So I have an Amiga 500 with a buffered VGA adapter, will it work with a VGA splitter box?
I got an Image 1 to 4 VGA splitter, hooked it up and it looks great!
It supposed to support 150Mhz signals and I'm sure that the Amiga 14 Mhz pixel clock is wayyy under that.
So now I can have simultaneous output to more than one monitor and also my RGBS/VGA to YPbPr adapter.
So I was working with some interlace modes and noticed that some monitors would support an Interlaced display but not a Non-Interlace display on my Amiga 500.
The Dell P2213 will show an interlaced Amiga display but "black screen" on a non-interlaced display.
I think it has to do with the "380 line minimum" that I saw on some of the Dell monitors while working with cvt. Interlaced modes are > 380 and Non interlace is < 380.
I tried a Dell S2415Hb with an interlaced Amiga display and while it would display it, the Auto Adjustment would keep cycling to the point it would force the monitor to shut down and reboot. I guess that even monitors can "crash".
A Planar PXL2780MW will display interlace but blanks out on the non interlace. Turning its Overdrive setting down to zero makes it flicker less, but it still has noticeable jitter. (It will also generate some LCD afterimage that will go away after awhile)
An Asus VS197 will display 640x400 interlace with jitter (and looks blurry) but not regular 640x200.
A Dell S2240Mc will display interlace but it also has some jitter issues.
An Acer V246HQL will not lock onto 640x200 saying "Input not supported". However, if you switch to 640x400 interlace then turn the monitor on, it will lock on to 640x400 and then you can switch back to 640x200 and it will display properly until you change resolutions again. The 640x200 display looks nice if you can get it to show up, but that's way too fiddly, requiring you to turn the monitor off and back on.
A Dell U2713HMt will not work with 640x200 saying "input not supported", but it will work with a 640x400 interlace signal with visible flicker. The pixel clock and phase can be adjusted to remove banding.
Since monitors like these will "wink out" when they get a non interlace display, I'll hook up the b/w composite out from the Amiga 500 to a TV so I can see what's happening and try to switch into an interlaced mode.
I wish there were a way to force the Amiga to always generate an interlace mode to work with monitors that only like interlaced signals.
The Acer G276HL looks ok with a buffered VGA Adapter and Amiga 500 NTSC 15khz output, but if you tweak the settings you can get it near perfect.
The auto adjust doesn't give you the best image.
Setting the clock to 95 (to expand the image) and the Hposition to 18 (to shift it left) the pixel color fringing is virtually gone.
Interlace modes are still "wrong line" and look bad, but I will most likely avoid them.
Amiga --> buffered VGA --> RGBS to YPrPb --> component output --> TV
At first, I thought it didn't work because the first TV I tried didn't support the component signals. I got a black screen.
But I kept trying different TVs and about half of them would work, and when it worked, the output was absolutely beautiful. The TV deinterlacing was often perfect so you could use interlaced modes without any jitter.
So I would recommend to keep trying different TVs until you find one that looks good. It's really a crapshoot, you never know if it will work unless you try it.
Another thing is that some TVs can work with plugging the Y component output into the composite video in. You will get a picture, but it will be black and white with color fringing, so if you also turn down the color, it should be all grey shades.
Also take note that the Green (Y) output is in between the red and the blue on the converter. Most TVs have it in YPbPr order (green blue red) so you'll have to make sure it's plugged in correctly.
WARNING:
edit: A warning about the SCART input on the converter. I bought an Amiga to SCART cable and connected it to the converter and it seems to have killed it.
It illuminated the power led brighter than normal when I plugged it in. I didn't get an image out with the SCART and now I don't get any component video out while using the VGA input.
So be careful if you use the SCART input on this converter. I'm going to buy another unit to replace it and use it exclusively with the VGA input.
Some TVs will output a purple screen:
An insignia TV looked really dark and blurry.
Sansui SLED2900 was perfect:
(similar performance with the Sansui SLED2280a)
A Vizio D40F-G9 was perfect:
A Vizio M320SL was perfect:
A Vizio D24F-f1 that has a component input via a 3.5mm plug:
A Toshiba 40L310U that looks great in non interlace, but interlace modes are jittery and choose the wrong line which makes text unreadable:
Gateway FPD2185W component input looks good:
The same Gateway FPD2185W on the VGA input does something strange with the colors:
A Dell 2408WFP on the component input (Amiga 500 VGA input was unsupported)
A Dell 2407WFP has very similar performance as the 2408WFP on the component input.
Magnavox 32" TV (youtube video)
Also the Sony KDL-32EX400 looks great on component input.
A Samsung UN46ES6150 looks good on component input with non-interlace. Interlace jitters about 2x-4x more than normal as it is very unstable vertically. Interestingly, if I connect the composite to the AV input, the UN46ES6150 will do proper deinterlacing, completely solid.
Viewsonic VT2300LED looks great, both 640x200 and 640x400 interlace are nice, screen blanks for a second while switching from non-interlace to interlace but other than that, perfect.
Also, you can take the YPbPr output and use a CELabs AV901COMP or AV901HD splitter/distribution amplifier to send the YPbPr component and audio output to multiple (9) televisions simultaneously. I've tried this with an AV901COMP and Amiga 500 NTSC signals and it looks pretty good.
I thought I'd write a little basic256 program to display the Imagewriter II rom, and it's very easy to see the font data. It uses a ...
