d3vilsadvocate wrote on 2023-03-24, 20:38:

I just replaced my new VGA cable with another because I had a very fuzzy output, and lo and behold the image is actually *a lot* better.

If I connect through my Creative Voodoo 2, however, there is a lot of "waves" going from left to right on my screen. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Or do I need another passthrough cable?

At leat, we need a photo of the defect. Are there waves in games when connected directly to the card without pass-through? Btw you can use an ordinary VGA extension cable as a pass-through cable

crapasanya wrote on 2023-03-24, 20:50:

d3vilsadvocate wrote on 2023-03-24, 20:38:

I just replaced my new VGA cable with another because I had a very fuzzy output, and lo and behold the image is actually *a lot* better.

If I connect through my Creative Voodoo 2, however, there is a lot of "waves" going from left to right on my screen. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Or do I need another passthrough cable?

At leat, we need a photo of the defect. Are there waves in games when connected directly to the card without pass-through? Btw you can use an ordinary VGA extension cable as a pass-through cable

No, when I connect to the Geforce 4 (with the same VGA cable), there are no waves.
It's either the cable or the Voodoo 2 I suppose...

Not sure about it being present in games, will test it tomorrow if I get the chance.

You misunderstood. You can use Voodoo without a pass-through cable. Just plug the vga cable into the main pideo card, launch the game and plug it into Voodoo when the screen goes black and you hear the sounds of the game. So we can understand if the cable or Voodoo gives these artifacts

crapasanya wrote on 2023-03-24, 21:21:

You misunderstood. You can use Voodoo without a pass-through cable. Just plug the vga cable into the main pideo card, launch the game and plug it into Voodoo when the screen goes black and you hear the sounds of the game. So we can understand if the cable or Voodoo gives these artifacts

oh good idea, I'll try that thanks

Not a defect. Voodoo2s are known to have this interference.

crapasanya wrote on 2023-03-24, 21:21:

You misunderstood. You can use Voodoo without a pass-through cable. Just plug the vga cable into the main pideo card, launch the game and plug it into Voodoo when the screen goes black and you hear the sounds of the game. So we can understand if the cable or Voodoo gives these artifacts

looks like it's the gpu, it also happens ingame when the other card is not connected...

Can you post pics or upload a vid o to YouTube of said waves?

I'll do it tomorrow when I get around to do so

However, when I set the OSSC's Video LPF to 95 Mhz (HDTV II) it disappears completely for most resolutions. There might be faint waves left, but when I switch resolutions back and forth they will disappear completely.

There is a minimal flicker under DOS apps left, I'll see if I can get rid of them somehow as well...

Voodoo2s are just noisy cards. You're on the right track using the OSSC's LPF, but ideally using a lower bandwidth filter would be even better. However it doesn't have that option on the VGA input.

Most add-in cards using the vga external cables resulted in a bad final image quality and the way to compensate that was to use a CRT monitor those cards were oriented to and maybe some higher quality VGA video cards like the Matrox ones that worked really well, as much as they could, with the 3dfx or others secondary cards having a strong and well designed VGA output source compared to MANY other low quality cards depending on many variables and probably after much time also PCB components that are becoming very old.
Also most VGA output cables weren't exactly good ones because an high quality cable for each wire inside the cable really cost a lot and usually only high end professional monitors used those (like Eizo monitors).

I tried some of the other scalers I have (Extron 300 and a cheap active VGA-HDMI scaler) and they all had the same waves and flickering. At least the OSSC lets me reduce them by roughly 80% which makes it usable overall.

I decided to get a second VGA cable and manually switch between VGA outputs instead of using the Voodoo + passthrough image permanently. It's a slight hassle but I figured that adding a KVM on top of everything isn't going to improve image quality...

I actually designed and produced an inline VGA LPF dongle for use with my voodoo2 and the OSSC. Then an OSSC firmware update came out which allowed you to source sync from AV3 and RGB from AV1 or 2. Doing this allows you to utilize the superior low pass filter settings available on AV1/2 since those inputs run through the THS7353 (as opposed to AV3 which connects directly to the TVP7002). The downside of this solution is you either need a matrix switch to connect both OSSC inputs to the same source, or to manually route the signals using VGA-BNC breakout cables. (HV sync to AV3, RGB to AV2) This was no problem for me since I use a matrix switch anyway. Applying the 35MHz LPF setting of the THS buffer really cleans up the v2 signal admirably and makes it almost perfect.

But the final hack is to just switch to a voodoo3 since they have clean output to begin with 😀 I finally did that this year

That sounds... complicated.
My go-to solution right now is to have 2 vga cables routed to the OSSC and just switch between them. Works pretty well and the ripples aren't that noticeable ingame.

I considered a Voodoo 3 but it's much slower than my Geforce 4 Ti 4200. And having both is supposedly a hassle, so...