[sintan]

i bought a VGA cable and butchered it in the hope of soldering a SCART connector to the end, but after reading various tutorials on how to do so i'm concerned that none of the wire colours are in the same order as shown in tutorials e.g. pin 1 is connected to the black wire rather than red, pin 2 to the brown wire rather than green and pin 3 to red rather than blue etc

should the colours be standardised or can i ignore them and carry on using the pin layout as a guide i.e. will the pins on my vga still be laid out pin 1 - colour red, pin 2 - colour green, pin 6 - ground red, pin 5 - ground etc???

also, some tutorials suggest connecting the VGA shield to the SCART shell. can anyone explain how to do that?

thanks for any help

[norm]

I finally got around to making one of these cables. I used a 4m patch cable (CAT5e) with copper conductors (not cheap aluminium core like you find today).

I'm really amazed by the quality on my Panasonic 28" TV (with 100hz processing so no flicker), it almost looks HD like at 1024x576i, plus the black levels are awesome way better than any LCD.

One thing though, the CAT5e cable I made doesn't have a ground wire (because there's only 8 cores), this doesn't seem to effect performance at all, is this normal?

[hellchild16]

here's one for anyone who has some sort of understanding of wires. i bought a VGA-Scart cable that i think is aimed more at projectors etc. and was wondering if adjusting the settings on my graphics card like it says to in this thread (im using a RADEON 9200) will work through this cable. to be honest im not sure of the wireing inside the cable but surely it will be something close enough to work, right?

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by hellchild16

here's one for anyone who has some sort of understanding of wires. i bought a VGA-Scart cable that i think is aimed more at projectors etc. and was wondering if adjusting the settings on my graphics card like it says to in this thread (im using a RADEON 9200) will work through this cable. to be honest im not sure of the wireing inside the cable but surely it will be something close enough to work, right?

I have a distant memory that old ATI cards could output an RGB signal that could be used via scart but we are talking radeon 9xxx cards.

I do not believe modern cards output a signal that can be just plugged into scart (VGA outputs a different type of RGB so a simple wire wont work)

Could be wrong but that is unfortunately the way I think it is. To output via scart you need hardware to convert the RGB signal

[apul]

I did this with my old radeon 7500 years ago and it worked well.

I recently bought a laptop with ATI HD4330 with VGA out, so I bought another scart to vga cable but I couldn't get it to work I believe because newer cards don't support it any more. Is it the something to do with composite sync?
If you are good with basic electronics I believe you can make a small circuit on the cable that can fix the problem. I am however not good with a soldering iron.

[Mr_Fantastic]

ATI cards were able to output a combined sync, however I do not know whether recent ATI/AMD cards can still do that. I know that nVidia cards have never been able to do it.

That is not a big problem because nVidia cards can be connected to RGB scart connectors but they need a small circuit to combine the separate H & V sync into a combined sync to feed the TV. Therefore the same could be used with ATI/AMD cards if they are no longer able to output combined sync's.

The biggest problem and the one which might prevent newer cards from working is that they tend to be limited in what pixel clocks they can use. They tend not to be able to use low enough pixel clocks to output the required resolution and refresh rates.

I had wanted to build a project box with a vga to scart and audio switching from my Pc but I don't want to be buying lots of parts if the graphics card won't work at such low clocks. My gfx card is a GT240 and nVidia support were not very helpful, they didn't seem to know whether it would work. They are American I believe and this is not something that is possible on US TV's which rarely have RGB connections and therefore they have no experience in doing it. It's a pity that their tech people couldn't answer whether the card is capable of the required low clock.

This is the site which suggests that my GT240 cannot use the required pixel clock.

I might have to make a quick mock up cable and see if it works before spending on the parts to make the full idea I have. The highest quality parts would make a difference when working in the Analogue world of RGB scart so I wouldn't want to scrimp when making the final product.

It's surprising that there are still people who want to do this and are still using CRT TV's. Thumbs up to norm's words on black levels on decent CRT's when compared to LCD's and that's before you even get onto the movement.

[Mr_Fantastic]

Originally Posted by jameson_uk

I have a distant memory that old ATI cards could output an RGB signal that could be used via scart but we are talking radeon 9xxx cards.

I do not believe modern cards output a signal that can be just plugged into scart (VGA outputs a different type of RGB so a simple wire wont work)

Could be wrong but that is unfortunately the way I think it is. To output via scart you need hardware to convert the RGB signal

They can, it's only the sync which is different. PC's use separate sync connections, H & V whereas TV Scarts use combined H & V syncs on one lead. ATI cards could output combined syncs however I don't know whether they still can. The pixel clock could be the real stumbling block.

It requires a fairly simple circuit to combine a PC H & V sync into a single combined H & V sync for a Scart TV connection. However it's the low (15 to 20 KHz) pixel clock which is the real problem.

[apul]

I know someone who could make the simple sync combining circuit for me. I think Maplins also sell them as some ridiculous price. I didn't even think about whether my laptop can output at the required clock frequency. I've got powerstip but without a crt monitor I can't test it. I'll get an old one from work to check.

[Mr_Fantastic]

It's newer graphics cores that might have the problem. Older ones should work and be able to use the required pixel clock. Newer cores might be optimized for higher resolutions, whereas older cores might be more limited in the high resolutions they can display.

I'm going to get the few parts that I need, a few resistors and the transistor to build a quick cable to test it. There is no point buying better parts and the case that I would use if my gfx card won't work. A site has already said that it won't, so I won't waste much testing it. If I can get it working then I will buy better quality parts and a case with audio input. It's analogue so shielding and connection quality is very important.

[MikeTV]

Wow, this thread takes me back all the way to 2004! Oh how I miss making custom analogue interlaced resolutions in powerstrip.

Not really.