You will have no flawless 320x200 on a random LCD TV. This video mode (13h) is a 4:3 mode with non-square pixels. If you want flawless 320x200 LCD, you need some 4:3 monitor. I have the Dell 2007FP, 20" 1600x1200 IPS monitor with VGA, DVI, S-Video and composite video inputs. It displays 320x200 normally, with one pixel being in fact a region of 5x6 real pixels.

With a TV you will not only get distorted image (4:3 converted to 16:9) or large black regions left and right (if you choose 4:3 from TV menu), but also be prepared to have other problems: shifted image missing borders, artifacts, flickering or corrupt regions on screen etc. That depends on the TV itself; my worst experience is with Philips, while Samsung has less problems, at least no flickering.

I suggest either getting a 4:3 1600x1200 monitor, or even a good CRT (Mitsubishi or LaCie or whatever), which are cheap now, save for the fact that larger models are incredibly heavy, 30kgs or even more.

There's gotta be a half-decent external upscaler that pillarboxes...
http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

bristlehog, thank you for your reply. My new TV is a Samsung & allows me to switch to 4:3 aspect ratio & pillarboxing is ok. I do not have a CRT monitor. The idea is to get the largest, sharpest picture possible without buying a projector. My previous Samsung had the VGA port & everything worked great. I didn't suffer with any picture flaws. I did feel that maybe the colors were slightly off, but not too bad.

Stiletto, thank you for the link. I will study my options there.

I was hoping that someone out there may be in my situation & could recommend a good converter box. I have read that there can be lag with some boxes.

So far, I am seeing converters that support only 640x480 & up.

Just buy a CRT, their cheap at thrift stores. No LCD TV will do 4:3 perfectly.

How about a VGA to Component video cable? Might make more sense going to analogue to analogue rather than analogue to Digital, on the plus side you could also have stereo audio on the same av port if your inclined to use your TV/soundsystem.

armankordi, I cannot find a CRT large enough for what I am trying to do. Plus, they are bulky. My older Samsung did do 4:3 perfectly via VGA cable and by setting the picture setting to 4:3.

dirkmirk, I have looked into that a bit, but i am not sure that my video card will support it. It is a Dos/Win 3.1/Win95 era ATI Rage card. I'll try to take a look at it since I cannot remember the exact card.

I am hoping for a cable or converter solutions that will allow 320x200 gaming from VGA to HDMI. The 486 is going into a custom wooden case that is being designed and built to be an addition to our living room. While I see that converters usually start with a supported resolution of 640x480, there must be one that can support 320x200.

I bet their is a product that does Vga 320x200 to Hdmi but it will be one of those stupidly expensive converters, If I were you I'd try one of those cheap ebay Vga to component cables and see if it works, if your serious about it you might be better off selling your TV and upgrading to something with VGA inut, it might work out the more economical solution.

Forget about those cheap adapters they wont work(I assume you knew this anyway).

The first thing I came across that would suit your needs is this "Extron emotia xtreme" its a discontinued product".

"Extron’s Emotia Xtreme is a high resolution scan converter compatible
with resolutions of up to 1600 x 1280 and workstation computers (including
PC, MAC, SUN, SGI and more). The Emotia Xtreme will convert high
resolution computer-video to composite video (NTSC/PAL), Y/C (S-VHS),
component video and RGBS with incredible results. Emotia Xtreme provides
a real time, high resolution output along with professional genlock
capabilities, multi-level anti-flicker, zoom, sizing and positioning capabilities
and 21 preset input memory blocks. Digital signal processing also
offers a full spectrum of 16 million colors."

http://media.extron.com/download/files/brochu … axtremeebro.pdf

On the specification page is says resolutions from 320X200 to 1600X1280, I would assume this would work and their is a 2nd hand one on ebay for $60 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Extron-Emotia-Xtreme- … r-/200964192568 with no power cable, its not HDMI but it might your cheapest way out.

Thanks, dirkmirk! That is definitely as start. I may be able to get away with using a unit like that with component cables. Selling the TV isn't an option. We just bought it & I haggled it down. It Is a Samsung 6350 series.

I have to assume that 320x200 is supported by other converters, even if it isn't stated. If someone is using one for a PC, the user may need to get into the bios, which I believe is still 320x200 on many motherboards. I can't imagine that the display would kick in only when Windows is booted.

What I'd suggest is shooting an email to that hazard-city.de guy asking about it, he seems well informed regarding the best of the cheap scalers, paying attention to lag. Heck, he could maybe even run some tests, he has a big collection.

The real trick is you're going to want to see more than just 300x200. DOS resolutions can be a weird and squirrelly thing when you start taking into account different register hacks, refresh rates, demoscene tricks. If you're only ever going to use one or two games, you should be okay. But it gets weird quite quickly. For evidence of this, see the evolution of h-a-l-9000's experimental VGA patch for DOSBox:
VIDEO - Experimental VGA patch (vgaonly commited)
or the overscan border patch for DOSBox:
VIDEO - Overscan border (SDL1)
or what Gona uses for compatibility testing:
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Monoprice has a VGA to RCA/S-Video adapter for $23.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_ … &seq=1&format=2

I don't know why this one costs $32 when it actually looks slightly less capable.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_ … &seq=1&format=2

The VGA to Component converter is $40.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_ … &seq=1&format=2

And they sell the Useless Cable That Is Useless.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_ … &seq=1&format=2
(I'd like to know if there was ever a video card that could actually use those cables. It seems questionable whether they ever existed.)

Jorpho, the original poster said he wants to upscale to high resolution and that his TV is largely legacy free so a lot of that would be useless, no?

I emailed the hazard-city.de guy.

Stiletto wrote:

Jorpho, the original poster said he wants to upscale to high resolution and that his TV is largely legacy free so a lot of that would be useless, no?

Well, he also said:

Scythifuge wrote:

I may be able to get away with using a unit like that with component cables.

A TV with a Zoom function can do its own scaling of a lower resolution up to fullscreen, though I wouldn't know if a fancier, external scaler would produce a better picture.

Tobias Reich from hazard-city.de emailed back. He hasn't ever tried what I am trying to do, but he thinks that a cheap box will work for me. I hate Wal*Mart, but they have VGA to HDMI converters which I can test and return if they do not work. The trouble is buying something online and being stuck with it.

If the motherboard on the 486 has PCI slots,then get a Powercolor Radeon 7000 PCI card because the Powercolor Radeon 7000 is on PCI and also has TV out.
Second option would be a box like this:

It has a Composite port in there so you could easily plug the PC to the TV via Composite and have audio from a separate jack-to-RCA cable.
I use the first option (except my Radeon 7000 is named "Radeon VE" and is on AGP)and I never had problems.

Does the TV have an aspect ratio setting at all? What about through HDMI?

Because if it does, you can go with a AGP platform instead (Super Scoket 7) and use a DVI AGP card. I do this for capturing VGA for my YouTube Videos.

PcBytes - My card has TV out, but composite video is poor compared to VGA out. It is too blurry. I read that it supports interlacing only.

Mau1wurf1977 - This is a custom 486 build that I have been using for nostalgia computing, purposefully built to contain parts not created past 94. The video card may be from 94-96, I cannot recall, as I needed a card with Windows 3.11 support & basic 3d support for experiments. basically, it would be a computer that would have received the video card as the last upgrade before going to a Pentium system (I have a Pentium II system that is also a custom build with similar, nostalgic purposes.) The TV thing was never an issue until the new TV that is missing the VGA port.