CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Rattanee]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Id almost bet it will be that... Not much else it can be!!

[UncleWill]

Dang dude - you are dedicated. Nicely done!

[Rattanee]

So I didn't get much done today as far as swapping boards go, but I think I have all my problems isolated now bar the jumpy image after power-on on the first PJ.

So here's a rundown for those who might be interested:

Focusing blue and green, not enough range:
Fault location: Deflection board
Having moved my first def board into my second PJ, this fault moved along with the def board. So it's definitely a problem on the deflection pwb.

Image position doesn't change smoothly, jumps at certain values:
Location: Deflection board
Same as above!

Noisey image from composite input:
Fault location: Decoder PWB
After recapping, image from composite input is almost as good as RGB! Quite astonishing really!


Today's result? - I hear you ask.
Amazing image quality! I took the time to move in a stable little table to put the second PJ on. Aimed it so as to need as little keystoning as possible.
1. Zeroed all settings. (For those of you who still think there's no option to do this on a PG without entering every setting and normalizing it separately, well... try pressing the normal button on the remote when not in any menus. "Normalize all gain data?" Select yes... presto!)
2. Loosened all yokes, and set up green for level horizontal on the screen.
3. Adjusted green cross-hair to as close to 90° with tilt/skew as possible
4. Set yokes of red and blue for parallel vertical cross hair
5. Adjusted red and blue cross hair horizontals to parallel green
6. Set toe-in for perfect cross hair convergence, set static convergence to correct what little had to be done
7. Set geometry using only green gun, to get as perfect a crossh-hatch (coarse) as possible
8. Set dynamic convergence (time consuming yes)
9. get image so good I hesitated if I should touch point at all...
10. give in and do point...
11. PROFIT! Well no not really... but damn that image!

Also adjusted focus in there several times of course. I have to say... best damn colour reproduction I've seen on a PJ! (Had several DLP projectors previously, none compare!)

What's left to do? fix the electronics faults of course in due time! Aside from that, set proper astig, get a perfectly flat screen instead of the not exactly straight wall surface I'm using atm, ceiling mount!

I'll post some screenshots tomorrow, though I know they won't return the real thing, but damn it's starting to look damn convincing

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Fault number 1, did you turn the pots on the bottom right corner of the DEF board?

The normalise all gain data is not the best thing to be doing... There are certain items you may not want to normalise... But yep, i knew it was there, i just dont like to use it. There is also the option to normalise all items within a menu or sub menu.

No reason to be using STATIC at all on your primary setup. That is LAZY!!!

[Rattanee]

[gjaky]

[Rattanee]

The problem is exactly the fact that with the digital focus set to 0, blue and green pots need to be turned up completely, and even then I can't reach the focus sweetspot for these two colours.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

You need to move the yokes, every set could be different.

Phase and kelvin should be left in their best spots.

When doing focus, center all electronic settings for focus, set mid point electronic to -10, blue defocus switch off, center the focus pots, move the yokes back and forward til best sharpness in the center is obtained, then adjust digital zones. Once you get the blue focus as even as you can over the whole screen, turn on blue defocus.

The fact that the DEF board influences the focus that much leads me to believe the pots are dirty or the connections are bad.

[Rattanee]

Okay so I didn't have much time these past weeks... so I got about to a little more tinkering...

Well my first little disappointment is the fact that there is indeed a light frame burn-in on the second PJ... it's not visible on the tube face but a white screen shows it quite heavily... I suppose I'll have to set the set up with the rasters offset after all :\ Shame...

Has anyone tried using a PG9 to hook up older consoles? I wanted to use the RGB inputs to hook up some consoles, built the converter, hooked it up, and the PJ can't seem to sync to anything? I tried a Sega Megadrive and the Gamecube. Neither sync from the RGBHV input... I thought the sync signal level might be off, but no... I've checked my wiring, sync does arrive to the H/V connector for composite sync input.
Please don't tell me the PJ can't sync to 15khz from the RGBHV BNC inputs... it can... right?

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Mine always worked perfectly fine, either something wrong with your set or youre doing something wrong.

The Megadrive should come straight from the Sony CXA1145 from pin 11 to pin 1 on the DIN socket, dont have a capacitor in that path anywhere. Pin 11 from the CXA1145 should connect DIRECTLY to the HV combined sync input of the projector, you SHOULD NOT have any other circuit or component in the middle.

When you say 'build the converter' i assume you mean you built an LM1881 sync stripper to convert composite video to composite sync, and if you did and youre trying to use that with the Megadrive that is the reason its not working.

[Rattanee]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

With the megadrive, my cable is the same as for all consoles using the CXA1145, the RGB lines have a 470uF cap in series with a 75ohm resistor, and the sync line goes direct from pin 11 on the CXA1145 to the projector.

No megadrive i know of has composite video connected to the rear output sync line, the NEO•GEO did that from revision 3-5, however it was easily changed.

If you dont use the 75ohm resistor and 470uF cap on the RGB lines the colours will be the wrong level. You can go direct through a 220ohm resistor and no cap on the RGB lines and get simular results, and that is how ive always done NEO•GEO MVS and other arcade boards that dont have the encoder chip, but with consoles i stick to what Sony recomend for their CXA1145.

[Rattanee]

Okay I've nailed the problem. Apparently the site I linnked really does have the composite output wired to the scart connector... about to fix that right now...
And the Gamecube cable is a factory made cable... and it also has composite video on the sync pin! Albeit at much lower levels... cranking up the contrast gave me a viewable picture... bleh... time to tear apart some cables apparently...

Well... weird... I converted the cable I made to use the proper output pin of the MD. It works fine on my test monitor's scart input. Putting the scope to the sync line, very nice square pulses... almost 5Vpp... soon as I hook it up to the PJ's H/V input, the signal literally disappears... it sinks to barely noticable voltage levels...

The Gamecube composite signal changes a little too, but there's still an image, and that is a comparatively very weak output at 1Vpp...

strange things are afoot... though I jsut suspect the megadrive's output is too weak... it must be the case seeing how the gamecube works...

[Rattanee]

Just needed a decoupling cap on the sync line, and got a not so perfect picture. I'll grab some proper resistors and caps come monday and that should sort the issues (the only real problem being some vertical jumping of the image)

Still... going to have to do something with the gamecube... composite is not an option when RGB is available

Edit:
Weird stuff is weird... did the exact same wiring for my Sega Master System 2, but since it has no RGB out, I wired a D-SUB directly to the video encoder chip, with 220uf caps on RGB and CSYNC. It works flawlessly... it's strange... possibly meaning my Megadrive 1 has a problem... wouldn't be surprised considering I rescued it from the scrapheap

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Did you check the MD has the sync line going direct to pin 1 and not via other components?

Is there a CXA1145 chip in that Mega Drive or a CXA1645?

[Rattanee]

I'll check it in a bit. I didn't pull the sucker apart again (I'm glad I finally have it assembled... it needed some thorough cleaning inside and out!) just used pin 1 of the connector. The chip inside is quite possibly faulty, or there's a different fault, as I do get a rolling dark wave over the image as well. (Not completely black, it looks similar to the scan-roll you see when you point a camera at a CRT tv.)

[Rattanee]

Blah internet was out all day. It's a 1145 in there. Signal goes straight out indeed. As it turns out I may have found the problem. I don't have a factory power brick for it, so I've been using a generic one for testing. It's under-rated for the Megadrive for certain. Hopefully the problem will go when I get a proper brick for it.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Factory original is rated 10v 1.2A