VGA Questions

[SuperAleste]

Underneath my TV is turning to hell... I have a GameCube, a PS2, a Dreamcast and a DVD player all fighting for use of the solitary SCART socket on my TV. Then there's the small matter of my girlfriend wanting a look-in.

So, I got a spare VGA monitor and I thought: "Aha! I'll hook up my consoles to that using one handy box." Trouble is, I don't know the answer to the following questions:

1. Which handy box should I get? Logic 3 and Pelican Accessories both have their badge on this one device that has enough inputs for everything I could possibly need.
2. Do the games have to have a VGA or progressive scan mode to work properly on a VGA monitor?
3. Is the fact I use PAL consoles going to cause me any problems with their standard 50Hz outputs?

[Saurian]

2. Do the games have to have a VGA or progressive scan mode to work properly on a VGA monitor?

In the case of the Gamecube - yes. The VGA cable will not work unless prog scan is enabled, do PAL games support this? (I'm not sure) When you fire up the Gamecube through VGA you dont get a picture until the prog scan mode kicks in - the system menu etc will not be correctly displayed.

[Papercut]

2. Do the games have to have a VGA or progressive scan mode to work properly on a VGA monitor?

In the case of the Gamecube - yes. The VGA cable will not work unless prog scan is enabled, do PAL games support this? (I'm not sure)

Pal GameCube games don't support prog scan (so far).

Myself and Groundy on these forums have found that even with a Freeloader NTSC games won't switch to prog scan on a pal cube (they crash), but someone on avforums reckons they got it to work. I would guess newer pal GameCubes might work, but no one is really sure.

The DC has a very good vga adaptor, and is support by 80% - 90% of the games out there, even PAL ones.

There is a Blaze PS2 vga adaptor, but its not very compatible. It comes with a disk to force some games into prog scan, and there is a website full of additional codes for it.

An NTSC XBox supports prog scan (NTSC can be forced with a mod chip) but I'm not sure which XBox VGA adaptors work using prog scan. Quite a few XBox games support prog scan.

... you see there are also VGA adaptors available that just convert the normal video signal to VGA for about ?50, but the quality isn't very good, especially compared to 'true' vga or prog scan.

[Smeghead]

when using an NTSC console, PAL Rocky offers use of Progressive Mode, but couldn't tell you if it works or not.

[beecee]

as i recall from the pre launch talk about the gamecube.

the uk gamecube doesn't support progressive scan at all!
as it got 60hz RGB instead! but as i use a US cube i don't really care for pal ones

you could buy an XRGB2 and solve all your problems!

[bash]

Some people are claiming Gamecube NTSC prog scan VIA PAL cube and freeloader.

[beecee]

Some people are claiming Gamecube NTSC prog scan VIA PAL cube and freeloader.

not proven! the games just crash. as the pal cube doesn't have the hardware to display prog scan! it was removed. so its either a mod on the cube, faked or they are actually using a US/JAP cube.

[Papercut]

Some people are claiming Gamecube NTSC prog scan VIA PAL cube and freeloader.

not proven! the games just crash. as the pal cube doesn't have the hardware to display prog scan! it was removed. so its either a mod on the cube, faked or they are actually using a US/JAP cube.

See my post above, I tend to agree with this.

[SuperAleste]

Bah, so either I get one of those "fake VGA" boxes or spend the rest of my days fighting with spaghetti junction? Damn.

[groundy]

Guys, quite a few people have confirmed NTSC Progressive from a PAL Cube with Freeloader now.

While I gave up trying ages ago, I have no reason to assume they are lieing. Those who have got it to work were using straight Component Video to high-end Plasma screens, not RGB HV via VGA. This should make a difference but might .

[arhra]

Bah, so either I get one of those "fake VGA" boxes or spend the rest of my days fighting with spaghetti junction? Damn.

Or nip down to argos and pick up one of these (actually, since you want more than three inputs, grab a couple and daisy-chain them [i'm pretty sure someone here's tried it and found it to work perfectly well, but i can't remember who it was])

It won't help with the girlfriend problem, but it at least you won't be swapping cables constantly...