LCDs as monitor

zappaf19

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I always have trouble with my monitors and have heard about putting in a 19"LCD. Man that would be nice! It should take care of my monitor problems. BUT I guess there is a hook up between the monitor and board that is salty to buy. Does anyone know anything about changing to a LCD? If this has been brought up before I'm sorry.
Bill
 
No consumer LCD's will display a CGA signal so you'll need an adapter such as the CGA-VGA one from Jammaboards.com. However I've heard of mixed results with that.

I too wish there was a super easy sure fire way to do this...well there is you'll just have to spend $400+ or however much they are from Happ.

On that same thought train, does anyone have any experience with the CGA to NTSC adapters to let you display an arcade signal on a TV? That might be a cheaper solution for you(and me).
 
WOW 400! Man you would think it would be cheaper!
Bill


Unless the gameboard supports VGA ( not very many ) you need a standard res RGB to VGA adapter.
I've used one of these RGB to VGA converters, it's been pretty good with Namco games pacman, galaga, mappy etc. Haven't tried it out with a huge selection of hardware but it's worked with all the standard res. stuff I've tried it with.

http://www.jammaboards.com/store/cga/ega/yuv-to-vga-converter-pcb-gbs-8220/prod_291.html

One BIG thing is to use a monitor with a high enough refresh rate/response time, using an older LCD with a slow response time the display can't keep up and things look dim and blurry. Defender for example looks terrible and Galaga the starfield was invisible. Using a fast 8ms response time monitor it looks fine.

Personally.. an LCD doesn't come near the look for a CRT for gaming.

- James
 
Agreed James I've played Galaga on an LCD and experienced the same symptom of invisible starfield.

Do you have any experience with the RGB(CGA) to NTSC adapters? That's what I am very curious about right now.
 
Do you have any experience with the RGB(CGA) to NTSC adapters? That's what I am very curious about right now.

Oddly enough.. Yes ;)

I actually sell two different types http://jrok.com/hardware/RGB.html
The pricing is $75 for the component & NTSC encoder and $45 for NTSC video encoder, that includes shipping inside the USA.

In terms of compatibility it's really down to the TV and the gameboard, the TV itself is the biggest issue. Some TV's reject the signal if the sync durations is out of spec and in at lest one case disabled color (!) I also have a little board that helps fix this problem by re-generating the sync to durations to NTSC 'standard', Primal Rage is an example of a problem board with a very short duration sync that totally freaks out most TVs. The cost of them is $15, or $10 with an encoder.http://jrok.com/project/sync_cleaner/sync_pics.html

Another issue is some TV's reject a vertical sync that is too far outside 60Hz, some Sony's were horrible for this and caused the screen to just roll vertically. There was no external fix for this and required a configuration setting on the TV be adjusted for it to accept the sync.

In terms of quality composite video looks just terrible compared to a real monitor.
S-Video on a TV with a good video decoder can look GREAT, but some TV's have a questionable' quality video decoder and the s-video pic can look pretty rough.
Component video has always looked great from all my testing. IMO on a decent quality set it looks as good as a dedicated monitor even though some of the color resolution is lost due to the encoding.

- James
 
AWESOME. I can't believe I forgot that you did these as well, I remember seeing them a while back. I might be contacting you very soon. S-Video will be the way to go for me.

It's a 1995 Sony Trinitron TV so hopefully the decoder is up for the job. $15 on CL :)
 
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