CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[NFG]

Hallo!

I've dreamed about getting a CRT projector for a long time, and finally picked one up. It's got a little more burn-in than I'd prefer, but has only 2500 hours on the tubes, so I'm hoping for a few fun hours out of it.

Setting it up has been fun, I figured it out pretty quickly and can usually nail the convergence inside of half an hour. It's still enough of a hassle that I hope to not shift it too often.

Anyway. Blue focus - the seller told me that he didn't recommend focusing the blue too tightly, and now I see why - it creates a massive drop in blue brightness, where the out of focus blue is significantly brighter. This sort of surprises me, and I wonder if anyone could confirm this as a thing or whether there's something weird with my unit.

The other question I have is regarding the inputs - what criteria does it use to apply a different input number (out of the 100 slots available) to the input signal? For example, I hooked a Dreamcast up, and one game plays in 240p (standard retro game console resolution) and the other in 480p (VGA), and it chose a different input for each.

Having to re-do the entire configuration for each one is a massive hassle, and correct me if I'm wrong, I can't copy convergence configs across from one resolution to another.

Just sort of wondering how often it's going to tell me I'm spending another half hour dicking with the fancy remote, 'cause I have a lot of different hardware I want to hook up to it. =)

And, oh yeah, it snaps from time to time. Once during warm-up, usually within 15 mins or so, and then a few times every hour. Is this a Bad Sign?

Thanks for any info!

[gjaky]

It's pretty normal that you have to defocus the blue.

Actually you can copy convergence data between slots: create new entry, and after the name it asks if you want to load temporary data/default... and select the "entry number" there you can change an other entry from where you load the convergence data, it works more/or less, some touch-up may be needed.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

You need to go into the menus, turn off blue tracking, then set the blue focus to perfect. Now go back into the menu and turn blue tracking back on, it will automatically defocus the blue perfectly. When setting focus, set all focus menus to zero, then move centre focus to minus 10. Now adjust the center focus to absolute perfect using the focus pots, and i use the internal focus pattern for that. Now in the focus menus, adjust each zone til its the best it can be. The center should stay perfect on minus 10. Do all 3 tubes perfect, then set blue tracking back on to get your blue defocus.

Before you finish electronic focusing, you should do the mechanical focus, set the tabs as stated under the front cover, full field in the colour youre focusing, fully defocus electronically, use short range binoculars and move the main focus until you see the phosphor grain snap into razor sharp view. Then repeat with the outer edges, recheck the center, tighten the center, recheck outer focus and tighten that. Now youre mechanically focused the best you can be.

When you do the setup, you can copy settings from other inputs, but then set the PHASE correctly, you will only need minor changes from there. Every single setup should be started with PHASE, if that isnt set correctly, nothing will be right without more effort.

If you start again, zero every setting, then set PHASE, now return to the ALIGNMENT menu, set the AMPLITUDE and KEYSTONE as close as you can, and go through in order from the top. The line distortion adjustments may be required to get the cross hair perfect. Use the video image to set the AMPLITUDE and KEYSTONE. Use the cross hair to adjust tilt/skew and bow. Use the cross coarse or fine for everything else.

The XG has the best convergence system of any projector out there, its extremely stable, and the adjustments are so fine you can easily get it pixel perfect across the entire screen with no trouble at all.

Once you get to grips with all that and youre getting it looking great with minimal adjustments, itll be time to learn the astig. Once you do that, you will then repeat everything above, and be impressed all over again.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Where in Australia are you by the way? If youre not too far away from me, i can come and show you a few tricks.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

The snaps arent exactly normal, if the screen jumps when it snaps thats the HV arcing somewhere.

The machine stores inputs based mostly on the H scan rate, 240p at 60Hz is 15.7kHz, where as 480p at 60Hz is 31.5kHz or so. If you put something on at 480i at 60Hz, youd find it will make use of the same input settings as 240p in almost all cases, cause the H scan and V scan rates will be the same.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

A little something from my XG you may appreciate as a retro gamer

[NFG]

<yawn> Good morning!

I'm in Goodna, near Ipswich.

Would you say these HV snaps are cause for alarm, or something I should keep an eye on, possibly to repair if it starts getting worse?

And yeah, I always appreciate a little Gen'an Shiranui. =D

Hooking the neogeo up is one of the goals. I lost a huge amount of hardware in the floods, so I want to get some playing in while I still have some left. Today's goal is an adaptor for my arcade rig, so I can get Robotron running on the projector. ^_^

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Im on the sunny coast, so its abit of a trip, but we could work something out id say.

It could just be humidity causing the snaps, keep an eye on it, see how it goes. Mine has done it a couple times.

Are you the one that lost a fair few retro consoles in the box etc? If so, i saw pics back then of some of your items. I used to be on the NEO-GEO forum under the name "NEO-GEO Man", but got banned for apparently promoting Tokyo Toy Factory...

[CasetheCorvetteman]

The arcade boards will work straight into the RGB, just take it straight off the JAMMA edge, use a 220 ohm resistor on the RGB lines and run the sync direct to H sync, all the grounds are common.

[NFG]

Haha, wow. Yeah, that was me - I'm on the neo-geo forums as 'neogeoman'.

I think I nearly got banned for exposing the truth behind the RGB/composite outputs from different serial numbers. ^_^

I haven't worked out yet exactly where I'll be using the projector most. I've got a photo studio with a great big white wall which is where the projector will be used, but since I need that space for other stuff fairly often, I've built a wheeled cart for it. Works a treat, there's a surprising amount of wiggle room before the image quality is noticeably affected.

Basically I need to decide how big I want the screen to be, and how much brighter it will be if it's closer to the wall, etc. Once I work that out, it'll be time for the serious configuration.

[NFG]

Yeah, I'm not worried about -how- to hook up the arcade games, I just need to make the connectors. My JAMMA setup uses a DB9, which needs to be converted for the VGA cable to the projector. And IIRC I used 75Ohm for the RGB lines, but I'll double check that. Some of my displays don't care, some are fussy about that extra strong RGB.

[Curt Palme]

[Curt Palme]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Itll all work out the same, i found 220 ohm to be right on par with my consoles If you use a 75 ohm and a 220uF or 470uF cap itll be about the same. You know what youre doing anyway.

Yes, funny how many people believe the low serials have better RGB than a 3-5 or 3-6 ( ive got one of each )... Dont see how they could with the wrong coupling caps in there. Hard to convince these people the serial number has nothing to do with it!!

[NFG]

Curt: Buy another one, haha! I'd need to build another studio to house another of these monsters. Ye gods.

What's your take on the every-15-mins snapping sound, something to worry about? Or not yet? Fixable for a talented amateur?

Case: There were definitely some RGB changes made, to favour the quality of the composite output. Early model units (pre 90,000 or so) lacked the RGB striping or checkerboard effects that the later ones had. See: http://nfggames.com/games/neorgb/

[CasetheCorvetteman]

I know all about the revisions yeah, ive modded lots of them and done many hours testing Theyre all capable of being equal. Checkers is only on the 3-6 and easy fixed 3-5 is perfect right out of the box. The connection between composite changes and RGB changes is purely coincidental, they are electrically identical up to the Sony CXA1145, and the changes made are the coupling caps and resistor combos used. The layout varies, which is what caused an issue in the 3-6, however the rest is electrically identical.

Id be checking the tubes have the straps on the back of them and all the black ground wires are on where they should be, Curt will have to tell you more on that.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Something for you to test if you have some spare time, take a first revision and remove the 68ohm 100uF combo, replace it with the correct 75ohm 470uF combo on the 3 RGB lines as well as the composite video line, then compare to an untouched 3-5 revision. Replace it on just composite output line and youll see the RGB doesnt change.

Prior to the CXA1145, no changes exsist, and there is no composite video til the output side of the CXA1145. It goes in to the CXA1145 as RGB, in there it gets converted to composite and s-video as well as passing through, from there each of the 4 video output lines go to the AV connector via a resistor/capacitor combo. This combo is the only thing that changed electrically, and by changing that combo, you will get the exact changes to both RGB and composite you see in the various revisions. Every single machine used the exact same Sony CXA1145 encoder, and were all fed the exact same signal.

And Curt is right, you SHOULD just buy another one, ive got 5 of them

We will have to do abit of retro gaming when we both get some time

[matt697845]

NFG,

Id guess you already know about this, but are you using the VGA adapter to connect for Dreamcast to your PJ, if not you should be! Perfect RGBHV straight into the PJ. There are some games that weren't "designed" to work with the Dreamcast VGA box, but most of these can be "tricked" into working by flipping the switch on the box at certain points during boot up. The reason I even bring this is up, you said some games run at 240p... I wasn't aware it was even possible to get a 240P signal from the VGA adapter as the ~15.75 KHz signal would be incompatible with almost any VGA monitor, and could even damage some of the older ones.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

I dont see how it would damage any monitors, a hell of alot of CRT monitors start at 15.7kHz scan.

Id think considering the collection he had, he's a reasonably accomplished retro gamer

[NFG]

Haha, yeah, I'm pretty good at this stuff by now. ^_^

Matt: I added an extra switch to my Sega VGA box to go from 15kHz RGB to 31kHz VGA, using the same VGA output connector. This way I minimize the number of required cables while still maintaining low-res compatibility for games like Bangaioh which don't do VGA.

Case: surprisingly few VGA monitors will do 15kHz. The vast majority in my experience start from 31kHz. Some very old models will not simply go 'out of range' on signals below that, but will actually try and kill themselves doing it. You're more likely to fry them feeding higher resolutions though.

Hell, I used to fry monitors in my high school by CTRL-ALT-DEL too many times in rapid succession. "Huh, this monitor just died. Was it a once off? Nope, two down. Was it a coincidence? Nope... f*ck, I'd better be somewhere else for a while."

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Almost all the ones ive owned did 15kHz!!! Except the F700P, it started at 31.5