On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Joe Giliberti <starbase89 at gmail.com> wrote: Yes and no. The short answer is that there are amiga-to-vga adapters for cheap on ebay. Or with a little googling, you can make your own. They really just rearrange the wires. the problem is that the bottom end of the horizontal scan frequency range for most vga monitors is around 30hz. But amigas need 15hz (to line up with pal or ntsc tv signals). There's a number of things you can do. You could find a monitor that's will sync that low. Very few did, but they're out there. I believe the NEC multisync 3D did it for example. If you find a secret cache of vga monitors that sync that low, please let me know. I'd like to buy a few. Iiyama made some iirc. I have a JVC 20" studio monitor bristling with connectors that can do the right stuff. You could buy an amiga monitor. They're generally good monitors and can also be hooked up to video sources through RCA adapters. They can be had on ebay, but shipping is a killer. Work great on c64s also. They make devices called scan doublers or flicker-fixers (same thing). They do what the name implies. They step the frequency up from 15 to 30 making them work with most vga monitors. There's an external model that was made after the amigas went out of production. It's ridiculously expensive. Expect to pay several hundred dollars on ebay. If you had a 2000, you can use a flicker-fixer. Or you can find various high-end-for-their-day video boards that can do it also. Also into the hundreds of dollars. But you have a 500, so you're out of luck there because you lack a video slot. Doodads exist to give the 500 slots like a 2000, but they're harder to find than the 15hz monitors. Commodore made a device called the a520. The RCA connector on the back of the 500 is an rca video out, but it's black and white. The a520 made the same thing, but color. You could hook that up to a TV, but it's an rca video cable. Fairly cheap on ebay. If it were a 4000 or a 1200, you could go with the individual computers upgrade. Great solution. Wrong computer. Individual computers is about to release a board similar to the 1200/4000 model that plugs into the denise socket. It would install inside your machine and bring a real vga connector out of the case. Individual (jens) makes great stuff. Not sure when this is going to be out. I'd guess some time next year. It's designed for the 2000, so chances are it will work in a 500. Figure $150 to $180 for that. So I'd suggest just getting a 1084 or 1902? (not sure about the model number) monitor and use that for now, then keep looking for a bigger/better monitor. When Individual releases the other thingy, ditch the 1084 and use that with a flat panel LCD. If you have a TV that has both VGA and RCA inputs, we know it accepts VGA and syncs down to 15hz. The question is whether it will sync to 15hz from a vga connector. It's worth trying. Maybe a store would let you bring in your 500, power supply, and vga connector to try it out on a bunch of LCD TVs. brian

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 21:33, Joe Giliberti <starbase89 at gmail.com> wrote: The 23-pin video connector outputs analog RGB - european TVs with SCART can be hooked up with an adapter, IIRC. Nowadays, Component video (YCrCb?) is common on midrange sets here in North America. I have seen schematics for a RGB-to-Component converter, basically 3 opamps doing the linear transformation. If I do some digging in my files, I may have kept a copy (I just found it by googling). I've been considering this, though - the output from denise (U4 on page F-6 in "Introduction to the Amiga 500) is basically 12-bit RGB (4 bits each) into the video Hybrid HY1, which is basically a D/A converter. Wouldn't it be possible to program a PAL/GAL/FPGA/Fast EPROM to do the transformation in digital space (one big 12-bit to 12-bit lookup table)? (Basically replace the U40 and U41 buffers) If 4-bit-each resolution is no good in the YCrCb space, fast 6 or 8-bit D/A's should be easy to get off the shelves these days, no? Joe. -- Joachim Thiemann :: http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/~jthiem