I found it better to just leave these alone and adjust color on your tv but YMMV.
On your tv, turn on dynamic tone mapping. I don’t know what it’s call in Sony tv. If color look off or things look clipped, make sure to set hdmi range to full.
Back in Mister, play around with all the scanlines and masks for full effect. I love how crt make pixels look like they’re made of tiny lightbulbs so I wacked up bunch of stuff to get little lightbulb look.
Pixels are poppin’ but it’s still not there inperson I think. Mister resolution is too low for really satisfying masks. Would love to have Mame gpu based crt shader….
Maybe I‘ll be permitted to be a ’noob with gear‘ here. I’m working with a mister multisystem setup (working fine via HDMI) and I‘m trying to connect to a CRT I got that has RGBHV BNC inputs. I got the monitor and I don’t get any display without a signal (acts like its in some sleep mode); called the place and they said that behavior is what they had without signal too, but they were able to get output once a signal was coming in.
I'm trying to not lose my mind here - either the monitor is bunk, or it's fine and I'm either (a) not actually outputting RGBHV via the VGA/dsub port right now, or (b) the cable I'm using isn't agreeing pinout-wise with the pins used by the board (it is a VGA to RGBHV BNC breakout cable that's as old as the computer).
I've looked through different info about INI settings for video output options, and it kind of seems like my use case basically [shouldn't require](https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/crttable/) any particular things to be turned on? So can someone confirm for me that in general, the VGA port will be attempting to output a signal with default settings? (my suspicion is that I'm just stupid and haven't done some sort of "yes also output analog video please" flag, but I'm not finding it.)
My troubleshooting to-do's presuming the port is outputting a signal are: get a regular VGA cable to just try that directly since the monitor has a normal vga port, and/or check the pinout continuity of the cable.
@MDS-02 I believe the MiSTer puts out a 240p signal by default, and your monitor needs 640x480 minimum. I suspect you’d need to turn on either forced_scandoubler or vga_scaler to get a usable signal from the MiSTer for a lot of cores (including the menu).
forced_scandoubler would give you 480p for most stuff… or you could try setting your video mode to a 4:3 res your monitor would support (like video mode 1 - 1024x768) and enabling vga_scaler.
@Kez thanks for the suggestions, but still not getting a response out of this monitor (either in a core or just in system menu, at different resolutions that seem like they ought to jive). I’ll do a cable check next before I bail on this display (which I’ve got a path to return, fortunately). Thanks again.
@MDS-02 Ah okay that’s a shame! In that case my first thought would be
a) if I can get the MiSTer to work through VGA on any other device and
b) if I have any other VGA devices I could test on the monitor.
I often find myself assuming that everyone has a bunch of VGA accepting/producing devices like that in their house like I do, but of course that isn’t the case!
then I would at least try a VGA cable. That monitor can’t do native 240p since it’s a standard 30hz 480p minimum CRT monitor.
So yeah, best option is to use a regular VGA cable and use forced_scandoubler or turn on vga scaling and use the highest possible resolution with v-integer scaling, similar to what @Kez wrote.
There is a sRGB mode you can pick in the monitor’s menu somewhere too so maybe that will switch to the BNC input:
unsure if the MultiSystem has HV out of the VGA port, but you could probably try and use ‘Sync on Green’ in the ini file and leave the HV cables unplugged, since the manual says it supports it above.
Either way at least try the VGA cable since it’s probably the better option anyway for the monitor as it has more video adjustment features. Plus you don’t have to adjust as much in the MiSTer ini file. Good luck!
@copySave@Kez yup today I’ll grab a vga cable (can borrow one from work easily). My regular lcd actually has a vga port too, I realized, so I’ll do a sanity check there. Testing SoG might be worthwhile too but if the direct vga doesn’t respond I’ll be dubious.
The most missing piece of info for me is the pin out from the mister’s port with these different settings. Seems like it would be in easy documentation but it hadn’t been coming up in my searches last night.
@MDS-02 No problem. I believe the VGA pinout should be standard, matching the diagram above from the manual. I was using a VGA to RGBHV cable with the just the Green (Y/Luma) and Red (C/Chroma) wires attached to a YC to S-Video Adapter and the YC cores for a while (until I upgraded to MiSTer Addons YC board)
So unsure about the HV, but there’s definitely a signal coming out of the first three RGB pins of the VGA port. I am using a MiSTer Addons analog IO board, but I would imagine the MultiSystem uses the VGA connector standard pinout as well.
At any rate, hopefully the plain old VGA cable will work for you. I will say that if possible use forced_scandoubler=1 and set the artificial scanlines to 50% to get a near PVM look with 0 additional lag. I was using a CRT PC monitor for a while before the YC cores came out and it looked great. Here’s an example:
The main benefit of using the scaler with the VGA is that you can use shadow masks, and it’s necessary if using the PSX core since it switches resolutions from 240p to 480i so often (480i cannot be scan doubled). Still, if you set the integer scaling right it can look good, if a little dim and with a frame of additional lag. Here is the same PC CRT at 1024x768 with a PVM shadow mask:
I had one ini with the scan doubler, and a second ini with the scaler, so it was easy to switch between the two depending on the core.
Still worth it to use any CRT with the MiSTer though. Enjoy the smooth motion clarity and super sharp image quality of the PC CRT! It almost makes the games look like PC ports if you don’t use a shadow mask or artificial scanlines. I like my dirty composite or S-Video, but if your looking for PVM quality with a much cheaper price, go for a PC CRT (plus it makes the all the PC cores feel legit).
@copySave Sadly, I’m gonna throw in the towel with this monitor. VGA out confirmed working on my LCD display, tried various settings and none of which got this monitor to output anything (may as well be ‘off’ with the power light on).
Problem is just that the screen itself never seems to become ‘awake’ with typical CRT noise and I was hopeful that it was because it ‘slept’ last with a VGA input and so was waiting to get a signal on that port of any kind, and the BNC connections weren’t able to call it to life. From documentation, the onscreen display seems equipped to throw all sorts of messages about whether the signal is jiving or not, so even if I didn’t get the signal settings quite right I was hoping to get some kind of response. Fellow on the phone seemed to indicate that was a possibility, and their listings shows the monitor living with at least a system menu up, and so they got further than me. But nah, just nothing. Fortunately Off Mall is great and I’m just a phone call away from returning it.
Perhaps someday I’ll return to trying to get a CRT display (my wife said her mom might have one around, so I’ll make my next move checking on that). I’m in no rush here. 70%+ of the fun of the hobby is this troubleshooting for me, so its all good.
@KennyL You’re using a Trinitron right? I think that’s just how Genesis games look with it’s comb filter and shadow mask. Just a quirk of the display, like stabilizing wire making the black line around the 1/3 mark of the TV. Plus most Genesis games run at a higher but narrower resolution (these run at 256x224), so another reason why it fits into the pixel grid differently:
I plugged in my real console and it had that columnlike(?) look too with Trinitrons, but softer. They were also there with my home made YC cables as I also immediately noticed at the time.
I got my YC board too so here’s a comparison with a Genesis Model 1, MiSTer YC board with blend, and without blend on my little 8" desk Trinitron:
So yeah, just the nature of the display and console, so nothing to worry about.
I think the YC board is just super clean, rich, bright and sharp, so some of the artifacts are just the extra details coming through. The blend helps to dirty it up again by blending everything to the right slightly (there is more haloing without the blend too).
Overall I think the board is better than my cables, but they were still a good solution. There’s no rainbows even with the composite blend off (but I still think it looks better with the blend on with the YC board too). If you don’t have the soldering tools and components to make your own YC cable, for $30 the YC board is a no brainer.
@copySave Ok great thanks for the sanity check! I guess I’m too used to Genesis Plus on Wii which does interpolation to smooth things out I think. YC board is really superb. It’s must buy for composite freaks.
@KennyL lol - this may be related to me posting my palm tree pics from here in the MiSTer Addons discord this morning, but I can only speculate. I agree it would be nice to have as an option!
For the sake of completeness, for folks searching the forum/internet for troubleshooting info. My VRR issues are solved. Turns out it was a dud power supply. I ordered a nice chunky Meanwell 5V 6A power supply (model GST60A05-P1J) and my video output is perfect now.
Finally caved and bought one and it just arrived this week. Got AmigaOS up and running and have been playing around with Protracker it sounds incredible. I've wanted to write music on an Amiga for decades and now I finally can. Now to get the ST up and running…
@p3ters That is how I treated my retro pie but not how I treat my mister. I attribute this to being annoyed when games didn’t really play like I remembered. The mister plays them perfectly
I started up MSX core to play Snatcher eng translation but ended up playing bunch of other stuff. Took me hours to find it amongst that big hdd image I got and it sure is beautiful. Looks 100x better than that PSX/Saturn version to me for 100% for sure.
