we did it in the day with rf only. Hell I talked my parents into getting a new vcr so I could have the old one to connect my turbografx-16 to an rf only TV.
The swiping away of the cables is always a joy to me. GET IT OUTTA HERE!
hahaha glad someone notices my swiping. Of course you would
Just a note for anyone finding their consumer Sony or mitsubishi sets aren't showing a signal over rgb scart. I found u will need to set the jumper to 5v and add a pigtail barrel jack to your rgb scart breakout cable if going from mister and an extron into the tv. Unfortunately this means another power adapter and cable in the set up. Don't forget u can set controller shortcuts with multi ini to swap from rgb and vga settings. Back button up, back down, back right and left can all be used on mister main menu.
Good to know!
Oh Wow! Thanks for the tip on the power over pin 9, I was always curious about that jumper. I will test this with my encoder board as soon as I find a proper VGA cable where pin 9 is actually connected.
Happy hunting...its not the easiest thing in the world to find
@@VideoGameEsoterica I didn't have to hunt too much, I decided to check the VGA cables on some old monitors I have and the first one I've tried worked just fine. First I did some sanity checks, as my video converter board is not the same as yours, I'm using the RetroCastle RGBHV to Y/C + composite one, based on the AD724 chip.
The only weird surprise I've got is that the multimeter I use the most was registering a wacky voltage on Vin, but I guess it some glitch that happens when it's internal battery is running low, as it showed a normal voltage on the USB power tester I've used to check if I got voltage on pin 9. Besides that, it worked just as it should, put a jumper cable in the 5V position on the analog board and all is well.
Nice. The older the cable honestly the better IMO.
@@gcolombelli What happens if I don't supply 5V to the Retrocastle active adapter while using the composite output ? Will it work with less sharpness or it won't work at all ? Thanks in advance!
I have not tested that board but presumptively it just will not work
Thanks. Video outputs just fine by the way.
One thing I’ve had fun doing is putting 2 CRTs side by side with an original console like my Genesis and MiSTer running the same game and see if I can notice any differences….so far MiSTer is 100% spot on…great guide too
Yes to find any difference might take hours and a pixel peepers magnifying glass
@@VideoGameEsoterica I find the biggest difference isn’t in how the games run it’s more the MiSTer has very clean RGB out where OG consoles even through SCART can have a bit more noise and blurriness in the picture
My unmodified AES in particular has a much rougher output, I suppose a machine made in the early 90s compared to a modern state of the art system that’s to be expected
Yes. SNES and Neo Geo are the worst offenders for iffy RGB out without mods
@@VideoGameEsoterica I’m so used to the SNES’s blurry filtered output as I had mine since 1992 that I find a really clean picture hard to get used to….I’ve got a cheap Chinese clone SFC that’s got a much “better” picture than my original console, not sure what video encoder Nintendo used back in the day but it was blur city
It's been so long since I had a CRT. I miss them, especially for their motion quality. Flat panels with their sample-and-hold means of displaying frames make for some truly awful looking motion. My last CRT was a Sony 40 inch HDTV. It was massive, and weighed 304 pounds, but man it was glorious.
I’ve got this 14” PVM here with your name on it. Friends deal. Just c’mon down
It's tempting! 😅
At the speed at which things LEAVE my grasp you don’t need to rush 😂
thanks for yours videos! And where buy this s-video and composite adapter?
12:18 S-video does not need an active adapter. if you have analog io board you just need a VGA to component/bnc cable and a Svideo to RCA/bnc cable and Bob's your Uncle. also should work with direct video and a HDMI to VGA adapter but I have not verified this bc I have io board
Edit: I see this was already commented and you already replied... either way I think you should have mentioned it even if it is not your preferred method. I already had all the parts needed so I could have been misled into buying an active adapter from the video
Maybe I’ll mention it in a 2024 updated guide
Your videos are invaluable, thank you
You don’t adapt the digital IO to analog. You go direct video adapter out of the HDMI on the DE10. I may do a vid in it for the future
this is great. thank you.
happy to do it!
For me, mini toslink to toslink on my cheap sound bar has been amazing for audio
I have the A/V Pro v9.2 board and it does not have the sync on green switch. I am trying to uso compoent video with, however there's no info on how to do it anywhere on the web. I've found info on a lot of things, but this eludes my grasp.
By cherry picking a bunch of people with problems on Reddit I was able to find out how to make it work. What confused me the most was that after configuring the ini file, the system prompts me to reboot so it can apply changes, however a simple reboot does not do the trick, you'd have to completelly power off the Mister for certain paremeters to take effect. I was thinking I did something wrong before trying this.
I believe Antonio Villena’s I/O boards have audio on the VGA port using some particular pins but you obviously have to have the right kind of cable to take advantage of that. I wonder what VGA cable with audio people are using when they find there is no audio on the standard I/O board.
I’ve never used his hardware so I’ve never seen that in action
@@VideoGameEsoterica Meanwhile, I got his mini I/O4 with DB9 to avoid buying a USB hub board but I haven’t looked into audio on the VGA port since I’m not using analog yet. I believe there’s also something special about the video DAC he uses (4:4:4?).
@@emmettturner9452 the standard analog I/O board uses 6 bits per component as most cores don't even support outputting more colors than that. Antonio Villena makes two board models with 8 bits per component, there may be other models out there I haven't heard about.
@@gcolombelli Thanks!
@@emmettturner9452 You're welcome. I believe the Amiga and ao486 cores should be the ones you'd be able to exercise 24bpp, besides that, you can check if your board has 24bpp / "RGB888" output by enabling vga_scaler and pressing F1 on the main menu until you get the "spectrum" background, on 18bpp boards there will be very noticeable color banding.
I'm so happy I came across this. Your mention of SCART was great because I am trying to find a way to properly get a signal from my computer via either HDMI or DisplayPort to my CRT TV with a SCART connection and make it look good and proper and not have any delay if it can be helped. What will I need to buy in order to do that? I don't want to leave any stones unturned for this set up and sound is important for me too.
I would have joined that Discord server and found one of my fellow Europeans but the link appears to be dead.
Thank you again for all the info, even if I didn't understand everything as I am new to this.
So you just want to go MiSTer to SCART? You just need the triple stack with analog IO board on top and a VGA to SCART cable. That’s it!
@@VideoGameEsoterica My computer isn't s MiSTer though. It's a system I assembled a few years back.
@@VideoGameEsoterica No VGA output and there aren't really any DisplayPort to SCART and HDMI to SCART adapters I've found seem sketchy at best. :/
2:39 “Now, they do change manufacturing sometimes so it might be possible that that switches”
I don’t think you mentioned who made the cables anyway. ;) That said, composite sync when enabled should remain on the H-sync lead.
…sometimes it is yellow.
It’s in the description :)
We talking cables still?
@@VideoGameEsoterica LOL!
Thank you for this video, it was extremely educational and helpful! What PVM model did you use in your video? Asking because there seems to be many different models and each have their peculiarities and differences. Many of them don't have OSD and you need another device to configure the settings or even require removing the tv case to change some settings!
14L2 I believe was the model shown
I wish that using the composite adapter and HDMI simultaneously was a little easier. At first using only my crt, update_all was disabled, now I can’t use the menu scripts, such as the ini settings. Do you know if it’s possible to see those over HDMI while using the composite adapter (for dual screens)?
I’ve never tested it myself so I’m not sure on that particular config
You can do s-video straight out of the DB15 port, no adapter board necessary.
Sure you can adapt component to S video but the active converters do a better job IMO so that’s what I recommend
Can I use the Mister digital board which has more ram but use adapters to use VGA out for a CRT computer monitor?
Yes you can use direct video mode
Weird it's called sync on green when it's technically sync on luma. I get that it's the green cable, but with component the green cable is Y which is luma.
It’s an ease of use thing. If you say “green” anyone reaches for the green cable. If you say luma 90% of people won’t know which one that is
Sync on Green is also used by some weird VGA monitors. IIRC the PS2 needed a monitor with SoG support to run Linux in it. When outputting YPbPr on MiSTer the luma gets sent to the green signal pin of the VGA port, as most passive adapters will connect that pin to the color coded green RCA jack used for luma.
Excellent video, how can I make an adapter to use composite video? I have no possibility of buying an official adapter, thank you!!! greetings!
Id have to find if the build is available and what the BOM is
The only "official" one I've found schematics for is the active board (THS7374IPWR signal amplifier) for use with the Y/C cores, by Mike Simone, but not the one with the AD724JR RGB to NTSC/PAL encoder chip.
If you can get the AD724 chip and the oscillators, there's even a schematic for a simple converter board on the datasheet, the hardest part is soldering the 16 lead SOIC chip, but as far as SMD chips go, this one is on the easier side... at least if the PCB has solder mask, you should be able to solder it with a regular soldering iron with the "drag soldering" technique. On the AD724 datasheet there's also another schematic for a board with an additional AD8013 signal amplifier chip so you can get simultaneous RGB, S-Video and Composite outputs.
I wish I could get esprade working through s video adapter mines in black and white
odd its not getting color
Do you know where to toggle "sync on green" on the taki clone board. I don't see it like it is here.
INI file
@@VideoGameEsoterica that did it. Didn't put together what sog meant. Thank you!
@Brian-qo8bq it can def be confusing
Hi, can I connect the Mister VGA directly to 5 port BNC (RGB, H-Sync, V-Sync) of my Sony Trinitron PC monitor? Just your regular VGA->BNC cable?
I haven’t personally tested that on a trinitron monitor that accepts BNC but it should be fine
Another excellent video! Thank you. I have the JAMMA version of MiSTer in my arcade cabinet. The CRT in my cabinet is vertically oriented so I am unable to play many cores on it due to orientation. I needed a second external CRT connected in order to play the horizontally oriented cores. My external CRT only has an S-Video/Composite connections, no RGB. I tried tapping S-Video from a few different analog connections and had mixed results. ini changes required to make S-Video work will sometimes mess up the internal CRT and vice versa and swapping ini back and forth with each core is a pain. My solution for now is to use the HDMI connector on the DE10 nano and convert that to S-Video with an external convertor. This has worked well so far but I am wondering what kind of quality degradation I am experiencing by converting HDMI to S-Video vs a native analog connection? The internal CRT in the cabinet looks slightly better to my eyes but that could just be the quality/age of the CRTs and not so much the connection. Theoretically should the raw analog out provide a higher quality signal than a converted HDMI out?
Honestly if you don’t notice much degrading in the video…does it matter? I always look at it like “could it be better? Maybe. Is this doing the job for me and am I having fun? Absolutely. So maybe I’ll just enjoy what I’ve got” :)
Truth. So, for others interested in analog connections, using the HDMI port on the DE10 and converting it to your signal of choice gives acceptable results plus you can use the flip/orientation/etc settings in the cores and it also carries the audio signal as well! Thanks again.@@VideoGameEsoterica
Yes one day I’ll do a direct video guide :)
Watched the video, loved that you did it. 2 questions. 1. I just got the new direct video HDMI-to-Component adapter for my MiSTer. Haven't had a full chance to try it out yet. Have you or do you even plan to get one? 2. Would you be ok with doing an update to the whole "component vs. s-video" on MiSTer comparison video? I know you can't fully tell the difference via youtube but your words of wisdom would accompany it well.
Answering in reverse order; I may do that video. Sounds like a good idea. Talk about signal differences. I did it once but that may be two years ago now. First part…yes at some point I’ll do a direct video overview.
You might not be happy with dv to comp. For PS1 it's mostly good. Not sure if I see a difference. I've noticed some sync issues when trying other cores with that
Sync on certain cores can be weird due to some odd refresh rates on certain hardware. Especially arcade stuff
Be careful with HDMI Direct Video, those can damage the HDMI port on the DE10-Nano on hotplugging and the sync pins of some SCART devices when using an adapter cable, you need a cable with an inline resistor to avoid damaging SCART devices. Despite it having a higher range than the default analog board, it's not a full RGB 24bpp color range as it will usually be reduced to 16-235 or 15-255.
Another interesting option for those using HDMI displays and wanting less lag is setting the vsync_adjust option to 1 or 2, not every monitor/TV are compatible, but the ones I've tested were compatible with almost every core I've tested. The only one that glitched out for a second or two was the PC/XT core.
The composite/S-video adapter I bought actually wouldn't accept a VGA cable, but it was able to plug directly into the analog I/O board, would this work?
It will. It depends on the cable it seems
@@VideoGameEsoterica Sweet
Also this video says vga_mode should be set to svideo for composite, but it looks like RetroRGB says it should be rgb?
Nevermind, svideo worked
👍
Hi I got the MiSTeR Pi FPGA, I'm trying to use the VGA port to connect to the component input on my CRT tv, but i understand i need to change the .ini file, however in your video you said it's also necessary to turn on the "sync on green" but on the MiSTeR Pi FPGA i don't see any switch for doing that. Do you know how to turn on the SOG for MiSTeR Pi ... i can't seem to find any info on this.
Switch on IO board
@@VideoGameEsoterica The I/O board i have from Taki doesn't have the switch like in your video. But in that same area i do see 3 bare pins with a "VGA PWR" label on the board next to the pins. Do i need to connect some combination of these 3 pins?
@@VideoGameEsoterica I got it working! In the .ini file i have to also set vga_sog=1. After i did this it worked! Also, i noticed in each of the cores, there is a "Video Region" setting, and by default it's set to "Auto", but for EUR games this means the video is displayed using PAL mode which makes the video flick vertically constantly, so you have to set the Video Region to NTSC and the EUR based games will display properly! Anyhow thanks again for your helpful tips and hope this can help someone trying to use MiSTer Pi on a CRT tv.
Ahh yes you want to pick region for sure
Has anyone contacted RetroCastle about his dual ram i/o board that is development?
I haven’t. I don’t really contact people. I see if they’d like to chat with me
I just recently purchased my MiSTer and am having issues getting sound. I’m using an active yc adapter with a video out and a composite audio out as well but no luck with sound. Any thoughts? Do I need to change something in the ini settings?
Let me check into it. Unsure
will this hook up to my Commodore 1080 monitor?
Should but I haven’t tested it personally
I'm thinking of getting a retrocastle mister board, they have one that uses a saturn port instead of vga. which I guess is easier to do video+audio and takes less space. before I click fire on that do you think there's any "NO THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA" advice? I feel like it would work even in a pvm
I haven’t tested it so I really can’t say much about it. VGA offers the best of everything. I recommend the MiSTerAddons analog IO board personally
I own one and can vouch for its video output quality over rgb, composite and with use of a sega saturn rf adapter.
@@VideoGameEsoterica where I am it's really hard to get a mister. the retrocastle basically gives you the de10, a custom io board and low profile fan, 128mb ram, 256gb sd card, usb c power supply, usb hub, a good quality case and a custom saturn output port for a bit cheaper than a mister and it's smaller form factor. maybe when I'm back in the UK I will get a normal mister too
@@AlexRoseGames Go with Retrocastle. I assume Esoterica isn't filled in on the quality issues for the MisterAddons board that have been raised recently. It is garbage quality.
If you can get the relevant Saturn video cables with the quality you expect or can make your own, you should be good to go. I've been considering buying one of their boards (and aluminum case) to have a more compact and easier to carry setup, but I confess to be a little undecided on the Saturn vs VGA out. I've been using a video converter board from them that I believe uses the same AD724 chip they use on the Saturn board, the S-Video output is almost indistinguishable from YPbPr but with composite it's inevitable to have artifacts.
What game is that around the 4 min mark where you are talking about tate mode? Great vid as always.
I’ll check soon. My wife found a kitten at work today so after an impromptu vet visit my free time today is now zero lol
nice kitten doing ok? im a vet tech in my free time lmao. go have fun no rush
@@VideoGameEsoterica
Hey VGE! Wanted to know if I could run hdmi to morph 4k to tv while running vga to svideo?
Would any of the settings affect each other
Direct video is all or nothing situation. No analog out when using it
@ if I switched it back to regular video would I be able to use both?
@@VideoGameEsoterica but then wouldn’t the analog output be 1080p over VGA?
Yes if you use standard hdmi out you can use both sources simultaneously
Thank you for this tech, really fantastic.
Question: (Sorry, I don't know your name) - I'm looking at a CRT with Component Video. However, the inputs are listed in the manual as 480i specifically. I am thinking about two scenarios:
1. Using the available Component inputs for Retro games, i.e. 240p, which raises the question of how, or even if the inputs can be used to display the native 240p without interlacing up to 480i ? I am assuming this input is consistent with DVD line voltage.
Oh, I should note that I am planning on using a PC with a GPUs analog output (which is why the MiSTer VGA input is so helpful).
If I can run the Component 480i in 240p, would that shrink the image on the screen? I do not see any options for aspect ratio, scaling, etc. on this TV.
2. I also want to be able to go in the complete opposite direction, running modern games, specifically FPS games, without the latency of modern flat screens. The TV does have an aspect ratio option, which I hope is achieved by simply compressing the output of the tube's electron emitter, not via digital processing.
Using the same PC as the source, can I output from the MiSTer to the TV, that's now in 16x9, without introducing any latency?
I apologize, my grasp on these concepts is very limited, but I am learning as I go, so please excuse the above questions.
I am just now examining the TV itself and how it handles the Component Video and aspect ratio. The Service Manual is excellent, so I hope to spot any issues of digital processing if they exist, and nail down the frequency of the YPbPr.
Thanks again for your excellent tutorials and additional help. Without guidance such as yours, us simps would all be screwed.
240p is just a hack on 480i, I don't think there are any CRT TVs that accept 480i but won't accept 240p. Worst case are some modern LCD TVs that will interpret 240p as 480i and you end up with some really weird artifacts, but on CRT you should be good to go. Some modern LCD and OLED TVs are able to recognize 240p signals and will avoid trying do do any interlacing processing on those signals as well. 240p Test Suite has a few tools to test if your TV is well behaved or not.
IIRC both VGA, SCART, RGBHV, RGBS and YPbPr all work on similar voltage ranges... analog components are usually 0V to 0.7V, but sync may be something else. On some really old monitors it may even be TTL level on both color and sync signals, but on TVs and anything with VGA, SCART or YPbPr output, the voltage levels should be about the same.
What I'm not sure is if the sync signals on luma (or green, on the rare RGsB monitors out there) still carry luma/green on 0V to 0.7V and have the sync dip bellow 0V or if if the luma/green analog signal gets shifted to a little over 0.3V and have sync be somewhere in that 0 to 0.3V range.
I have heard chroma signals on Y/C SCART and S-Video has a reduced range compared to the luma signal, if this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if they just passed the signal through the same QAM encoder used in NTSC and PAL composite video systems, but instead of mixing chroma and luma, kept the signals on different channels. I wouldn't be surprised at all if chroma on composite video is transmitted on lower power than luma.
IIRC the main difference between 240p and 480i is that 240p hardware will always output odd fields (or always even fields, can't remember) instead of alternating between odd and even fields. What's the difference between odd and even fields? Well, just the number of pulses that signal vertical sync on composite video. That's pretty much it.
I'm not sure about aspect ratio, I've never seen an actual widescreen CRT in person and know barely anything about them besides the fact that they exist.
I can't seem to get svideo or composite to work. I updated my mister, I'm using the active adapter and VGA cable that are sold on mister addons, I have USBC running to the active adapter, I updated the ini file to the correct VGA scaler, VGA mode, ntsc mode, and composite sync settings, I toggled the switch on the active adapter, tried both types of connections, I get nothing :(
If anyone knows something I can try I'd appreciate it!
Hmmmmmm. And you are using the YC cores? By your description sounds like you know what your doing so…should work
@@VideoGameEsoterica well I wouldn't necessarily say I know what I'm doing, just that I think I followed your guide and the one on the GitHub page. I'm not tech savvy but I can usually follow directions lol
@@VideoGameEsotericaYeah I think I'm doing something wrong. I've noticed that I don't seem to get audio out from the headphone jack on the io board either, so maybe something isn't connected with the io board? Also, the 3 little lights on the io board don't light up. But the fan spins and the 3 black buttons work.
The lights never light up at all? Even from power off to on?
Nope. I used to use a digital io board and had no issues, but I recently swapped it out for the analog board.
The crack oh god the crack
In your defense you packed it like a champ
I actually heard that exact same line in a New York subway once.
Both lines.
Lolol
I just use direct video to a vga-bnc cable to my pvm
Also an option for sure
@dorfus 's busted Sony CPD cameo.
he shipped it so well too. For real
About every six months for the last 4 years I try to hook up my MiSTer FPGA to my Sony PVM and it never works. I guess I’ll try again in 6 months lol
Haha what’s not working?
@@VideoGameEsoterica Its super goofy. The arcade cores display beautifully, but the console cores split the screen vertically and show the image twice --once on each side. I haven't been able to find a fix online.
You sure you aren’t doing RGBHV? Not RGBS? That sounds like a sync issue
You might be right. I don’t even remember where these cables came from tbh. I just ordered the ones that you suggested in the caption. I’ll keep you posted!
Just use the grey lead for sync and make sure you are RGBS AND NOT HV :)
According to Google Translate, the Japanese on the pen says "Cute Death". 🤣
Lolol really?
That's not the intended translation. "Desu" basically just means "is" so the translation is just saying "cute" or "is cute". The reason Google Translate says that is because the "Desu" is in katakana which is mostly used for foreign words, like "Death", but in this case, it's written in katakana as a method to make the language seem more cute or exotic.
Lotta cat pen lore this week
@@kunka592 I like that they also use that to denote a foreign accent. Usually a "white European" accent. Like the way the King of the Cosmos speaks in Katamari Damacy.
you didn't mention RF through a VCR or misteraddons RF board... unsubscribed!
I kid I kid. It's out of stock right now anyways. Thanks for this video! You should do a detailed Direct Video guide some day 😊
Lol one day I’ll show RF. Why? I don’t even know haha. For nostalgia
like a unmodded Atari 2600 or unmodded top loader NES or a original famicom, those are only RF
This is true
Is it possible to save anywhere in the game?