Comments on: Cheap RGB to VGA converter – Amiga

By: tomse

tomse — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:01:54 +0000

I won’t deny that it can be the board.

Can you post the games you mention, and also the full specs of your A2000. I’ll see if I can reproduce the problems you have.

By: tomse

tomse — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 10:59:56 +0000

When I made this article I didn’t expect this many comments on it.
I’m very pleased that you all find it useful :-)

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 09:13:19 +0000

Well i got the converter and it works great!
Very happy with it. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge Tomse :)

By: Daniel Conder

Daniel Conder — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 04:07:17 +0000

There are tools in the 2,x realm that handle ntsc to pal and vice versa. I rather suspect the problem is not the ocs to ECS denise or the OS upgrade from 2.04 to 2.1. I think it is the $30 board that take my output from the 23 pin connector and outputs via. I probably need to find an old 1084 monitor and hook it up an I can test that theory. I will post what I find

By: tomse

tomse — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:27:57 +0000

I don’t remember how Kick 2.x is, it does have an early bootup though.

In Kick 3.x you can select PAL/NTSC which works fine with my own A2000 with Minimegichip (upgrade to 2mb chipmem, NTSC). I haven’t testet the RGB converter with this machine.
I do believe, if you can change to PAL in the early bootup in your troublesome games, they’ll work.
Some of the games are NTSC or PAL only.
As an alternative, you can try the NTSC version of the games.

You can also try and connect the composite output to the composite in on the GBS. This could probably give the sync signal used.

Unfortunately I’m not aware of any cheap RGB->VGA converters, but there is the indivision ECS which costs more. I have this with my A2000 and the minimegichip, though I haven’t tested all games, it works fine.

Let me hear if any of the immediate tips can solve the sync problems

By: tomse

tomse — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:19:34 +0000

Looking forward to hear about your experience :-)

By: tomse

tomse — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:18:14 +0000

1. The specification on the board does say 2A, So I wouldn’t recommend that you try with less.. it can damage the supply
2. the 23pin rgb port can deliver 5V, but I wouldn’t recommend it as mentioned in 1.
3. I doubt the 5v can deliver 2A, the specs of an A1200 PSU on the 5v pin is 3A, I suspect only a couple hundred millivolts on the RGB port.

These are not all hard facts, but it’s the best I can give you atm.

By: Daniel Conder

Daniel Conder — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 23:41:50 +0000

For the most part I am happy with this solution for my NTCS A2000. I also upgraded the Denise chip. Then bumped from 2.04 to 2.1 Now I get 1436×460 displaying at 1024×768. A couple of games cannot sync now. I am guessing games that used a different scan rate like pal or something do not work with this converter. The old 1084 monitor used to sync fine with these I tried messing with some utilities to force NTSC etc but no luck.

All in all it is fantastic to have the Amiga out of mothballs. I had forgotten how fun that machine is. I doubt few are finding as much joy getting their 25 year old PC out of moth balls. Does anyone know if I need to purchase a more advance version of this board to get everything working?

By: Mick

Mick — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:12:31 +0000

This is great! I recently purchased an Amiga 500 and can’t get RF or AV output from the A520 modulator. I’m guessing the A520 is faulty as the monochrome display out works fine. Fingers crossed this solves my problem. I’ve ordered a GBS8200 from eBay and can’t wait to try this. I’ll post my results hopefully within the week depending on delivery time of the GBS.
Cheers :)

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 17:07:22 +0000

Hey mate, i have a few questions…

1) Is 5V 2A mandatary ? this circuit dont seems to use 2A.
2) Can be the 5V taken from the DB23 connector directly ?
3) In that case how much current can be taken fron the DB23 connector ?

Thanks in advance…