PTherapist wrote on Yesterday, 19:55:

Another retro-related activity today, a bit more successful and fun. […]
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Another retro-related activity today, a bit more successful and fun.

I bought some converters from Aliexpress.

An ODV Composite & S-Video to Component Converter & a Component to RGB Scart Converter:

The attachment odv-c64-1.jpg is no longer available

The ODV does line doubling to 480p/576p with smoothing options and correct 240p/288p handling on modern TVs etc, but that's not what I purchased it for.

Instead I'm taking it's output in passthrough mode and putting it into the pictured Component to RGB Scart Adapter. So, Composite or S-Video goes in and gets converted to Component which is then fed into the 2nd converter and converted to RGB.

The result is the ultimate trolling, a Commodore 64 displaying on an Amstrad Monitor 🤣 -

The attachment odv-c64-2.jpg is no longer available

I now have a nifty way to pretty much connect any of my computers and consoles to the Amstrad Monitor. It was a bit limiting only being able to connect RGB Scart devices, so these 2 converters are ideal.

I need to look into the off-center positioning. I know Aliexpress also has those Scart Picture Shifters with potentiometers, which I may consider in the new year to solve this minor issue.

cool setup. im also a CTM644 enjoyer 😀,

had my monitor since i was a kid bit over 30yrs, still works great after sitting in my loft for 25yrs.
i got it out about a yr ago and finally got round to wiring up a scart to din, picture quality is sharp. only issue i had with RGB scart consoles is the brightness was too low, despite being fine with the amstrad, i found theres a secondary brightness pot inside labeled "sub-bright", i set the brightness on the side of the set to half then adjusted the sub bright pot inside slightly till i had it just right. i still find myself adjusting it constantly for each game for the best look.

as for the off centre problem i also had the same issue with the screen being a couple of mm off centre, on the back of the set theres a hole by the v-hold knob, should be labeled H-hold, this is to centre the screen, you'll need a small flat head screwdriver to fit in the hole.

another good thing about these set is you can adjust the v-hold knob on the back for a stable 60hz. i was also looking at a way to hook up my nes, your adapter setup seems to be a better option that what im using. ive got compostite running through a dvd/vhs combo which is outputting RGB scart to the monitor. ive heard these monitors do support composite but only in black and white which isnt much use.

i saw these adapters a while back, i dont think they still sell them though they do have an ebay store so might be worth finding out more about them, they have connections for svideo and composite though im not sure if they are inputs or outputs

It's almost 8 AM my time, kinda pulling an all-nighter. Last night I brought home a SCSI hard drive to test it in my Macintosh LC III. A couple of nights ago, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my HP Vectra tower from 1999. It wouldn't display a video mode compatible with my monitor, on ANY vga= setting, so I had to drop to a virtual console. xrandr wouldn't even work because Screen0 couldn't be opened. I referenced the monitor's manual to find its specs and edited my xorg.conf file accordingly. Then it worked like a charm.

s0s wrote on Today, 14:05:

It's almost 8 AM my time, kinda pulling an all-nighter. Last night I brought home a SCSI hard drive to test it in my Macintosh LC III. A couple of nights ago, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my HP Vectra tower from 1999. It wouldn't display a video mode compatible with my monitor, on ANY vga= setting, so I had to drop to a virtual console. xrandr wouldn't even work because Screen0 couldn't be opened. I referenced the monitor's manual to find its specs and edited my xorg.conf file accordingly. Then it worked like a charm.

That is the 90s Linux/Xorg experience in a nutshell..

Found out that Virtual PC 2007 doesn't work on Ryzen, or perhaps the other way around, that Ryzen can't run Virtual PC 2007. DOS will boot but 32-bit stuff crashes. Toggling hardware-assisted virtualization changes exactly when some things crash, but they still crash either way. I played around with an old version of Bochs a little bit, and found it to be user unfriendly in the extreme. The default settings are nothing close to anything working. When you change any settings, you have to manually save the new settings to a file (and confirm overwrite!). Then when you try to start emulation and get any kind of error, the program automatically closes, reverting back to the default settings when you relaunch it. Blargh.

appiah4 wrote on Today, 14:46:

s0s wrote on Today, 14:05:

It's almost 8 AM my time, kinda pulling an all-nighter. Last night I brought home a SCSI hard drive to test it in my Macintosh LC III. A couple of nights ago, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my HP Vectra tower from 1999. It wouldn't display a video mode compatible with my monitor, on ANY vga= setting, so I had to drop to a virtual console. xrandr wouldn't even work because Screen0 couldn't be opened. I referenced the monitor's manual to find its specs and edited my xorg.conf file accordingly. Then it worked like a charm.

That is the 90s Linux/Xorg experience in a nutshell..

Yeah, thankfully the days of dependency hell are (mostly) over. I honestly don't mind Linux problems too much, because it's fun to attack them from different angles until you fix it. Then you just gained another story to tell. I remember one time when I still lived with my parents, I had an old PC with Linux installed. One time something happened to it, and it wasn't able to display ANYTHING. I simply connected an old laptop to it with a serial cable and null-modem adapter. I was able to fix it from the console on the laptop. I love serial ports.

bakemono wrote on Today, 14:48:

Found out that Virtual PC 2007 doesn't work on Ryzen, or perhaps the other way around, that Ryzen can't run Virtual PC 2007. DOS will boot but 32-bit stuff crashes. Toggling hardware-assisted virtualization changes exactly when some things crash, but they still crash either way. I played around with an old version of Bochs a little bit, and found it to be user unfriendly in the extreme. The default settings are nothing close to anything working. When you change any settings, you have to manually save the new settings to a file (and confirm overwrite!). Then when you try to start emulation and get any kind of error, the program automatically closes, reverting back to the default settings when you relaunch it. Blargh.

What Ryzen? they had some legacy support problems that were fixed in 3rd gen.

DudeFace wrote on Today, 10:58:

cool setup. im also a CTM644 enjoyer :), […]
Show full quote

PTherapist wrote on Yesterday, 19:55:

Another retro-related activity today, a bit more successful and fun. […]
Show full quote

Another retro-related activity today, a bit more successful and fun.

I bought some converters from Aliexpress.

An ODV Composite & S-Video to Component Converter & a Component to RGB Scart Converter:

The attachment odv-c64-1.jpg is no longer available

The ODV does line doubling to 480p/576p with smoothing options and correct 240p/288p handling on modern TVs etc, but that's not what I purchased it for.

Instead I'm taking it's output in passthrough mode and putting it into the pictured Component to RGB Scart Adapter. So, Composite or S-Video goes in and gets converted to Component which is then fed into the 2nd converter and converted to RGB.

The result is the ultimate trolling, a Commodore 64 displaying on an Amstrad Monitor 🤣 -

The attachment odv-c64-2.jpg is no longer available

I now have a nifty way to pretty much connect any of my computers and consoles to the Amstrad Monitor. It was a bit limiting only being able to connect RGB Scart devices, so these 2 converters are ideal.

I need to look into the off-center positioning. I know Aliexpress also has those Scart Picture Shifters with potentiometers, which I may consider in the new year to solve this minor issue.

cool setup. im also a CTM644 enjoyer 😀,

The attachment Aleste 2-PS2-fmsx core-15khz-RGB-CTM644 60hz.jpg is no longer available

had my monitor since i was a kid bit over 30yrs, still works great after sitting in my loft for 25yrs.
i got it out about a yr ago and finally got round to wiring up a scart to din, picture quality is sharp. only issue i had with RGB scart consoles is the brightness was too low, despite being fine with the amstrad, i found theres a secondary brightness pot inside labeled "sub-bright", i set the brightness on the side of the set to half then adjusted the sub bright pot inside slightly till i had it just right. i still find myself adjusting it constantly for each game for the best look.

as for the off centre problem i also had the same issue with the screen being a couple of mm off centre, on the back of the set theres a hole by the v-hold knob, should be labeled H-hold, this is to centre the screen, you'll need a small flat head screwdriver to fit in the hole.

another good thing about these set is you can adjust the v-hold knob on the back for a stable 60hz. i was also looking at a way to hook up my nes, your adapter setup seems to be a better option that what im using. ive got compostite running through a dvd/vhs combo which is outputting RGB scart to the monitor. ive heard these monitors do support composite but only in black and white which isnt much use.

i saw these adapters a while back, i dont think they still sell them though they do have an ebay store so might be worth finding out more about them, they have connections for svideo and composite though im not sure if they are inputs or outputs

The attachment Amstrad CTM-644 Monitor Scart Adaptor NEW.jpg is no longer available

Thanks for the info regarding H-Hold, it did help a bit and I could probably live with the way it is now.

With regards to the V-Hold, I found that if I was patient enough and super precise, I could set it to just the correct position that it would correctly sync PAL & NTSC from my PS1 automatically. 🤣

One of those Retro Shack adapters would have been ideal, but as you say they don't appear to be available anymore unfortunately. The combination of 2 adapters was about the best option I could find. Not cheap though, for the price I paid I could have just bought a better CRT TV instead haha, but that'd be no fun.

I did the sub bright adjustments a few months back myself too, as well as tweaking the other internal brightness pot. I also had to tweak the red colour levels on mine, as the red levels were really low and barely showing up in 240p Test Suite colour bars.