Can You Use Modern Displays With Vintage Computing Hardware? 61
Long-time Slashdot reader 50000BTU_barbecue likes using vintage computers from the 1980s and early 1990s -- " real hardware with all the weirdness that goes with it."
But what do you do for a monitor? Especially when "old CRTs are starting to lose sharpness and brightness and may get tossed or damaged when moving..." We still use the same electrical plugs, and keyboards and joysticks are still similar-looking. But display devices have become these enormous high-resolution devices with fewer and fewer analog inputs... The solution is to use some sort of video upscaler.
There are many devices offered, from cheap Chinese units for about $10 to old professional studio scalers from 10-20 years ago. The Chinese units have no controls and are quite variable in the results obtained. But they're cheap. The old scalers would deliver professional results but are not guaranteed to work with consumer monitors or lock onto the non-standard timings of the non-interlaced "240p" video common on 8-bit computers.
What device do you use?
Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments. How can you use modern displays with vintage computing hardware?
But what do you do for a monitor? Especially when "old CRTs are starting to lose sharpness and brightness and may get tossed or damaged when moving..." We still use the same electrical plugs, and keyboards and joysticks are still similar-looking. But display devices have become these enormous high-resolution devices with fewer and fewer analog inputs... The solution is to use some sort of video upscaler.
There are many devices offered, from cheap Chinese units for about $10 to old professional studio scalers from 10-20 years ago. The Chinese units have no controls and are quite variable in the results obtained. But they're cheap. The old scalers would deliver professional results but are not guaranteed to work with consumer monitors or lock onto the non-standard timings of the non-interlaced "240p" video common on 8-bit computers.
What device do you use?
Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments. How can you use modern displays with vintage computing hardware?
TV as monitor (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TV as monitor (Score:4, Funny)
me: Alexa, plugh.
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me: pee ell yoo gee aitch
Alexa: oh, why didn't you say so earlier?
Re: TV as monitor (Score:2)
Re:TV as monitor (Score:5, Informative)
I first had a 28" TV for retro gaming, then a 22" and now I'm down to a 17" and a 15" monitor. I realized that a lot of those old action games seem to rely on you being able to see the whole screen, at least near the centre of your vision. Often I would die to stuff I didn't see coming from the sides, but on a 17" or 15" display it's fine.
The main problem is finding decent and working CRTs that age. Most need some attention. In Europe we had RGB SCART as pretty much standard so late era CRT TVs often have really good picture quality.
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Depends on how old. VGA's been around since 1987 and adapters still exist. For pre-1987, things get dicey. A PC computer I have from 1988 (year I bought it used; probably 2-3 years old) had RCA jacks but mostly relied on its EGA card and DE-9 connector. Before that, my (ok, mom's) Apple ][e used an RF modulator. You can still get RF modulators, but they usually convert to RCA, so your TV/Monitor needs RCA jacks. I had this setup for my current TV, but my receiver that connected it crapped out, so my old com
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"A few-years-old" graphics card may already contain DisplayPort or HDMI. I bought a 2560x1440 monitor a year ago, and plugged it into an old Radeon HD 6670 from 2011 at first. Connection was via DisplayPort. Worked fine, just the frame rates in gaming were poor as expected.
Some PC makers just do not bother with supporting all interfaces. The slightly newer and more expensive HD 7850 in my main PC has no DisplayPort for instance. Fortunately, it does have HDMI which supports 2560x1440.
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Yes! (Score:4, Informative)
I use an OSSC - (Open Source Scan Converter) - its expensive, but the results are phenomenal.
The only downside to it - it doesn't support composite inputs and some consoles/hardware you'll have to mod before it will work with it (like the Nintendo 64).
Re:Yes! (Score:4, Informative)
There is also the RetroTink 2x.
A third option might be the Mister FPGA project, there may be a FPGA implementation of the computer systems.
Skip the pro gear (Score:2)
Some flat panels, yes (Score:2)
Some flat panel displays still support the slower horizontal refresh of 15.750KHz. Many support composite video. The monitor I am using (24 inch Dell U2410) is one the list of displays that do.
ttp://15khz.wikidot.com/
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Many support composite video.
They often forget to label things these days, but nearly anything with component video should also accept composite on the Y plug. Most will indicate this by a yellow stripe on the Y plug, which is otherwise green.
The horizontal refresh mostly doesn't matter on the modern digital decoders, they don't follow the specs and they will sync to almost anything.
One Word... (Score:2)
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Well, import it. (Score:2)
I'll gladly ship you one, if you pay my costs.
Try a foreign e-bay though. As long as you pay, private people will probably have no problem sending it to you. Here in Germany, we certainly wouldn't.
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I have a few 70s/80s gaming consoles (such as a pong machine and a Philips Videopac) that work by sending a TV signal at a specific channel frequency. In the old days, I'd hook it up to a TV, and play with the channel frequency in order to get the output on screen. I've been trying to find a solution so I can hook it up again to one of my monitors. Your post intrigued me but I cant see how SCART will fix this issue. Care to elaborate?
Old CRT Tv (Score:1)
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"I can sell you an old crt tv. "
I still have an EGA monitor lying around.
Re:Old CRT Tv (Score:5, Informative)
Me too, and for just this reason. I haven't powered it up in more than 20 years though. Too old for the "capacitor plague" problem, but still should be brought up slowly- probably for weeks- with a Variac.
For those who don't know, aluminum electrolytic capacitors found in most power supplies tend to degrade over time, especially when not used (no voltage applied). They lose their ability to withstand rated voltage and could blow apart if full power and voltage is applied.
The capacitive insulator is an aluminum oxide layer which is formed during manufacturing and is kept intact by electrolytic (electro-chemical) action during normal frequent usage when voltage is applied.
However, over a long time of disuse, the electrolyte degrades the insulating layer, thin spots form, and when energized, one of those spots can fail rapid electrical discharge occurs which causes rapid heating, rapid expansion of gasses, and disassembly occurs. Although a cap can be replaced, they often spray electrolyte-whetted paper everywhere.
By using a Variac (variable lines transformer), you can apply lower voltage initially, slowly raise it, maybe over weeks, and give the aluminum oxide time to re-form.
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It's fun to see them after they explode; sometimes they become literal paper confetti. The downside is when the exploding cap damages nearby components.
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No, that's the fun part!
I used to do a bit of TV, etc., repair (well, still do sometimes) and long ago I was working on a TV that someone had spilled beer into. She had a plant on the TV, and believed beer was good to water the plant. Anyway, a fairly small cap, maybe 3/16" x 1/2" long, got far more volts than it was designed for, and the can blew off like a bullet and passed through my hair just next to my eye and hit the wall with a thwack 10 feet behind me. Ever since then I tend to wear eye protectio
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Cheap Chinese FTW (Score:3)
I've got two cheap Chinese upscalers. The first could not translate the colour signal from my Apple ][e. The second could (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L8GG6PW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
Huge screens don' work great. The small number of very large pixels on a large screen is pretty bad to use. Use a smaller flat screen that takes HDMI from the upscaler (again China provides - https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... [amazon.com]).
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The best upscaler for retro machines is the Framemiester. There are cheaper options but if you are serious that's the one to get.
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The best upscaler for retro machines is the Framemiester. There are cheaper options but if you are serious that's the one to get.
If I'm not that serious, will my 280x192 pixels become less readable?
DIY hacker products (Score:4, Informative)
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use FPGA (Score:1)
Color... (Score:2)
Didn't a lot of old composite hardware exploit timing quirks of CRT monitors to generate color? The problem is that modern TVs and screens (even with composite input) may actually be "too good" for that hardware.
Interestingly, I've seen TVs that are less than five years old that still have a composite input as part of their RGB coaxial inputs. Also, some still have a analog RF input, so you can use an RF modulator.
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Yes absolutely true. And quite a few emulators will emulate the effect of composite color mixing to try to get something that looks reasonable today. I don't think composite color artifacts were widely use in the IBM PC world. I don't remember any games used it back in the day. But quite a few modern retro games do use it today in the retro 8-bit enthusiast world.
Modern screens with composite input are probably good enough for most retro computing, but they probably won't show composite color artifacts.
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I don't think composite color artifacts were widely use in the IBM PC world. I don't remember any games used it back in the day.
There have been some, like King's Quest I. Unrelated to that, but a cool demo that pushes the limits of CGA: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/0... [int10h.org]
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>exploit timing quirks of CRT monitors to generate color?
Yes.
The color carrier for NTSC was 3.58mhz (ok, 3,578,949 hz . . . the things we remember . . .), and this could be exploited.
The Apple ][, for example with 40 characters per line with six bits of position, did hires graphics by packing six bits of data (on/off), and one of the other bits shifted colors by causing the stream to switch by *half* a bit, "tickling" the color trap.
The earlier machines (until the Rev 7 motherboard, iirc) transmitted th
Do a bit of research and you have a solution (Score:5, Informative)
For most stuff that you'd hook up to a TV (older consoles, well, including Wii, your C-64, whatever), there are quite a few well-known solutions.
Start e.g here: https://retrogamingcables.co.u... [retrogamingcables.co.uk]
I'm myself using the Elephas converter and it works just fine. Essentially the problem is that there are plenty of composite-to-HDMI converters that
- Don't support different framerates (50 vs 60)
- Only accept composite input (No S-Video, RGB, or component)
- Proper handling of interlaced content - if you have interlaced content, it should be upscaled to 1080i *and* the half-frames (fields) should be processed separately. You get the weird scanline artifacts when an object moves horizontally.
- Have some weird latency issues and might lag (I guess it encodes to HDMI on the fly). Panning seems to be particularly difficult for a few options (I guess because it has to process the entire image)
So just as long as you get a proper converter you can use old stuff with modern displays just fine - just don't pick the cheapest option.
Sure. Can't go more vintage than Ben Eater: (Score:2)
The world's worst video card? [youtu.be]
Can't give away a CRT (Score:2)
I've listed my 36" Diamatron for free and can't give it away.
Anyone near Houston interested?
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This was going to be my suggestion, at least for someonw who wants an authentic experience. There are plenyto of old or even new old-stock monitors you can still get for reasonably cheap.
Alternatively if the device had VGA output, many reasonably modern monitors have that input natively. Although as someone pointed out, old graphics often relied on CRT specific tricks so you wouldn't necesserly get the correct result on a new LCD.
Old arcade games (Score:2)
Apple2 (Score:2)
My Apple 2e has a VGA video card that can also drive RGB monitors.
The 2c had similar hardware built in, and as I recall even an LCD and signals to drive it.
Also for text mode, you can redirect the keyboard and 40/80 col text routines to the IO firmware of any card in any expansion slot, including a serial port.
Lastly it seems every couple of years someone in the community pops up with a similar issue and designs a video buffer capture card that outputs to the standards of the day.
They will either release th
Whats the problem? (Score:3)
My 80" LCD has a composite input. So does my Yamaha receiver. I do not understand the problem.
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A lot of TVs' composite inputs are designed to receive a signal from VHS decks, cable boxes, and consoles no older than a 1999 Dreamcast. These sources generally meet NTSC timing spec (227.5 colorburst periods wide by 262.5 scanlines tall, including each field's blanking periods). A lot of older computers and consoles produce video with a nonstandard width (usually 227.333 for Nintendo or 228 for Atari, Sega, or Apple) and height (usually 262 lines, producing "240p" video where the fields are drawn on top o
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producing "240p" video where the fields are drawn on top of each other), and not all TVs and scalers can cope with these signals.
First, try toggling inputs with the remote or powering off/on the TV. That'll sometimes trigger a proper sync.
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BenQ BL702A monitor (Score:1)
I was looking into a simple solution for my Amiga 1200 a few years ago and was recommended a BenQ BL702A LED TN 17 inch monitor (which is currently £90 on Amazon UK) on various Amiga forums. It can accept a standard 15kHz signal. I didn't buy it, after being given a CRT TV, but the Amazon comments show it in action.
The YouTube Channel My Life In Gaming (Score:2)
Also if you can find an old Vizio flat panel with s-video input and you're preferred consoles have s-video that can be a good way to go. That won't help if you need RF though. Here's a good video [youtube.com] on solutions for that. Again I
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Also if you can find an old Vizio flat panel with s-video input
Sadly, newer Vizio's are often lacking s-video input.
They also handle some of the odd ball resolutions PS1s and PS2s can put out (namely 240p).
Yep, though a CECHA/CECHB/CECHE PS3 is also a solution for PS2 games since the PS3 will scale PS2 output to 480p. All PS3's will play PS1 games and output them at 480p.
I kind of prefer the look of PS2 on S-Video (Score:2)
BBC micro (Score:2)
A modern flat screen TV would not sync properly to the video output of my BBC micro, I soldered together a lead with a few resistors that connects the RGB output to scart socket and that worked fine. I usually only plug it in to play Chuckie Egg at Christmas.
The original cube shaped Microvitec Cub monitors are good for letting young people experience the 15KHz whine. They never produced an image that counts as sharp by todays standards.
Not with SimIsle (Score:2)
Matrox DualHead2Go (Score:3)
The future (Score:2)
for CGA/EGA/MDA (Score:1)
multiple solutions (Score:2)
most of the time there are several solutions, unless it's a really obscure retro system.
1. special cables - all kind of cables have been developed and are being sold to get your old system connected to modern displays. sometimes even hdmi cables or dongles.
2. mod kits - you have little kits available for almost every system, it does require you to open it up and do some soldering (most of the time), but you'll have a hdmi (mostly) connection straight from the chip signal
3. ossc - the most famous and best al
Fixing CRTs (Score:3)
Especially when "old CRTs are starting to lose sharpness and brightness...
FYI, I only "recently" learned that if the sharpness can't be corrected by high voltage transformer adjustment or certain capacitor replacements, it's likely the little magnetic strips (named?) slid next to the CRT yolk that are out of place or lost their magnetism. As always, be very careful/informed when working with this high voltage stuff.
15khz (Score:1)
There are a few flatscreen displays that will sync with old computing hardware. I have a couple BenQ monitors for my Atari ST and Amiga. Check the list: http://15khz.wikidot.com/ [wikidot.com]
Modern 1920x1080 flatscreen with my Apple IIgs (Score:2)
Somewhat astonishingly, there's still an active hardware development scene for the Apple IIgs. The ROM 3 model I got at a local dealer's hotel sale with cash I saved up mowing lawns, is now equipped with: