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.

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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.

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).

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:

I've always wondered about that too. I did hear that focusing along the corners is more difficult with a flat tube.

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.

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.

Here is someone's holy grail retro/modern gaming setup!

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!

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Can't all be about pinball. Anyone else into retro gaming from their younger days?

I was thinking maybe it was a temporary issue with the CRT but who knows. It's completely gone now.

Hmm, now it's acting up on me again. Thinking it's a power supply problem... guess it may be time to reflow some solder!

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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...

Man that's a shame...

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

I would remove those file names from your posts as they facilitate piracy.

Bump. Show us your setup!

Well 240p on a 36" screen over component looks pretty sharp. Wasn't surprised by the slight blurring because of the bigger screen size as I've heard the scanlines are "fatter" with bigger sets, not to mention the bigger aperture grill ("pixels") certainly doesn't help. I almost modded in s-video to my smaller TV but I'm not confident enough in my precision soldering skills (yet).

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Has anyone tried using RGB SCART with a computer monitor? I heard some monitors won't accept 15kHz signals.

If you just need composite and audio out of a console, it's simpler to do what girloveswaffles suggests and it will yield better picture/audio quality. You're just bypassing the RF modulator that was originally used with very old TVs (late 80s and earlier).

While we're on the subject, it's possible to do the complete opposite with TVs. It's much like adding outputs to consoles, but you're adding extra inputs to your monitor. Here's a great example with RGB.

http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=284

This can also be done to add s-video to composite/RF TVs. Ones with RF only can't be modified (or rather, shouldn't) due to them using a "hot ground" for everything on the monitor chassis.

I'd like to see that article.

Sweet, great idea! Meanwhile I've been moving forward with my s-video input mod for my 20" TV...

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I soldered the Y, C, and grounds into the corresponding inputs on the jungle IC. This kinda works, but the TV won't strip sync from the luminance signal so it still needs to receive sync through the composite input. I don't have a sync stripper to produce composite sync, but fortunately composite video works pretty well without muddling up the picture (video component of the signal is ignored). Dang, I had forgotten how much BETTER s-video is over crapposite. I drilled out an unused hole in the back of the case and mounted the jack to the chassis board. All that's left to do is add AC coupling caps to correct the brightness levels.

Before and after pics. Bye bye dot crawl!

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I don't mean to run this subject into the ground but DANG, I still can't believe how much better the picture looks now! Details are sharper and the color really pops! Text is rich and clean, black levels are amazing! There's no way my flatpanel TV could even come CLOSE to matching a CRT. I can't imagine what a Trinitron would look like! My phone dulled the color in the second and third photos but holy crap, it's amazing now. I can't believe this TV sold for just $80 at Kmart!

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Reminds me of tearing down a whole playfield just to fix a switch. Have you tried memory capacitors?

Has anyone tried gaming on a vintage TV? The picture on those old things is impressive! You can actually see the scanlines with all resolutions. It's like every vintage tube is a Trinitron.

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D'oh, that's only 240 lines. Cameras suck.

Posted this on another forum.

I found an old eMachines 17" PC monitor a while back and decided to build a Windows 98 machine around it. The picture is freaking incredible for a consumer product. I have never seen a Sony PVM but judging by the photos compared to my pictures it looks pretty darn close. The convergence is a bit sloppy at the corners but that's to be expected. It's technically a flat viewing surface but I don't think it's a "flat tube" per say. It may be appropriate to call a good PC monitor a poor man's PVM. It even syncs at 1080p 60Hz but with a bit of overscan. I cannot believe I haven't used a CRT PC monitor for these old CD-ROM games since my high school days. They look like utter crap on my 22" 1080p LCD.

The color saturation is really washed out in these photos but in person this display is gorgeous. A mix of 240p and 480p images, I used a hard edge scanline filter for the 240p ones. Since this monitor is 31kHz only inserting a black line mask reproduces the double strike effect with real scanlines. Some games do this too such as the StarCraft character portraits during campaign mission briefings to save vertical resolution in the sprites. Only the 240p photos are a full frame shot since they blur together past that point with 480p. Screen refresh rate is 120Hz.

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Next week is spring cleanup. Time to stalk the curbs for Trinitrons.

Super Smash Bros. is crazy expensive now too. In fact just about any N64 game these days.

Well, I'm gonna take the full RGB plunge. Got some cables and sockets on order. Will update this thread if successful. Should look like a delicious arcade monitor when I'm finished:

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For anyone who is interested in how this works: every TV from the early 1990s to 2008 has an on-screen display for menus, channel numbers, and captions. This overlay system has two main components: a microcontroller IC and a video IC. The microcontroller generates digital RGB and blanking signals to be used with the video IC's analog RGB inputs. The blanking signal switches the RGB on and off on a per-line basis. By disconnecting these lines, injecting your own RGB, and connecting the blanking input on the video IC to 5v so the RGB display is always on you can effectively turn the TV into an RGB monitor. Some people install a switch to disconnect these inputs and reconnect the microcontroller to allow the original video inputs to be used. I'm thinking of just taking out all of the existing ports, dropping in a single SCART plug, and using one of these from now on. I can wire the 5v coming from my game's video cable to the blanking input and still get a black and white OSD as well as my existing inputs when I disconnect the SCART cable and plug in the RCA adapter.

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It's done! Mwahahahaha! Check it out if you're interested. Amazing results.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/crt-tv-rgb-input-hack-attempt.62175/

No thoughts on SSB64?

Banjo-Kazooie.

Nice! I think 20" is just about right, any bigger and you have to sit father back from a 100lb+ box that takes up the space of a medium sized desk. Plus the convergence is more of an issue with bigger tubes. I like being able to see the phosphors without scooting up 3 feet, it helps smoothen the image.

Run the 240p test suite if you can. This set may be too new to show scanlines at 240p resolution.

To bring some interest back to this thread, I picked up a 1999 17" Sony Trinitron PC monitor from the side of the road during spring cleanup week. It had a slight wang of smoke and a damaged case, but works perfectly. The smell wore off fast. It has awesome color and nearly perfect convergence. Using it for my retro gaming PC. Evidently it sold for $1000 new geared towards office users and Sony boasts its sharpness when using spreadsheet applications, lol. And Trinitron monitors of this era still fetch $150-$300 on the used market!

I recently upgraded the screen in my Gameboy Advance to the replacement AGS-101 used in the GBA SP. The difference is huge! I'll be playing my GBA a lot more now. This video also explains how you not only get an awesome backlit screen with deep blacks and rich color, but also BETTER battery life!

I also bought a SoundBlaster 16 for my retro PC. It's going to be a challenge getting it working but it will be fun. I have several DOS games I want to play just for this.