I've got a V9990 power graph light by Technobites (Brazil) over here. I'm looking for a moden monitor that could work with this.
Any suggestions? I've looked in second hand stores, but never could fine one that would really work...
VGA monitors which can accept 15 kHz signal are almost impossible to find at least in Europe. It’s not a standard signal for VGA, it uses 31 kHz or higher normally. I believe in Brazil they are (or were) a little bit more common.
However the V9990 outputs 15 kHz RGB so you can use a SCART cable. Clear information on how to make a cable is unfortunately a bit scarce. Also note that there are pinout differences between Powergraph versions.
AFAIK the pinout of the PowerGraph light is the same as the OCM and derivatives. Basically the original VGA pinout but with CSYNC on pin 13. I am still waiting for my PG light v2 to confirm it works with OCM SCART cables.
@Edoz: I did find that list a while ago, bought 2 monitors from a second hand store... and they didn't work :-(
@Grauw: I'm hopeless with soldering, so I'm not going to create my own cables... that would be a disaster ;-)
So, before I start spending my money again, I want to be sure that it's going to work :-)
Me too, I've been in the quest to find a compatible VGA monitor, spending much money to obtain... nothing!
At the end, I found the solution using the S-VIDEO output to Scart, and a normal TV.
There's not much to do wrong... The V9990 has got a standard VGA output, and the monitors had a standard VGA input. The list stated they were able to use the correct Hz ... but in the end, they didn't.
Of course it can be a faulty monitor, but 2 in a row...
Mmmm... unfortunately I haven't got a TV that supports scart anymore... so I have to be 99,9% sure that it's going to work before I buy something.
Weird thing though, on facebook and on the internet I see photographs shared with people using a modern LCD monitor with a MSX... So it should be possible to find a model that works OK.
Just to be clear with the wording here, the V9990 does not have standard VGA output, at least not in the modes supported on MSX cartridges. The V9990’s VGA output modes requires an extra clock crystal to be installed that no MSX V9990 cartridges have. So although the connector used is the same as VGA, it does not actually output standard VGA (31 kHz) but regular TV-style RGB (15.7 kHz) like found on SCART.
So a SCART connector would actually have been the most logical output for this, since it can carry RGB, S-Video and Composite. But that takes a lot of space on a small cartridge (also SCART is uncommon in Brazil). So they used the DE-15 connector instead, and use a pinout similar to VGA, but not using a supported VGA horizontal scan frequency, and using some of the pins for Composite and S-Video signals.
dracul wrote:
Weird thing though, on facebook and on the internet I see photographs shared with people using a modern LCD monitor with a MSX... So it should be possible to find a model that works OK.
It’s pretty easy to connect SCART to modern LCD monitors, several TV models sold here in the Netherlands still have a SCART input, and if they don’t then you can use a SCART -> HDMI converter, either a cheap Chinese one (~€10) or a high quality one for retro computers (~€100). For example my MSX-es are connected with SCART to the OSSC converter, whose SCART output then connects to a Dell 23" LCD monitor. This gives me a great and super sharp image quality.
