I found SCART cables at a local thrift store here in Florida, USA!

So my Dad's truck needed repairs and while we were in the same town as the dealership, I convinced him to take me to the thrift store there. As I love electronics and video games, I immediately went over to the electronics section. They mostly had printers and random PC/AV cables. On one of the shelves was a complete shocker: 2 European SCART Cables for $1 each. I bought them along with an official Xbox 360 Audio breakout box for when using HDMI cables and older receivers that lack HDMI input (should've had that when I still used my Turtle Beach headset).

We don't normally use SCART in the USA. Few TVs here have the port and it is usually labeled as an EIA Multiport, and those TVs are rare. How did they get to that store here in Florida?

I'm pretty sure they are SCART cables but they could also be Japanese JP-21 cables. They are just generic Male to Male cables and nothing special. How can I tell if they are European or Japanese?

Well that saved me money on cables I was going to buy for a lot more money. I currently don't have anything i can use them with as the only things I currently use SCART on is my NTSC SNES and my Sega Genesis CD 32X Model 1 setup.

I still can't believe I found SCART cables in a local thrift store here in Florida. I really wonder how they got all the way here. What imports have you guys found at local thrift stores that shocked you?

 

I've seen scart cables before at my goodwill,ending up buying some,one was a original xbox scart.

Hell I once saw a d-terminal cable there.

 

Because they are male to male patch cables, they might not be euro or Japanese configuration - if all pins are wired they would work with either system

 

Nice! When my cousin gave me his broken original Xbox, it came with the official Component cable. I don't even have anything that accepts D-Terminal cables.

That's good to hear. Thank you for the info, I kind of figured it would but I wasn't too sure.

 

Exactly...if you're just using them as straight through patch cables, it doesn't matter what signals are on what pins. If you are concerned that some lines might be tied together (such as grounds), then take a multimeter on continuity mode and make sure each pin only connects to the same pin on the other end of the cable.

 

When I lived in the States a lot of my A/V stuff was imported. The advantages of having a screen that could handle nearly every system, signal, and connecton known to man far outweighed maybe having to power it through a transformer. For people who played imports this was very common. I imagine it's become even easier in 20 odd years since then and is still done.

 

I would do that but my multimeter died and I was about to buy one at RadioShack but my Dad didn't like the ones they had. Can't blame him as some RadioShack products (like their HDMI to Component converter) aren't the best. What else can I test continuity with?

 

Check out Harbor Freight if you have one near by,sometimes they will give away multimeters with a coupon.

 

They actually have a store nearby. I'll try to check them out next time I'm over that way.

 

Why is this such a shock anyway?

 

Guess it would come down as not being a common thing to see in the US.

 

I don't think I've ever seen a Scart input on a display other than a PVM here in Canada, I believe RCA made a TV with Scart inputs, but I've never set eyes on one.

 

They did, it was the RCA Dimensia and it was labelled as "EIA Multiport - Stereo"

 

I got one of those at goodwill a while ago. It was a shame I had to throw it away since it had a DVD menu burned in and was dieing.

 

CRTs can get images burned into the screen? I thought that was only a Plasma TV thing.

 

You must be too young to remember older arcade machines with burn images on their screens. Main reason why newer arcade machines have screen saver of game play demo on them. Lot of older arcade machines had their company/title logo burn into them. Same reason for screen saver on computer, to save the screen of computer monitors when it used to be CRT.

 

From what I've read those tv's won't output analog rgb,better off with a sony pvm/bvm.

 

I have never seen a SCART in any thrift store, flea market, garage sales, etc. I guess SCART is just never used in my parts of Michigan. I did score a store display SNES with Zeneith RGB monitor that has Super NES silkscreened on (many monitors often burned out and were replaced with one that doesn't have the mark). Inside the system is an early SNES with separate audio board, and official Nintendo SNES to SCART cable plus SCART to RGB board inside.

Remind me to take picture of it. The board has additional circuitry that connects in parallel to SNES reset button and a set of DIP switches, one enables/disables auto reset and 4 sets the reset time to discourage game hogging.

 

Nice! I would love to see some pics of it. I've never seen a SNES store display before. The SNES was actually the first Nintendo console I ever played. That was probably around 2002-2003. My sister was in the hospital and since our aunt worked there (she still does), she got us an SNES with Super Mario World to play in the hospital room. My former babysitter has her son's SNES she would bring out every now and then for us to play. I always loved that one Bubsy game for some reason. I didn't get one until the end of last year because the price was so high online. It wasn't my first console I ever played though. My babysitter always hooked her son's SNES up via RF though so going from RF to my friend's mini via Composite to mine via RGB was a big improvement for me.

 

The snes kiosk used a jp 21 rgb cable.