Modern Solutions for Retro Consoles

[Steo]

I can certainly see why OLED might would need it. Though I fail to see why LCD would considering you could just use brighter backlighting.

Though I can see how it effects the clarity. After all the days of monochrome displays for computers to CGA showed a difference in how sharp your text was too. I've heard LG has to do this due to the manufacturing process of such large panels anyway, where normal RGB layout isn't ideal right now?

I would have no problem with it only the TV is 43" (there's far bigger ones out there) and the layout they used just isn't really practical.

An OLED has them arranged in a neat vertical straight down manner while the LED RGBW is using a checkerboard pattern.

A 4K RGBW OLED TV consists of 15,360 sub-pixels per row (3840 of each red, green, blue, and white) meaning the total amount of coloured sub-pixels is 11,520, where as the RGBW LED TV shares the white sub-pixel with the next RGB row.

This means it consists of 11,520 sub-pixels, but 960 on each row are white horizontally. This means the total amount of coloured sub-pixels on each row is 10,560 (meaning there's only 3520 of each red, green and blue) so each row is missing 320 sub-pixels of each colour which have been replaced with shared white sub-pixels.

[Reese Riverson]

I know it's been a while since we've last had a discussion about our retro consoles and modern solutions to get them to look and work great on modern displays. Since this thread's creation, we've got the RetroTINK-4K Video Processor & Scaler, which I had to get on day 1 of release.

This thing has been amazing on my 65" LG G3 OLED 4k TV, especially with the scanline and CRT filtering with HDR on, it was incredible to see!


I still haven't tested the VGA input with my retro computers just yet, that's going to happen in the near future. Though for anyone curious, it does seem like these devices are actually good for digitizing your VHS / Laserdisc collection due to it's Time Based Correction capability.



A feature that the RetroTINK 5x is also capable of, by the look of it.


Another thing I'm working on next is USB-C to the barrel jack power solutions, since you can get these USB-C PD power cables for devices and retro consoles to tell the USB-C brick "Hey, I need xVolts here!", for example, the 9VDC a lot of systems require. So something simple as this 9V 5A USB-C to 5.5mm barrel jack from Adafruit is an example of one.

Though it's important to be very mindful of the polarity your systems take!

zsp7C.png (9.57 KiB) Viewed 58 times

Some systems use reverse polarity, and you can damage your systems if you are not careful with this when mixing power adapters or upgrading them for your consoles! For example, the Atari Jaguar for example has no such protection against this, at all. Hence why a Reverse Polarity Protection Diode Fix mod exists for the system.

Reverse polarity adapters do exist, and usually can be found through a supplier within your region that is either Amazon or one that specializes in electronics. If in doubt, most consoles do show the polarity by the power connector or on the bottom on of the system, if they do not, you can refer to your existing power adapter for the system. If no markings exist, and/or if you do not have one, then consult forums or search online to see what you can find out to be safe.

The last thing anyone needs is accidentally frying their precious systems.



I would also recommend for anyone who has a lot of systems, to label the cables properly, especially with a label maker or some sort of printable label you can handwrite on. Because you don't want to later forget what belongs to what system!

Anyway, I'm getting some cables in by Thursday, I plan to report more on this then.

[Steo]

I haven't heard much about the RetroTINK 4K, but I must look into what it's like. I only recently got an OSSC 1.8 though and I think one of the main things on my list is going to be an OLED TV again.

Regarding the power delivery thing, as we've talked about on Discord, I'm going down the same route to give it a try. It will also make it much easier to find things rather than going looking through boxes of power adapters etc. The idea here is that I will just have a cable similar to the one you shared, with a chip inside that asks for 9v. I will also get a cable that inverts the polarity as you've mentioned. I'm aware that my Famicom, Sega Mega Drive 1 models (and Genesis 1), Sega Master System, and Atari Jaguar (iirc) are all centre negative. I still think it was a bad idea that they even made these with inverted polarity in the first place, for one reason being you can easily damage something if you don't check, and another being the idea that the outside of the barrel is literally postitive voltage. Doesn't that seem a little dangerous.

Anyway, I should be receiving some of the equipment I ordered today, and the rest tomorrow. I will be able to check by then whether this works as expected, though of course, I'll use a multi-meter first to make sure it's actually 9v, we don't want to start breaking things.

I think the labels might be a good idea, though in my case I'm sure most of the consoles are going to be 5.5mm x 2.1mm barrel jacks. There are exceptions such as how the SNES actually has 2.5mm diameter on the inner hole of the barrel. I also know that the Mega Drive II uses a thinner barrel, not entirely sure of the size just yet though, but something from the tips I bought should fit.

[Reese Riverson]

As cool as the OSSC is, I just decided to get away from it in favor for the RetroTINK, because my home theater equipment just hated the OSSC. Of course the RetroTINK required an upgrade in the HDMI chain, due to the bandwidth requirements, but hey.

[Steo]

As much as I'd like one of them, I don't think my use case can justify the price of it ($750 is a lot of money), hence why I went with the cheapest decent solution available again and ended up with an OSSC. If I just have a TV that plays ball with it, then that's all I'd really need. The TV I have now is the most fussy one ever, but it's still at least somewhat manageable (other than being stupid enough to force 16:9 in Game Mode when using 480p ).

Basically once I get an OLED again, just about every mode I want will work. Until then, if it really doesn't work for any specific purpose, I can just plug it into my monitor. All I really need is a solution for a modern display with little or no input lag (OSSC really has nanoseconds iirc). Even if I ever wanted to stream, I don't mind if it's only 480p on a YUV capture card. I would never be doing anything professionally or streaming for a living etc.


-- EDIT --

I just got the USB-C 9v power delivery cable I'd ordered. I tested it with a multimeter and it indeed outputs 9 volts. I then attached the tip onto it that fits the SNES, and it works perfectly. This is going to be so much easier than having to dig through boxes of power adapters each time I feel like playing an old console.

[Reese Riverson]

I've got my cables in as well:

I've tested one out for the Sega Nomad, and success!

Speaking of testing things out, I decided to try my RetroTINK 4k with one of my retro machines through OBS, with Windows 3.1 and Duke3D:

The only odd thing that happened was on one of my 486 systems, when Windows 3.1 ran in 800x600 resolution, the RetroTink thought it was 1920x480 for whatever reason.

Though fixing it to use 4:3 mode was easy enough at least, but here's what happened, I tested it on my 1080P professional video monitor prior to connecting things up to my capture card: