To everyone that wants RGB on their TVs

So this has been discussed a million times, even by myself on this forum. So I had no idea why nobody came up with a solution besides a real experienced and knowledgeable hacking of RGB on the TV IC.


This is way more easier and worked out perfectly.

A friend of mine still works on the arcade business and has a bunch of cool stuff. He had several arcade monitor's chassis for 38" inches CRT. The brand we had here is the infamous EAGO that changed it's name several times.

So I got a brand new EAGO monitor chassis, opened my Gradiente TV, the CRT is made by JVC.
Hooked the 4 wires, 2 for vertical, 2 for horizontal.
Hooked the Ground to the YOKE. Hooked the YOKE itself.
Installed the flyback.

Don't forget to get yourself and isolate transformer.

And on the chassis board you will have an input with GND/Sync/R/G/B so all I did was get a female SCART connector and wire the correspondent pins.

It worked
I did the same for the audio and hooked it up to an amplifier.


I still have the Sony 40 inches XBR here and I'm hopping for a guy I know to be able to do build an special chassis for this CRT. Still I'm pretty happy with it.
This TV is in my mother's house so I didn't had much time to take pictures of it running games or anything.

This is the messy result:


I'll take more pictures when this gets home.

Hope this helps out people outside Europe that wanted to get real RGB and weren't able to.

 

So long story short: If you can find an arcade driver board with the same plug for the tube cathode as what you have, chances are it should be a simple plug and play operation. Or did I read that wrong? If I read it right, I actually thought about it 8 months ago but never went through since I didn't have enough money at the time and simply forgot later. My setup would also involve a component video switcher that also has composite switching to get the needed channels for R G B SYNC and audio. Need about a 6 or 8 input model which isn't cheap hence the other reason for not trying this myself...

 

Woah, this seems like way too much work. If it's a CRT, I'd rather just find one with component input, buy the $50 converter from SCART, get a breakout adapter for audio, and be done with it!

 

Every TV, as far as I know, has the some yoke plug on the back. The thing that changes is inductance, if it's too high you can damage your arcade chassis. For retro consoles I don't see the need for component since the only system that output component (ps2, game cube) also output RGB.

 

I was doing exactly that but TVs with component input usually do this: component in ---» tv circuit ---» turns digital ---» filters --» go back to analog ---» rgb on the tube.

Since you already had RGB going component to go RGB again is way too much conversion. I had that and I wasn't happy with the results. Now I'm happy
The image is outstanding in comparison with the converter and I had the J-S technology converter, which is, at least, the most expensive one.

 

My grandparents have a dead CRT set from the early '90s. I believe it is a 32" tube or somewhere around that size. It only would display a black screen with a rainbow line down the middle. I assume the driver board died and the tube itself is still good. Never could get it fixed despite checking every single transistor and resistor one at a time. I forgot the model but I'll check it out sometime soon. Perhaps I can strike a deal with them. Trade it for my 20" Toshiba set from 2001. Then see if I can find a compatible arcade driver board for it, video switcher for my consoles, make some cables up, mod other junk for RGB, ..., done, profit?

Oh, and mod the audio out to hook into my 5.1 system for the sound. This way I won't need to use any sort of a converter to go to or from composhit and S vid. I would lose the channel tuner, composite, S vid, component, and built in audio but the way my stuff is I won't ever need the composite and S vid again. It all seems to have RGB out minus the Xbox. Audio will be handled by external setup, component on the Xbox either converted to RGB or Xbox modded for RGB out like a PAL model. I don't use the channel tuner anyways so no loss there.

I have a plan now assuming I have a good tube and can find a good priced compatible arcade driver board. I could just mod my current 20" unit to put the RGB in place of the channel tuner since I know where the lines are located but I don't wanna risk it, I'm too lazy, and I would be wasting other features on the set that some people like my grandparents could use. I like to keep stuff as minimal as possible.

Why didn't the USA just go with RGB like Europe did? WHY???!!! Even my grandfather who is 73 years old, and doesn't really understand the gaming generation from around '85 onward, says that the fact USA didn't go with RGB and used the compressed composhit as mainstream video was pretty stupid of them. Especially after I told him pretty much all sets them convert the signals back to RGB before going to the tube itself and the fact that composite is pretty shitty in quality compared to RGB, component, and even S vid. Stupid America...

EDIT:

I said I wanted to get a component video switcher with composite as well for use with RGB switching. RGB has 4 wires. (Red, Green, Blue, SYNC) Componet has 3. But if I find one with composite as well, that's 4 video wires right there. Ground shouldn't be an issue since it will most likely have a common ground setup. Unless separating the grounds would be better then finding a model with S vid switching too would be better to get 5 or 6 separate video signal wire channels for the 5 from RGB with separate ground. Audio switching will be a given and work fine since the only console I have that puts out more than 2 channels is my Xbox that I have a 5.1 setup on.

EDIT AGAIN: The 32" tube is a no go. Grandparents want to keep it and see about getting it fixed. I say the driver board is too fucked up to use. No dice...