We got into some interesting topics in the Analogue HD NES thread regarding retro gaming stuff and Goodwill finds, so if you are into retro gaming or old A/V equipment this is the thread to talk old tech.
Some Super Mario World on my 14" old school tube set. I've got a lead on a bigger TV that I will dedicate to just retro gaming/old TV shows.
Quoted from radium:Hmm... I've got a 32" Sony CRT sitting in my garage to be thrown out. Never thought of using it for old gaming.
Then again... the thing is sooooo damn heavy.
I still use my Sony 36" vega xbr400 for retro consoles like the Dreamcast and use the component inputs for the SNES and RGB modded N64. Not many pixels due to the up scaling. This set weights in at 240 lbs. the 40" was 325 lbs or equal to 1 Twilight Zone pinball. You should drag that 32" back into the house! I just got a Sony 27" CRT Trinatron with s video and component inputs for free on CL Anchorage as a back up for when this beast finally dies.
Quoted from radium:Hmm... I've got a 32" Sony CRT sitting in my garage to be thrown out. Never thought of using it for old gaming.
Then again... the thing is sooooo damn heavy.
Don't get rid of it, it's a freaking Trinitron. Hook it up to your old NES/SNES/Genesis/N64/PSX and it will look fantastic. People are giving this old stuff away and gamers have kind of built their own retro "shrine" around them complete with surround system, multiple consoles, and switch boxes. To me there is no comparison between using an old TV and a new flatscreen. The scanlines and artifacts of old monitors hide the pixels and jaggies of old low resolution systems. I can almost guarantee you the games you played when you were young won't look half as good as they used to on LCD/LED TVs. I stopped playing my N64 because I just couldn't stand it on my ~40" LCD. The picture was washed out, pixelated, and off-center. They weren't designed around this type of display.
Quoted from LITZ:I still use my Sony 36" vega xbr400 for retro consoles like the Dreamcast and use the component inputs for the SNES and RGB modded N64. Not many pixels due to the up scaling. This set weights in at 220 lbs. the 40" was around 270 lbs if I remember correctly. You should drag that 32" back into the house! I just got a Sony 27" CRT Trinatron with s video and component inputs for free on CL Anchorage as a back up for when this beast finally dies.
Unfortunately the Sony Wega sets upscale the 240p image to 480p or higher, so you don't get the scanlines. Still good color and constrast though compared to other stuff that isn't even compatible with this type of signal. I love S-video, it's not as good as RGB of course but it's a huge step up from composite (which is a minimal improvement over RF).
Quoted from Crash:People are giving this old stuff away and gamers have kind of built their own retro "shrine" around them complete with surround system, multiple consoles, and switch boxes. To me there is no comparison between using an old TV and a new flatscreen.
Yep, my wife thinks my retro "shrine" is ridiculous until it is time for her to play Mario Kart 64 and battle it out with me on Dr. Mario. I hope the analogue nt ends up looking nice on my Panisonic ZT60 plasma...fingers crossed. Oh and if you have a multicade...nothing available brand new on the mkt IMO beats the 27" Makvision CRT arcade monitor.
ebay.com link: Makvision 24 8 Tri Mode Flat Monitor CGA EGA VGA REPLACEMENT FOR GUN GAMES
Quoted from radium:Hmm... I've got a 32" Sony CRT sitting in my garage to be thrown out. Never thought of using it for old gaming.
Then again... the thing is sooooo damn heavy.
It's always amazed me how heavey Sony CRT sets were compared to other brands. Had a Sony 25" set that took two people to move. Also had a Panasonic 25" set that I could carry with some effort.
Quoted from Crash:Don't get rid of it, it's a freaking Trinitron. Hook it up to your old NES/SNES/Genesis/N64/PSX and it will look fantastic. People are giving this old stuff away and gamers have kind of built their own retro "shrine" around them complete with surround system, multiple consoles, and switch boxes.
Not a week goes by that I don't see something like that sitting on the curb in front of a house in the neighborhood (or an DLP set!). Shame that they go to waste like that.
I drove around town for a little while during spring pickup week and saw three sets on the curb. Two were on the same street and were picked up before I got a chance to check them out. Another was a 27" model with component inputs in someone's front yard. Two of them were flat CRT Philips, one was a standard bubble tube. Seems like flat Philips TVs are common recycling material these days. I personally like mid to late 90s curved screen TVs with s-video inputs. To me the flat screen ones have oversized bezels and don't look as sharp (probably because of the upscaling).
It never ceases to amaze me the things people will just dump in their front yard. Perfectly working electronics that someone could use! A lot of people will tape the remotes to them with a "free" sign. And even then nobody wants them. Gotta have that large flatscreen! Prime examples:
Quoted from Crash:I drove around town for a little while during spring pickup week and saw three sets on the curb. Two were on the same street and were picked up before I got a chance to check them out. Another was a 27" model with component inputs in someone's front yard. Two of them were flat CRT Philips, one was a standard bubble tube. Seems like flat Philips TVs are common recycling material these days. I personally like mid to late 90s curved screen TVs with s-video inputs. To me the flat screen ones have oversized bezels and don't look as sharp (probably because of the upscaling).
Projecting an image on a "Flat" CRT is a lot more complicated than a standard CRT. The beam has to be focuses differently from the edges to the center of the screen because there's less curve, the center is closer than the edges are to the electron emitter, so the set is constantly adjusting the focus as it scans. That's why it probably doesn't look as sharp.
Quoted from girloveswaffles:Projecting an image on a "Flat" CRT is a lot more complicated than a standard CRT. The beam has to be focuses differently from the edges to the center of the screen because there's less curve, the center is closer than the edges are to the electron emitter, so the set is constantly adjusting the focus as it scans. That's why it probably doesn't look as sharp.
Thanks for the tech explanation on this. I'd rather have the flat screen, but the focus thing is super annoying..
I've always wondered about that too. I did hear that focusing along the corners is more difficult with a flat tube.
I have the Toshiba 34" model of your first youtube link, its great. NES/SNES/N64 and arcade emulating games look fantastic. I hope I can keep it running forever.
Yeah I've seen that exact model before, it's a nice TV. Pretty amazing it used to sell for nearly $1000! Connect your consoles using S-video and you'll be set. And it's not just the 4th and 5th generation consoles, PS2/XBOX/Gamecube games look great too.
Last year I toyed around with projectors and old consoles. Could never get the clarity of a CRT from my cheap projector (250.00), yes fun to play on a huge image but just felt too blurry.
When space becomes available I may look for a crt for retro gaming. My mame cabinet has a amazing crt monitor and that always brings a smile to my face how it is just arcade perfect on everything but vector games.
Have commodore 64, Amiga 500/2000, genesis and an intellivision going. Running them on my flat screen ok. Still have the old commodore monitors as well though. Funny how 15 years ago you couldn't give this stuff away and now it's back on demand. Glad I kept it all.
Quoted from starbase:Last year I toyed around with projectors and old consoles. Could never get the clarity of a CRT from my cheap projector (250.00), yes fun to play on a huge image but just felt too blurry.
When space becomes available I may look for a crt for retro gaming. My mame cabinet has a amazing crt monitor and that always brings a smile to my face how it is just arcade perfect on everything but vector games.
You may want to look for an early 1990s CRT projector. I'd be willing to bet it will show scanlines. Plus, a lot of them will work with 1080i HD signals for your new consoles and you will be avoiding the HDCP mess a lot of older digital projectors will run into. The contrast alone should be superior to a typical color wheel/DLP projector where the "black" pixels are actually gray since there is light coming off the entire lens.
I have also scored a 20" TV given to me by a fellow Pinsider. Now to get it set up with my remote-less sensor bar-less Wii that has Bootmii installed for the ultimate retro emulation machine (plus Wii/Gamecube games 
). The manual clocks the weight in at 55 pounds but there's no way it weighs that much. Seems more like 35-40 pounds.
Does yours have an s-video input? Mine does not but that's probably due to size. Most people wouldn't notice any difference.
When I first turned it on the picture was terribly burry, squished, and had bad color bleed. Was starting to worry I had a dud. So I took the back off and made some adjustments to the G2 and focus voltages and the picture popped back to perfect. So I dunno... it's probably a power supply warm-up period (it's 12 years old so possibly aging caps, though I didn't spot any bulging or leaking caps on the chassis board). Glad I tweaked it anyway because now it looks awesome. I got it from Pintucky for the low low price of free. Now I gotta hope my games won't start speaking Mexican!
Quoted from Crash:When I first turned it on the picture was terribly burry, squished, and had bad color bleed. Was starting to worry I had a dud. So I took the back off and made some adjustments to the G2 and focus voltages and the picture popped back to perfect. So I dunno... it's probably a power supply warm-up period (it's 12 years old so possibly aging caps, though I didn't spot any bulging or leaking caps on the chassis board). Glad I tweaked it anyway because now it looks awesome. I got it from Pintucky for the low low price of free. Now I gotta hope my games won't start speaking Mexican!
image-15.jpg image.jpg image-30.jpg
This is one reason I'm trying to get my hands on a B&K 470 or 480 CRT tester / Rejuvinator. Maybe some tube sets with dim CRTs can be revived or extended.
Right now i'm trying to beat Super C without codes and its a pain in my ass, Contra no problem but Super is taking me a while.
Quoted from sulli10:Any comments on the new NES RETRO systems that are out now. I saw one last night. That could work for 5 systems and cost 139 dollars
The Retron 5 is just an emulator box, it's basically the opposite of what people who are buying RGB displays and worrying about scanlines are after.
Not having to mess with making monitors perfect is one of my favorite parts of pinball, so I'm happy with my regular old 24" flatscreen Trinitron. One day I might get crazy about this stuff but hopefully not to the point where I'm collecting and refurbishing different CRTs 
Quoted from girloveswaffles:This is one reason I'm trying to get my hands on a B&K 470 or 480 CRT tester / Rejuvinator. Maybe some tube sets with dim CRTs can be revived or extended.
I was thinking maybe it was a temporary issue with the CRT but who knows. It's completely gone now.
I made one of these last week, its pretty good. Does NES/SNES great, Sega seems to work fine, and the a lot of Mame games work fine.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-retro-game-console-498561192
Troubleshooting monitors is a bitch, it's why I got out of arcade games.
Troubleshooting TVs is ten times a bitch, because of all the extra circuitry to do stupid things. Take it to your local mom and pop tv shop, do them a favor. They'll probably have it fixed pretty quick, and you won't have to spend 500 bucks trying to find a rejuvinator that's been obsolete for 20 years, or deal with hazardous voltages yourself.
Has anyone else seen the crazy prices on certain N64 games lately? For example, Smash Bros. is going for $60 online.
Bump. I found another TV on the street (that works!) so now that is my "new" gaming monitor. It's a 1999 Curtis Mathes Tronics. This brand has a well-regarded reputation so hopefully it won't crap out on me lol...
Curtis Mathes was the top of the line TV at one time, pretty sure I remember that they used to be so good that if one broke Curtis Mathes would repair it for free.
That was once upon a time though, the race to the bottom killed Curtis Mathes and Zenith too in the 80's... thats when people started deciding that $5 cheaper was better, regardless of quality. In the 90's the Curtis Mathes name was owned by K-Mart. They bought whatever TV model they could buy cheapest that month, have the Curtis Mathes nameplate stuck on it and see how many people they could hornswoggle into thinking it was a real Curtis Mathes.
I have a thread for buying and selling retro games, check it out.
As for a monitor, I use lcd's for my gaming party since i like to have multiple systems setup at once around the house. For the hard core shit, i have a really nice 27" data monitor that was a subwoofer built into it. Looks and sounds great.
Can some one recommend where to get REAL svideo or rgb cables for snes n64 dreamcast etc? Seems lik there are a lot of knock offs that dont really work properly. Thanks
A lot of third party cables will just spit out composite video over both luma/chroma pins of the s-video cable. Results in horrible crosstalk like this. If you are not sure if you have a genuine s-video cable either look for this checkerboarding or barely insert the plug into the socket. If you can wiggle it around and cause the color to disappear, that means the signals are properly separated. My third party Wii cable (fortunately) outputs true s-video.
I know someone who just upgraded to a flat screen for their living room. They have this monster 36" Panasonic CRT left over. It's impressive, it's from 2002 and even has component inputs. They said I could have it... lol. Nope... Big. Heavy. But I bet the picture is amazing.
Call me new-fashioned, but I'd still rather play older games on a new HDTV. I never was a huge gamer, but pinball has actually gotten me into playing old games recently. I feel like I missed out on something special because I never frequented the arcade when I was younger. I guess my generation really did kill the arcade scene.
You can also find good deals on CRTs at the Salvation Army and the like. Ya know... if you're into that sort of thing.
Ok now this is pretty friggin' cool. Someone has managed to (successfully) mod an old CRT TV to accept RGB over a VGA connector. Granted it's a set that has s-video but RGB is, according to pretty much everyone, the ultimate holy grail of inputs. Think arcade monitor quality. Basically what he did was disconnect the RGB lines going into the jungle IC on the chassis board for OSD text and short out 5v to the blanking pin.
http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=284
I freaking hate composite. This is all my cheapo Kmart TV has. I may get bored one day and try to hack in an s-video jack...!
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?120515-Anyway-to-mod-a-TV-to-take-S-Video-or-RGB
Quoted from Crash:Ok now this is pretty friggin' cool. Someone has managed to (successfully) mod an old CRT TV to accept RGB over a VGA connector. Granted it's a set that has s-video but RGB is, according to pretty much everyone, the ultimate holy grail of inputs. Think arcade monitor quality. Basically what he did was disconnect the RGB lines going into the jungle IC on the chassis board for OSD text and short out 5v to the blanking pin.
http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=284
I freaking hate composite. This is all my cheapo Kmart TV has. I may get bored one day and try to hack in an s-video jack...!
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?120515-Anyway-to-mod-a-TV-to-take-S-Video-or-RGB
That is just f'ing rad....
Heck you can even drive the gun transistors directly by sending RGB signals to the neck board (using composite sync), but they must be properly terminated and you may have to adjust the horizontal sync timing in the service menu to override the delay originally designed to factor in processing time from the A/V jacks to the neck board. In other words the picture will be offset slightly to one side.
I figure getting s-video to work would be a lot easier, but not every processor IC has inputs for Y/C.
Quoted from girloveswaffles:All I know is I've been playing DooM 64 on a 32" LG LCD, and it's still to damned dark.
You ever play Brutal Doom?
I went through this retro exercise almost 2 years ago. My parents told me to get my crap out of their basement (moved out 12 years ago) and it turned out to be all of my consoles. 2 NES, 1 SNES, 1 TG16 and 1 Sega Genesis and tons of games. Set up the TV downstairs and spent my nights reliving my childhood. get the everdrives for them all and set that up as well. Around the same time, I was building a MAME cabinet so I added all of them to my Hyperspin setup and kind of forgot about he old consoles. I love my retro games but I am fine with playing them on a cabinet, LCD or my main TV in the living room.
Fast forward a bit and since then I have built a mini Cupcade, put a PC (Intel NUC) in an NES (for movies mainly, but I game as well) and my latest endeavor was putting a mini-itx PC in a PS2. I have movie nights outside and wanted something different to play my movie son so I built this and, of course, added a sized down Hyperspin. I have no issues with blurriness or anything on my projector outside. It made its debut last night. Watched Joe Dirt 2 and played some Sunset Riders. Now I just need to build a control panel to use when I play.
For anyone familiar with the video signal side of things, I got this weird idea. I remember accidentally mixing up composite and component connections on my consoles years ago (back when component was a new thing). I mistakenly connected the luma (Y) cable to the composite jack of the set and surprisingly I actually got a picture, but it was in black and white. The reason for this is composite video is basically YCHV, and the green luma connection carries composite style luma and composite sync, but no color information (chroma). Since I hate dot crawl to all ends of the earth theoretically, since chroma is absent, there would be no intermodulation issues with color being removed thus eliminating dot crawl. And just observing the picture with this in mind was noticeably better without all the signal interference. A comb filter was still applied for color separation, reducing sharpness just a bit, but if you have a cheapo TV with no s-video inputs give this a try. It will give you a pretty good idea of what a potential s-video mod could look like. Of course the signal has to be 15kHz 480i or the TV will not sync.
Quoted from playboywillis:You ever play Brutal Doom?
I had not even heard of it before. It kind of looks like a cross between Playstation Doom, Windows Doom and Doom 64.
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/retro-gamingaudiovideo-discussion/page/1 and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.
Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.
Covington, LA
Toronto, ON