tabm0de wrote on 2023-11-16, 15:12:

Never tested the generic vga frame grabber, didnt even know there was one ;) seems to cost around $60 and the example i can find […]
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creepingnet wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:36:

Well, my Fosmon VGA to Composite Converter just died, I figured I'd give a little review of it here and tell what's next. […]
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Well, my Fosmon VGA to Composite Converter just died, I figured I'd give a little review of it here and tell what's next.

So my current setup is a late 2015 iMac 21.5" with a Amazon.com bought Composite/S-Video capture USB device, and I would feed my VGA machines into the composite device via a 1/8" stereo to RCA cable for sound, and the Fosmon for VGA.

Firs toff, that little purple Fosmon thing pretty cheaply built. The cables that came with it all crapped out on me in short order, and all they do is lay around on my desk. Later on I was using a 6 foot VGA cable with a pin removed to allow my Compaq Deskpro to be attached. This device was only really good for 640x480p and updward, but I would sometimes manage to force it to use 320x200 or other wacky DOS resolutions by using a laptop computer with it - usually an NEC Versa M/75, P/75, or NanTan FMA9200D - because the LCD controllers on those cause the screen to fit into the Fosmon's window properly in "SimulScan" or "CRT+LCD" mode depending on the computer we're talking about.

On my desktops however, the Fosmon would cut off the right side of the screen or the outer edges, and getting it properly stretched out would not work. Odd since I was using a totally different setup years ago and it worked great till it burned out. It seems the problem with these new Chinese Composite to VGA converters is that they are oriented at MODERN PCs using 640x480 or better resolution , and so the chipsets are limited to that resolution or ghigher, nothing below that. The telltale was when I ran things like Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 in 640x480 or 800x600, I would get the full screen, then drop to DOS and you'd get the edges cut off unless it was a later era laptop that put out a more compatible VGA signal.

THe other problem with the Fosmon was that it looked VERY dim and had poor contrast in Composite, and no adjusting of colors ever worked right with it. In S-Video it looked a lot better but there was a lot of color bleed meaning you had to really turn down the colors. However, the most incredibly janky thing with this device was that it could use either the menu, or two small dip-switches in a square on the side to change between PAL, NTSC-M, or NTSC-J, and I think even SECAM. And the dip switches were broken out of the box a little bit, so sometimes it'd freak out for no reason because the left DIP was "floating" a little bit and the contact made it unreliable.

Toward the end I started having power issues with it both because the soldering inside must have been bad and my USB-to-Barrel Jack cables kept going bad. That's why I ultimately scrapped it recently because I was getting sick of it being so problematic.

So now I'm thinking of trying a more "direct" solution for VGA......

So has anyone used these 1080 generic VGA Frame grabbers with Audio in at all? I'm thinking this might be a great solution, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing here, or any possibility this is meant for higher resolutions like the Fosmon? I may still end up getting it anyway to experiment and pioreer, just wondering if anyone else has used this type of thing before.

Never tested the generic vga frame grabber, didnt even know there was one 😉 seems to cost around $60 and the example i can find on amazon is:

But the user uses vlc, and hard to understand how clean the picture is.

My self i have Startech VGA2HD2 and VGA2HDPRO2, but did only got VGA2HD2 to work with my old computer against elgato 4k dongle.

Cheapest way for capturing vga which is a example "FOINNEX VGA to HDMI Adapter" then a simple hdmi to usb capture dongle from amazon, getting good picture is sadly expensive i think, as i havent tested the "generic vga frame grabber" i cant say if it is good or not from the few pictures on amazon but think the quality is same as the cheap way i mention just built in to one device, would be nice to to see real pictures if some one has a dongle like that and if it supports all resolutions as 320x200/640x400 and 80x25/720x400.

Also note few vga till hdmi comes with new cheaper chip Macro Silicon ms928* chip which does not support the resolutions 320x200/640x400 and 80x25/720x400, older once uses the chip AG02-EX which work with low resolutions which "FOINNEX VGA to HDMI Adapter" uses at the moment but dont know for how long.

Currently I'm running something a little different now. I'm using one of those generic white $6.45 units off of e-bay - the ones without the passthrough, and using it with my laptop computers, and it seems to do really well with 320x200 on most of my machines except the FMA3500C and the Compaq DeskPro 386s/20. I have not tried it on my 486 desktop yet, but if that works great, this could be really kickass for some Let's Plays on a computer that has an AWE-series card under the hood for sound and SVGA that's really screamin' fast (S3805 with 2MB VRAM). I did all of my #DOScember videos on my channel using that this year save for maybe a few of the earlier ones (mostly system profile videos) and it's done pretty well altogether. I did, howeve,r have to boost the audio output from my NEC Versa M/75 using a pair of powered speakers with a headphone jack though. But my FMAK9200 NanTan Laptop works incredibly great with this device. And the picture is great.

I ended up buying an extron 300 a RGB HDMI.
It simply works, it scales everything on the fly, sharp, has no issue with different resolutions switching, nice menu and it adds audio to the HDMI output, it has everything.

Best solution as of now after testing many other ones, it's also relatively cheap.

Kordanor wrote on 2023-11-16, 16:00:

The Retrotink 4k received a pricetag now. Will be 750$.
I will still wait till Reviews for DOS are in and it's available in Europe. Probably dragonbox.de will offer it in germany. Hopefully that will be cheaper than shipping and importing it individually.

That pricetag is kind of crazy..

Well, the datapath, to go-to capture device so far, got a pricetag of 1000$. Just that most of us happened to get some used ones for cheap ^^

appiah4 wrote on 2023-11-20, 11:45:

Kordanor wrote on 2023-11-16, 16:00:

The Retrotink 4k received a pricetag now. Will be 750$.
I will still wait till Reviews for DOS are in and it's available in Europe. Probably dragonbox.de will offer it in germany. Hopefully that will be cheaper than shipping and importing it individually.

That pricetag is kind of crazy..

Yeah, but given the FPGA it uses ALONE made for over half the device's pricetag (Mike had to negotiate some gray-market prices)..

Kordanor wrote on 2023-11-20, 11:50:

Well, the datapath, to go-to capture device so far, got a pricetag of 1000$. Just that most of us happened to get some used ones for cheap ^^

$1000 Datapath is a niche in the retro scene. But unlike the Datapath the Retrotink is made for the scene so you can forget about tangential use benefits when shopping.

iraito wrote on 2023-11-18, 13:48:

I ended up buying an extron 300 a RGB HDMI.
It simply works, it scales everything on the fly, sharp, has no issue with different resolutions switching, nice menu and it adds audio to the HDMI output, it has everything.

Best solution as of now after testing many other ones, it's also relatively cheap.

Looks like real studio equipment 😀

Does it work with 8086-286 and up ( that would be bios and all postings )? the spec says "640x480 to 1920x1200* or 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p".

I would consider testing one then 😀 its seems to need to have a simple adapter for power input added also.

It does, I tried multiple dos games, early win95 and later ones, everything works even weird resolution switching.

I use it only for capturing, so I can't talk about input lag and such.

i bought a 20 eur amazon wonder, just because of the curiosity: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0BW9MK247?psc=1&ref … product_details

the setup, what i used:
p3 with asus v6800 as source (not the best analogue output)
ossc for hdmi output
apple mba m1 with obs

what i really surprised:
* it could accept 70hz, and vga input directly
* if i choose the input resolution to 1080p, it shows the correct 4:3 image in the right position
* at 640x480 with the 320x240 content pixel perfect

what does not really good:
* it does not support too much resolution input profile, and if it does not matches to the real source resolution, it makes an internal scale - eg at 640x400 - stretched to 480p or 1080p
* the image is somehow darker

but anyway, for this price it is useful thingy. ok, it cannot make the datapath output quality, but does the job - and if they can do from a 20 eur "cable" a good scaling, why we do not have a cheap scaler on the market?

here is the capture with the "guermok": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10_rzmdiDk
and with the datapath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do2TkVZr_Yo (genoa vision864 video card)

So, discovering the Datapath card may not be as ideal as some think for DOS capture. Tried using JROK's "Ms. PacPC" in fullscreen mode, and a total of 20% of the image for top and bottom are completely cut off. Looks fine on the Datapath via OSSC.

Though (as with amy 4:3 source), my EVGA XR1 Pro always seems to stretch the image to 16:9.

You cannot find more flexible card, than the datapath 😀 just you have to configure it properly.

arncht wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:02:

You cannot find more flexible card, than the datapath 😀 just you have to configure it properly.

The question is, is it better to have an incredibly flexible but also expensive as all hell capture card or an incredibly flexible scaler (extron) with a good modern capture card that costs way less together than the datapath alone?

The datapath is a professional card with own programmable api, just the retro freaks started to buy the old cheap cards. I do not think, somebody here payed the original price, probably it was cheaper than the modern capture card alone w/o the scaler. If the best capture quality is the target with wide frequency support, with a lot of calibration possibilty, you cannot really find better, max similar good.

arncht wrote on 2023-11-28, 17:43:

The datapath is a professional card with own programmable api, just the retro freaks started to buy the old cheap cards. I do not think, somebody here payed the original price, probably it was cheaper than the modern capture card alone w/o the scaler. If the best capture quality is the target with wide frequency support, with a lot of calibration possibilty, you cannot really find better, max similar good.

Gotta be honest though, empirically between datapath, extron and retrothink i don't see much of a difference, the sharpest seems to be the retrothink with the ability to not only making recording possible but to also play on a modern screen with the sharpest possible picture.
The extron offers a lot of manual settings too (and it's an old professional grade scaler for productions) and gives off the same quality as the datapath from what i can see, i ask myself if the device isn't a bit overrated at this point.

The best of the best seems to be the new retrothink without a question.

NightSprinter wrote on 2023-11-28, 14:33:

So, discovering the Datapath card may not be as ideal as some think for DOS capture. Tried using JROK's "Ms. PacPC" in fullscreen mode, and a total of 20% of the image for top and bottom are completely cut off. Looks fine on the Datapath via OSSC.

Though (as with amy 4:3 source), my EVGA XR1 Pro always seems to stretch the image to 16:9.

There isn't just one Datapath card. The VisionRGB-PRO captures the full board, though at least with this Matrox G400 reports the resolution as 772 x 579 and lots of empty space on the sides which I cropped out:

iraito wrote on 2023-11-28, 17:57:

Gotta be honest though, empirically between datapath, extron and retrothink i don't see much of a difference, the sharpest seems […]
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arncht wrote on 2023-11-28, 17:43:

The datapath is a professional card with own programmable api, just the retro freaks started to buy the old cheap cards. I do not think, somebody here payed the original price, probably it was cheaper than the modern capture card alone w/o the scaler. If the best capture quality is the target with wide frequency support, with a lot of calibration possibilty, you cannot really find better, max similar good.

Gotta be honest though, empirically between datapath, extron and retrothink i don't see much of a difference, the sharpest seems to be the retrothink with the ability to not only making recording possible but to also play on a modern screen with the sharpest possible picture.
The extron offers a lot of manual settings too (and it's an old professional grade scaler for productions) and gives off the same quality as the datapath from what i can see, i ask myself if the device isn't a bit overrated at this point.

The best of the best seems to be the new retrothink without a question.

it is a capture card, not a scaler. if you can get the same pixel perfect 1:1 output, they are the same, any another scaling settings you can do eg in the obs (it is way more flexible, than the "hw" scalers).

if you want to use as a scaler, there are better options.

vvbee wrote on 2023-11-29, 06:00:

NightSprinter wrote on 2023-11-28, 14:33:

So, discovering the Datapath card may not be as ideal as some think for DOS capture. Tried using JROK's "Ms. PacPC" in fullscreen mode, and a total of 20% of the image for top and bottom are completely cut off. Looks fine on the Datapath via OSSC.

Though (as with amy 4:3 source), my EVGA XR1 Pro always seems to stretch the image to 16:9.

There isn't just one Datapath card. The VisionRGB-PRO captures the full board, though at least with this Matrox G400 reports the resolution as 772 x 579 and lots of empty space on the sides which I cropped out:
ppc.jpg

I have the E2S, and it only sees the fullscreen mode as 640x480 59.94Hz. Hence the screenshot I provided.

NightSprinter wrote on 2023-11-29, 13:52:

I have the E2S, and it only sees the fullscreen mode as 640x480 59.94Hz. Hence the screenshot I provided.

I have both and have recommended the PRO for DOS many times. They were being handed out for $25 shipped a few years back, hard to beat that.

iraito wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:17:

arncht wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:02:

You cannot find more flexible card, than the datapath 😀 just you have to configure it properly.

The question is, is it better to have an incredibly flexible but also expensive as all hell capture card or an incredibly flexible scaler (extron) with a good modern capture card that costs way less together than the datapath alone?

What modern, cost effective card would you recommend? 😀

anne wrote on 2023-11-29, 20:20:

iraito wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:17:

arncht wrote on 2023-11-28, 16:02:

You cannot find more flexible card, than the datapath 😀 just you have to configure it properly.

The question is, is it better to have an incredibly flexible but also expensive as all hell capture card or an incredibly flexible scaler (extron) with a good modern capture card that costs way less together than the datapath alone?

What modern, cost effective card would you recommend? 😀

Personally i'm loving the live gamer ultra from avermedia, nooooot really that cost effective but i had the luck to buy an almost unused one for 100€ it accepts any kind of refresh, color space, vsync up to 4k and it's portable (needed in my case)
But avermedia produces way less expensive cards that go max to 1080p but still have a lot of refresh etc. options and the same crisp and color correct quality.