SteveC wrote:

I assume you did try pressing the button so it resynced the VGA signal?

Yes, I did. I did get it nice and tight around the whole screen, but the wobbling was still there.

Get an Open Source Scan Converter. Its a device designed for retro console gaming on HDTV's. It accepts SCART, component video, and VGA. I haven't used it with a computer, but every old console I've thrown at it has worked beautifully. Check out some reviews. As far as quality is concerned, it's probably your best option, but it will cost you more than just buying a monitor with VGA inputs.

Thanks. I didn't know about the OSSC. It might cost more, but space is a premium, so I might give it a go. I see they even have a kit version. Tempting!!

I've done some messing around this evening and found on different PCs I get different results with that Portta device - I've got a range of IGEL thin clients here of a wide range of ages and chipsets (I'm desperately trying to get sound working in DOS!) and some give me BIOS, some don't, some give me DOS, some don't, but all give me graphics modes. So it does depend on the graphics card used - I was just lucky with the tests I did with the old ThinkPad before - sorry!

I have three problems with devices like:
Startech VGA2HDMIPRO and Gefen and OPEN SOURCE SCAN CONVERTER..
1) They are expensive, 200$.. for simple signal convertor..
2) They are not so simple, i would prefer some which i not have to touch at all.. just connect it between videocard with VGA and modern monitor and i care im in Bios, DOS or in modern Windows with high resolution
3) Its not true for Startech a Gefen, but lots of such device are quite big and i would prefer smaller box

BTW want you thing about Startech and Syba devices, i often see same item no eBay from cheap Asia manufactor and visual same item for they much more expensive, add they to such items some more care, testing, firmware etc.. or they are just overprised, rebranded items form other companies?

ruthan wrote:

I have three problems with devices like: Startech VGA2HDMIPRO and Gefen and OPEN SOURCE SCAN CONVERTER.. 1) They are expensive, […]
Show full quote

I have three problems with devices like:
Startech VGA2HDMIPRO and Gefen and OPEN SOURCE SCAN CONVERTER..
1) They are expensive, 200$.. for simple signal convertor..
2) They are not so simple, i would prefer some which i not have to touch at all.. just connect it between videocard with VGA and modern monitor and i care im in Bios, DOS or in modern Windows with high resolution
3) Its not true for Startech a Gefen, but lots of such device are quite big and i would prefer smaller box

BTW want you thing about Startech and Syba devices, i often see same item no eBay from cheap Asia manufactor and visual same item for they much more expensive, add they to such items some more care, testing, firmware etc.. or they are just overprised, rebranded items form other companies?

Lolz.

1) Opensource converter can't compete in price with massively produced hardware crap. The market for it is niche and small, so them are produced in small quantities. Probably is also the case for Startech and Syba, which although them are cheaper than the OSS option, you have to add the reseller handling costs. Finally, if is so simple as you said, then stop asking for one and build your own signal converter. Is "easy" for you after all.

2) Well... When you convert from VGA to DVI-D or HDMI, you are converting an
Analog signal to a Digital one. Diferences between analogic and digital signal, refresh rate and screen ration make impossible to build an active "automatic" signal converter. The options are there to allow fine tune the conversion quality or adjust it manually if the device fails to do the conversion itself.

3) Opensource converter uses a mass produced standard size case, but you can get one without case and make your own one, and tune it to your specifics. Biggest sized devices are probably professional second hand converters being resold... and them are small enough. I can't think in a scan converter device bigger than these, and still i don't find even the pro ones having an inconvenient size.

Startech and Syba are just reseller brands in western countries for the mass produced chinese crap. They give unnamed devices a brand, package them and take care of the importing and distribution in the destination country. All these things generate a cost, and that's why them cost more than the unnamed stuff you find in Alibaba.

In any case, if you think like this, maybe you are in the wrong hobby. There are simpler and cheaper hobbies you can pick on.

hyoenmadan : Very nasty post, nice piece of demagogy inside, i hope that your ego temporary boosted, because its probably only good outcome from it.

1) If there is massive market for cheaper devices, it means that there could be quite big market for middle class devices too.

2) If it is so complex how its possible that every even cheapest LCD monitor with VGA input could do it too? Its nonsense, that resolution, refresh rate and aspect ration couldnt be detected on both side of cable on input from signal and for monitor there are EDID info.

ruthan wrote:

hyoenmadan : Very nasty post, nice piece of demagogy inside, i hope that your ego temporary boosted, because its probably only good outcome from it.

there is this saying, the truth hurts. He is right, you know.

ruthan wrote:

1) If there is massive market for cheaper devices, it means that there could be quite big market for middle class devices too.

There is not a massive market to begin with. specialized gear for specialized purposes come with a price. You have to realize, that most recommended scalers and converters are either enthusiast gear (framemeister, OSSC) or are (semi-)professional gear repurposed for hobbyist needs. (gefen, extron, etc.) none of this is consumer hardware with a mass market appeal.

But there are cheap devices. They are cheap for a reason, because they are shit. Either they support only a limited set of resolutions (windows resolutions) they introduce massive amounts of lag (cheap RGB to HDMI boxes are notorious for that) or the quality is utter garbage (composite to HDMI, the cheap ones make RF look decent). Also they ALL are incredibly unreliable.

I went to a number of cheap devices over the year before I bit the bullet and shelled out for a Framemeister for RGB, composite, Svideo and component, as well as a gefen VGA to DVI box for VGA. Unlike the cheap crap they actually work, they have good image quality, they are low latency and they are reliable. None of which you will get with cheap garbage

The good devices are not just a simple "signal converter" which from analogue to digital is already non trivial, they are also a scaler and are low latency, or in the case of OSSC a line multiplier with virtually no lag. This combination of features is not simple and doesn't come cheap. Add to that pretty much all of them have low production numbers because of an already small market, you get to the high prices.

ruthan wrote:

2) If it is so complex how its possible that every even cheapest LCD monitor with VGA input could do it too?

High integration and economics of scale. The chipsets used in Displays are highly integrated and do a lot of functions at the same time. There are not individual chipsets that do each connector individually, there is generally one large IC that does it all, including actually controlling the screen. These ICs are made in the millions, that is why they are cheap. Also usually only some of its capabilities are actually exposed on any device, because it is cheaper to make a lot of more capable chips than smaller amounts of more "appropriately" capable ones.

They are however not useful to build a scaler/converter. A scaler/ converter does only a subset of the functions of these ICs, but also some other things these ICs don't have to, so they are designed differently with more specialized ICs that are produced in lower numbers and are therfore more costly.

ruthan wrote:

Its nonsense, that resolution, refresh rate and aspect ration couldnt be detected on both side of cable on input from signal and for monitor there are EDID info.

EDID was first introduced in 1994 with the introduction of the DDC channel as part of a vesa standard and before that there was NO standard way for a display to provide any information. On consumer electronics EDID only became relevant with HDMI because before that we had fixed "resolutions" with PAL and NTSC. Retro gaming/computing has a lot of hardware that either does not support EDID at all, or so poorly that it is useless. Also, EDID tells an attached device the capabilities of a display, not the other way around,

Also, as the scalers prove, the resolutions and display modes CAN be detected, it is just not nearly as simple as you want it to be and it involves specialized hardware and software and an awful lot of math and assumptions.

I didn't realize recommending the OSSC would spark such a reaction. Here's the pros and cons from my experience with it.

Cons:
It's expensive. Not as much as a framemeister, but definitely a lot higher than other cheaper alternatives.
It requires taking some time to learn how all the various menu functions work. It's not hard, but to get the most out of it, you'll need to spend maybe 30 minutes reading through the wiki and testing it out.

Pros:
Firmware updates increase compatibility and add new functionality on a regular basis.
Since it's only a linedoubler and not a proper scaler, it introduces no lag between inputs and output.
It has a lot of cool features, such as triple and quadruple line double modes (makes old game consoles look super crisp on an HDTV) in addition to scanline overlays.

I went down the road of trying cheap analog to digital converters and never got a satisfactory result. I finally bit the bullet and got the OSSC, and I've been immensely satisfied with it. HDMI has always been very finnicky about what it will accept (and this largely goes to what TV you're using), but so far the OSSC has been a beast with anything I've thrown at it. This is definitely beyond the scope of what the original poster wants to do, but the OSSC and the framemeister are simply the best devices on the market for converting analog video to digital. It's money well spent for those of us who fit that niche.

Koltoroc wrote:

there is this saying, the truth hurts. He is right, you know.

When someone need to use such sentences like do it yourself and other far fetch arguments, he is usually not right.

I feel that i maybe can touch a nerve of someone who already spent lots of money on these boxes. I would really consider such big investment only if user experience would be flawless - connect and forget that your monitor has not VGA input, otherwise i would live with some workaround, or simply wait for better times.

Because i know market works, its nonsense to say that is big market for crap and niche market for premium and nothing between. Maybe its this state quite comfortable for present manufacturers, they just sell fewer items to less customer with huge margin and dont risk bigger investment for bigger cheaper production. Maybe is that such good middle class device and we dont know about it, or it has to come.

Are components used within these devices really so special and expensive even for small orders or we simply dont understand it on such low levels and assume that they are? When see OSSC and its open case, i really feel that for that price i should receive at least proper shielded box.

I think that nature market evolution would be that these most of these cheaper manufacturers of crappy devices will die and few of them would make products better and better to slowly much most of features of now premium ones and middle class would emerge, is not already here.

On consumer electronics EDID only became relevant with HDMI because before that we had fixed "resolutions" with PAL and NTSC.

If remember correctly whole Powerstrip from W9x era was build around displays DDC/EDID info and its long time before HDMI.

Retro gaming/computing has a lot of hardware that either does not support DDC/EDID at all, or so poorly that it is useless

Ok, but we can assume that we really dont need Framemeister it other unversal box which has zillions of features for VGA to DVI/HDMI thing.. also we can assume that if target device is modern LCD without VGA port, so it has DDC/EDID support => i dont see any retro element involved.

RichPimp wrote:

I didn't realize recommending the OSSC would spark such a reaction. Here's the pros and cons from my experience with it.

I dont see any mistake on your side, or you could predict our further discussion. I dont mind to discuss something, but i dont like that used style of argumentation.

It requires taking some time to learn how all the various menu functions work. It's not hard, but to get the most out of it, you'll need to spend maybe 30 minutes reading through the wiki and testing it out.

Its not primary about learning, its about comfort. Its like difference between car it manual and automatic transmission in car, when i have possibility to not do that stupid hand movement during driver, i choose car with automat. I want to play quick as possible not spend time on setup things. Other disadvantage from life experience that if setup it once and you its working fine.. and it take months or years to situation when you need to setup again and you again new to spent time to relearn thing, often you have couple of friend waiting behind you which want to play.. I prefer keep such things simple and automatic as possible.

BTW i hope that at least some youtube will start to review such devices and will create some comparison tables/videos etc.. because some far i saw only some very long video reviews of these very expensive boxes.

ruthan wrote:

I feel that i maybe can touch a nerve of someone who already spent lots of money on these boxes. I would really consider such big investment only if user experience would be flawless - connect and forget that your monitor has not VGA input, otherwise i would live with some workaround, or simply wait for better times.

I spent more money on the cheap boxes combined than I spent on the framemeister and gefen VGAtoDVI box combined. The cheap crap didn't work, Framemeister and the gefen box do. I should have bought them directly instead of trying to "save" money.

ruthan wrote:

Because i know market works, its nonsense to say that is big market for crap and niche market for premium and nothing between. Maybe its this state quite comfortable for present manufacturers, they just sell fewer items to less customer with huge margin and dont risk bigger investment for bigger cheaper production. Maybe is that such good middle class device and we dont know about it, or it has to come.

The market is tiny. there are enthusiasts and professionals that use gear like that and the professional market is actually shrinking because most signal chains today are more and more purely digital. In fact a lot of the (semi-)professional analogue gear we can buy used today is from companies that get rid of it because they don't need it any longer. Once all of that is gone for a while, it will get even more expensive and community driven projects like the OSSC will be the only viable options left. It is only a matter of time now when the market is only made up of the enthusiasts.

The average consumer will not bother with old hardware. They will either get things like the SNES mini, or use emulation.

ruthan wrote:

Are components used within these devices really so special and expensive even for small orders or we simply dont understand it on such low levels and assume that they are? When see OSSC and its open case, i really feel that for that price i should receive at least proper shielded box.

Yes, the components used ARE that expensive. The OSSC main chip is an altera cyclone IV FPGA IIRC, that should cost 50-100 dollar per piece. Add to that PCb manufacturing that is not particularly cheap either, all the conncetors and other ICs, and you get a rather expensive to make device. They are unliklely to make more than a few bucks of profit per unit. And that is with free community driven software development. If it was a traditional company that would do all software development in house you could expect the price to be double of what it is. the OSSC realistically *is* a bargain.

Also be glad the case is "only" lasercut acryllic, to provide a proper molded case they would have to pay 50k+ in setup costs. Granted mass production would be incredibly cheap for that case then, but considering the market size they would never make that investment back at that price.
But I am sure they would be delighted to provide you with a molded case should you donate the money necessary to produce the molds

There is a reason pretty much all community driven hardware projects have either lasercut acryllic cases or provide the files to 3d print a case yourself.

BTW, the Framemeister will go out of production once micomsoft runs out of stock of the main IC. That IC went EOL last year and micomsoft bought up all remaining stock.

ruthan wrote:

I think that nature market evolution would be that these most of these cheaper manufacturers of crappy devices will die and few of them would make products better and better to slowly much most of features of now premium ones and middle class would emerge, is not already here.

the cheap devices exist precisely *because* they are cheap. They also happen to be shit. There is simply no market big enough to support R&D for "middle class" devices or even new professional ones. Community driven projects are pretty much the only viable solutions going forward.

ruthan wrote:

On consumer electronics EDID only became relevant with HDMI because before that we had fixed "resolutions" with PAL and NTSC.

If remember correctly whole Powerstrip from W9x era was build around displays DDC/EDID info and its long time before HDMI.

personal computers don't fall under consumer electronics, consoles, mediaplayers (DVD, VHS, etc) and TVs do.

Also I did mention that EDID/DDC is from 1994. For the first few years it was also rather useless, either broken on a device or driver level or outright unsupported by cheap hardware. And everything pre-1994 obviously didn't have it.

ruthan wrote:

Retro gaming/computing has a lot of hardware that either does not support DDC/EDID at all, or so poorly that it is useless

Ok, but we can assume that we really dont need Framemeister it other unversal box which has zillions of features for VGA to DVI/HDMI thing.. also we can assume that if target device is modern LCD without VGA port, so it has DDC/EDID support => i dont see any retro element involved.

The displays EDID is only visible to the converter. Analogue signal sources dont care about EDID info of a digital Display. It is the job of the converter box to translate the analogue signal into a digital one the display can understand. That means active processing and in case the signal does not get converted properly (which will inevitably happen) you need the complex settings to compensate for issues. There is only so much that can be done automatically, you will have to manually adjust settings sooner or later.

ruthan wrote:

Its not primary about learning, its about comfort. Its like difference between car it manual and automatic transmission in car, when i have possibility to not do that stupid hand movement during driver, i choose car with automat. I want to play quick as possible not spend time on setup things. Other disadvantage from life experience that if setup it once and you its working fine.. and it take months or years to situation when you need to setup again and you again new to spent time to relearn thing, often you have couple of friend waiting behind you which want to play.. I prefer keep such things simple and automatic as possible.

An interesting analogy you made here, quite applicble, but not like you intended. It is more like that

Someone (you) who is only uesd to driving cars with automatic gearbox (digital video) now wants to use a car with manual gearbox (analogue video) but doesn't want want to deal with the complexities of a manual gearbox.

You will have to learn how to make that old hardware usable in a modern environment. You will never get the simplicity and comfort of modern digital devices with old hardware. They were never intended that way. You will have to learn how to make that old hardware usable in a modern environment and you will have to make compromises in comfort and usability.

The only easy solution for retrogaming is emulation. The moment you start playing with old hardware you will have to learn and you will have to improvise. There are no "one click" solutions for most issues you will come across. You will have to work with what actually exists, and not with what you *want* to exist.

If the current solutions are insufficient for you you have to either create a solution yourself or you have to take what exists and make it work for you. there are no magic solutions to be found.

The Startech VGA2HDMIPro can be found cheaply if you create an eBay search, set up alerts, and wait.

It's **absolutely not** worth the RRP, but can be had reasonably (~$100).

I got one and use it for streaming old PC's on to Twitch. I have it set to always output 720p60, hit the "auto adjust" once at power-up, and it's right for the duration. It has its shortfalls (like the short blanking when switching modes), but is a great performer for the price. Importantly, it downsamples 70Hz to 60Hz for POST / Mode 13h content. Albeit with tearing, but you're going to have interference one way or another showing 70Hz content in a 60FPS capture or stream.

Another user on here complained that it had bad ringing when showing bright reds, but I haven't had that.

Koltoroc: Thanks for explanation, i will still keep my hope that some new good device with $100 price tag will emerge.. These Startech VGA2HDMIPro are something like that, but they are seems to be for now available for such price only in USA and shipping and taxes make it unreasonable. It would like to see some review. BTW have some of these device something like upgradable firmware if there is lost of software involved?

Koltoroc wrote:

The moment you start playing with old hardware you will have to learn and you will have to improvise. There are no "one click" solutions for most issues you will come across. You will have to work with what actually exists, and not with what you *want* to exist.

In way how i make money is lots of reverse engineering, i dont need to be mentored in this area. But from my experience people often doing lots of unnecessary magic steps to make something to work and there is lots of urban legends.. I only trying to make it simple as possible, i already have too many boxes on and under my desk and in drawers etc.. and much better if box could somewhere under table or place when it doesnt need to be accessed during usual operation..

Hello

I would like to get an HDMI signal from my old IBM ValuePoint - 6382 computer

http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/f02e.htm

There is an S3 graphics card on the motherboard. I bought a simple VGA-HDMI converter and of course the problems started. The IBM logo is visible, later when DOS loads it is already a black screen and the message "no signal" on the TV. The converter in the specification supports a resolution of 640x480 but it does not work.

I wanted to ask which solution from the ones you provided would be the best, i.e. that it would have a fairly nice image, preferably in native resolution, possibly in 1080.

I thought about five possibilities:

1. OSSC
2. Portta (metal big)
3. VGA2HDMIPRO or VGA2HDPRO2
4. PremiumCord VGA + Audio Converter -> HDMI
5. Hammerhead

What would be the best someone tested?

You're not going to be able to scale to 1080p and have a nice image. If you do that, the image will at the very least be stretched.

If you want to run the monitor at 1080p, you will need a scaler that can letterbox the output so the image displayed on the screen will be the correct aspect ratio. A monitor that has a letterbox setting would also work... sets the monitor to run at native resolution and then just displays the incoming image at the resolution the image is at... aka.. only uses part of the display for the incoming image.

The reason that DOS doesn't show up is because it is running in a lower resolution than 640x480 and probably at 70Hz.

The best solution I have found is a combination of a scaler and then a converter to go to HDMI if you really must have HDMI. I use a capture device that accepts a VGA signal so I don't have to worry about that part of the conversion.

Anyway, the scaler is a tvone-task 1T-C2-400 (supports up to 2048x2048 input and output as well as any refresh up to 250Hz)
https://tvone.com/products/130-1t-c2-400
https://tvone.com/filestore/Manuals-Other-Pro … ES-V3.00-US.pdf

It is a cross-scaler... you can scale up or down... you can input one refresh rate and output another refresh rate. You can change all the timings. It basically lets you configure absolutely everything.

It has VGA in and VGA out and it has a program that you use to set up whatever settings you can possibly think of. It hooks up to your computer via a serial cable.

I got a couple of them a couple years ago off of eBay after trying a bunch of different scalers and converters.

Way way better at doing whatever you want than any of the cheaper, non-configurable scalers that I have tested.

To hook it up you would go out from the computer to the vga input on the scaler.. then out from that you will go to an vga-HDMI adapter then to your monitor.

It does have some pre-sets already configured from the factory, but you would most likely need to set up your display resolutions and timings manually to make it do exactly what you want it to. Having the timing, resolutions, etc. specifications for your specific monitor will help a lot instead of having to use a shotgun approach and try to find something that works properly.

A non-configurable unit is just not going to be able to have everything just work as expected.

Almost all of the newer scalers do not have actual support for the lower DOS resolutions.. they have a minimum resolution of 640x480 which just isn't going to work.

I like Atlona AT-HD500 scaler, it provide a lot of options, including letterbox. Different sound in/out options for inexpensive price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atlona-AT-HD500-VGA- … le/114191056310

Not sure about refresh rate changing.