JesTheRed

Grinding in Arcania (again)

  • She/Her

~30 | AuDHD | Demi Transbian??? | Occasional writer | Bug furry?? (Idk the right term for it, but the urge to shed this human flesh for a hardened exoskeleton is strong sometimes) | Perhaps a little Poke-therian somewhere in the mix? Idk, I like Flygon.


Gaming Interests: Dungeon Crawlers, RPGs, Turn based strategy, Management games, occasionally Pokemon, pretty much anything with meaningful exploration
Hobbies: Being tired :(
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Ask me about Etrian Odyssey, Tunic, Fire Emblem, and/or Pokemon. I can and will nerd out about them.


Lizstar
@Lizstar

What an experience this has been lmfao

So, capture cards don't really like PC resolutions very much. My HDMI capture card is like "NOPE NOPE NOPE" any time the resolution is below like, 1280 by 720. And on Windows 98, pretty much EVERY game you'll ever play goes full screen as like, 640 by 480. Extremely out of range.

My friend who's been helping me with this showed me a vogons thread going back 14 years ago, and still going strong. But everything I can find has some caveat. Oh try this old capture card, it can handle it! It doesn't accept audio, and also its a PCIe slot, and I have no more empty PCIe slots. Ooh, try this old AV system! lol 800 dollars.

Anyone got any good recommendations? There's GOTTA be some kinda simple easy capture card that can handle 640 by 480.

My current wonder is, I wonder if my Retrotink 5x can handle it??? If I can get like, some kind of VGA or DVI to SCART translation going on, and plug that into my Retrotink, can it upscale it with no issues? Or like, this fucking VGA to Composite cable https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Analog-Adapter-Display-Converter/dp/B082RB74K4/ref=sr_1_15?crid=1J5ZW679MCDEB&keywords=VGA+to+Scart+cable&qid=1707692611&sprefix=vga+to+scart+cabl%2Caps%2C187&sr=8-15

I've already spent like 30 dollars on things on Amazon for this project, some of which have been a waste of money, so I don't wanna keep wasting money on this if I don't have to lol


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in reply to @Lizstar's post:

I don’t know about the Retrotink, but when I was capturing from a Mac, I was able to pass it into a Framemeister just fine and use that to clean up the refresh rate before passing it to the capture card.

Capturing all the oddball resolutions and video timings that old PCs put out is kind of a nightmare. 720x400 @ 70hz is a common resolution that capture cards fail at. I've been using an Extron IN1508 Scaling Presentation Switcher to upscale to 1080p, which then goes into my capture card. It handles most weird video timings I throw at it. They were like, $40 on eBay the last time I checked. Downside is that they're not really plug and play, as you often have to manually set the video timings yourself. Also, not the sharpest output, depending on the resolution.

I have a Retrotink 5x as well but, while I haven't tried it with my retro PCs, I think it probably won't work well for old PCs as that's geared more towards consoles.

Have you looked into a GPU that has S-Video out? During the Windows 98 times they were not rare.

With those passive VGA to Composite adapters i had bad luck in the past. As the sync signal often is kinda jank.

I feel like I remember seeing a Startech capture card quite a while ago that could do VGA/DVI. I think it's what I saw being used for capturing arcade cabinets. I don't really have the details anymore because that was 5+ years ago, though. That's probably about has helpful as the old forum post lol

RE: Retrotink 5X: I don't have any experience with a Retrotink 5X and VGA resolutions, but my understanding is it will handle 480p well of any horizontal resolution if you get an HD15-2-SCART or the open source Retrotink VGA to SCART design, but doesn't handle resolutions not used by game consoles well. So 800x600 or 1024x760 won't be detected properly by it.

The Retrotink 4K allows setting custom resolutions for it to detect to handle those and has a native VGA input, but is extremely expensive. I've heard about the OSSC Pro as a more computer focused scaler in the same price range as the 5X, but only vaguely, so I can't say much one way or the other and it just came out but was overshadowed hard by the 4K.

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