SNES RGB?

SNES_Is_Best said:

I wonder why the ghosting is virtually invisible on the older 2chip PPU's.

Which 1CHIP systems have you seen the ghosting on? 1CHIP-01? 1CHIP-02? 1CHIP-03?

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All single PPU units have the ghosting, including the mini. The reason you cant see it on the 2 PPU systems as badly is because they are blurry, it masks the ghosting a good deal. On my 1-Chip the ghosting is not super bad, if I were to blur the picture as much as the 2 PPU revisions are you would not see it.

Skips said:

All single PPU units have the ghosting

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Even the 1CHIP-03? I'm asking because some of its owners claim that has no ghosting, nor any vertical bar.

Here's a pic by Darcagn showing no ghosting via his capture card - http://dcemulation.org/~darc/snesmods/comparison/smw-1chip-03.png

That very spot in Super Mario World will show ghosting immediately. He said that he couldn't see neither via eyeball nor capture card. Thoughts?

SNES_Is_Best said:

Even the 1CHIP-03? I'm asking because some of its owners claim that has no ghosting, nor any vertical bar.

Here's a pic by Darcagn showing no ghosting via his capture card - http://dcemulation.org/~darc/snesmods/comparison/smw-1chip-03.png

That very spot in Super Mario World will show ghosting immediately. He said that he couldn't see neither via eyeball nor capture card. Thoughts?

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Ghosting visibility changes based on the display you are using. When using an RGB to component converter with my 32 inch VVega I can not see it at all. When using straight up RGB on the PVM-20L5 its there but not bothersome at all (you only see it if you get real close and look for it, normal people wont notice it). When I had the BVM-20F1U it was blaringly noticeable compared to the first two. On the XRGB mini the ghosting was missing altogether (which makes sense since the XRGB processes and filters the video).

As for the center bar that does not appear to be an issue with a specific model of SNES. Some mini's have it, some don't. Some 1-Chips have it, some don't. A lot of 2 PPU systems have it but I have seen a couple that don't. No clue why some have it and some don't but its not specific to model or revision.

Skips said:

Ghosting visibility changes based on the display you are using. When using an RGB to component converter with my 32 inch VVega I can not see it at all. When using straight up RGB on the PVM-20L5 its there but not bothersome at all (you only see it if you get real close and look for it, normal people wont notice it). When I had the BVM-20F1U it was blaringly noticeable compared to the first two. On the XRGB mini the ghosting was missing altogether (which makes sense since the XRGB processes and filters the video).

As for the center bar that does not appear to be an issue with a specific model of SNES. Some mini's have it, some don't. Some 1-Chips have it, some don't. A lot of 2 PPU systems have it but I have seen a couple that don't. No clue why some have it and some don't but its not specific to model or revision.

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He used the following

- Same SCART cable for both, fully shielded cable from retro_console_accessories store on eBay
- XRGB-mini Framemeister upscaled to 720p with scanlines disabled, captured via HDMI through elgato Game Capture HD hardware

So there you go.

Fudoh also has a 1CHIP-03 and he said its pixel perfect with no ghosting. But he also uses XRGB-Mini......

SNES_Is_Best said:

He used the following

- Same SCART cable for both, fully shielded cable from retro_console_accessories store on eBay
- XRGB-mini Framemeister upscaled to 720p with scanlines disabled, captured via HDMI through elgato Game Capture HD hardware

So there you go.

Fudoh also has a 1CHIP-03 and he said its pixel perfect with no ghosting. But he also uses XRGB-Mini......

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Both the XRGB mini and HDTV's (if Digital Noise Reduction is turned on) will filter out the ghosting. The XRGB mini and HDTV's are not a good way to test systems for any issues like these.

Skips said:

Both the XRGB mini and HDTV's (if Digital Noise Reduction is turned on) will filter out the ghosting. The XRGB mini and HDTV's are not a good way to test systems for any issues like these.

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So I guess - to make a long story short - there's no real way to fix the ghosting, nor the slightly blurry picture of the older 2chip SNES's. You would think that capacitors could do the trick.........guess not?

SNES_Is_Best said:

So I guess - to make a long story short - there's no real way to fix the ghosting, nor the slightly blurry picture of the older 2chip SNES's. You would think that capacitors could do the trick.........guess not?

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There is no known way to fix the ghosting, maybe someone will find a way to filter it out in the future. If anything bypassing the capacitors should sharpen the picture on the old systems. I am going to try something later this week if that SNES PCB still works and will post my findings here.

Skips said:

There is no known way to fix the ghosting, maybe someone will find a way to filter it out in the future. If anything bypassing the capacitors should sharpen the picture on the old systems. I am going to try something later this week if that SNES PCB still works and will post my findings here.

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Look forward to hearing back from you then. Maybe you'll be able to bypass capacitors without bypassing the encoder. I say this because some people are limited to S-Video.

I have no visible ghosting on my CHIP1. I'm not sure why, or even what revision of the C1 I have. If you have a game and spot I can provide screen shots.

Jassin000 said:

I have no visible ghosting on my CHIP1. I'm not sure why, or even what revision of the C1 I have. If you have a game and spot I can provide screen shots.

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The 14L5 would be to small to see it on. At least I think you were the one using the 14L5

Anyone know where to get SNES pure/raw Euro SCART RGB cables? None on ebay...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk 2

Jassin000 said:

I have no visible ghosting on my CHIP1. I'm not sure why, or even what revision of the C1 I have. If you have a game and spot I can provide screen shots.

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Go to this spot in Super Mario World - http://dcemulation.org/~darc/snesmods/comparison/smw-1chip-03.png - and jump up and down, looking for a faint shadow to the right of mario and yoshi. Its the 3rd stage (Yoshi's Island 3), right at the checkpoint.

skate323k137 said:

No problem

All you need is a scart cable with 220uf caps on the R G and B lines. I personally just put RCA jacks on the back of my console with one jack each for R G B and Sync, and put the caps inside the console. I go straight to a PVM from there with RCA to BNC adaptors.

This page is very useful too. NTSC SNES's even output csync clean if you wire to the right pin (scart cables will use cvid, which may or may not need a sync stripper depending on your setup).
http://www.gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av:nintendomultiav

I think 'broken' on here had some SCART cables for NTSC SNES's, but if I recall they went quickly. May still be worth checking with him.

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Where can I get a proper snes SCART lead? I got a cheap Chinease one but it didn't look right.

Hans Grösse said:

Where can I get a proper snes SCART lead? I got a cheap Chinease one but it didn't look right.

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Goebbles will look after you.

Skips said:

The 14L5 would be to small to see it on. At least I think you were the one using the 14L5

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Yea that could be the case. I will put up some Nikon 16mp screens tomorrow of that spot in SMW.

I got to try what I wanted today. This time I did the RGB bypass and removed the transistors at Q1, Q2, and Q3 to completely disconnect the RGB pins on the PPU from the RGB circuit on the 2 PPU SNES.

I tapped RGB directly from the PPU pins. This does make it a tad bit sharper but it is still much softer than the single PPU revisions. RGB was amplified with a THS3714 and ran through 300 ohms to bring the RGB levels down to normal (The amp is needed).

Ghosting is A LOT worse tapping RGB right at the source even though it is a tad bit sharper. The dual PPU setup has terrible ghosting when a full bypass is performed. Doing a partial bypass on a 2 PPU system by simply tapping RGB right before the encoder does not increase sharpness and simply gets rid of the center bar.

So in short by doing this I have determined that..

1. Ghosting is a problem with the PPU's
2. Something in the dual PPU revisions does reduce ghosting a bit (But blurs the image more)
3. The 2 PPU systems output fuzzier RGB right off the PPU than the 1 Chip Systems

Sorry no pictures, my camera on my phone is shit and cant really snag the differences or ghosting.

And like I said as well, ghosting visibility depends on your display. Every single SNES I have ever repaired or modded for myself or others have showed some sort of ghosting at least one of my monitors. It is kind of like the NES jailbar problem from the older PC10 PPU RGB mod, some displays show them strong while others don't.

How can I find which revision are my SFC and pal SNES? I use my pal SNES with an RGB cable that was intended for a pal GameCube, but plays fine. Not 100% sure though if image is the proper one...

Skips said:

I got to try what I wanted today. This time I did the RGB bypass and removed the transistors at Q1, Q2, and Q3 to completely disconnect the RGB pins on the PPU from the RGB circuit on the 2 PPU SNES.

I tapped RGB directly from the PPU pins. This does make it a tad bit sharper but it is still much softer than the single PPU revisions. RGB was amplified with a THS3714 and ran through 300 ohms to bring the RGB levels down to normal (The amp is needed).

Ghosting is A LOT worse tapping RGB right at the source even though it is a tad bit sharper. The dual PPU setup has terrible ghosting when a full bypass is performed. Doing a partial bypass on a 2 PPU system by simply tapping RGB right before the encoder does not increase sharpness and simply gets rid of the center bar.

So in short by doing this I have determined that..

1. Ghosting is a problem with the PPU's
2. Something in the dual PPU revisions does reduce ghosting a bit (But blurs the image more)
3. The 2 PPU systems output fuzzier RGB right off the PPU than the 1 Chip Systems

Sorry no pictures, my camera on my phone is shit and cant really snag the differences or ghosting.

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Hmm.......so based on this, there's really no way to make the 2chip systems as sharp as the 1chip systems, correct?

SNES_Is_Best said:

Hmm.......so based on this, there's really no way to make the 2chip systems as sharp as the 1chip systems, correct?

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Bingo, it comes right off the PPU that way.

Skips said:

Bingo, it comes right off the PPU that way.

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Interesting. So do you think that this confirms my original hypothesis - ie; that Nintendo added some type of filtering for dithering and smoothing/blending purposes? (and for whatever reason abandoned/forgot it with the 1chip)

SNES_Is_Best said:

Interesting. So do you think that this confirms my original hypothesis - ie; that Nintendo added some type of filtering for dithering and smoothing/blending purposes? (and for whatever reason abandoned/forgot it with the 1chip)

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No, I think they simply improved upon an old design with the 1 Chip.

Skips said:

No, I think they simply improved upon an old design with the 1 Chip.

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Yea the reason I brought it up is because Sega's Composite output was so bad that they intentionally made use of it by dithering games heavily (for blending of colors). Sony's PS1 Composite output was also very bad, so bad that it greatly anti-aliased all the jaggies on their polygons. So I assumed (rightly or wrongly) that Nintendo did something similar with their SNES, but as we both know, its slightly soft picture is not only with Composite, but also S-Video and RGB.

My only problem is that - while the 1CHIP (S-CPUN-A) is an improvement in sharpness, its a downgrade in accuracy. Some games have minor issues with it. Some really good games too.......

Skips said:

Ghosting is a problem with the PPU's

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More on that......

You mentioned that it doesn't show up on XRGB-Mini due to filtering the image. So I got the idea to try hooking up my SNES Mini to my Pioneer Plasma, because it has DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) and its able to be turned on or off. So I used Super Mario World for my test, and sure enough the ghosting very noticeable. Then I turned on DNR (set to "High") and BOOM the ghosting was nearly completely gone!!! I was stunned to see that!

So this is undeniable proof that its 100% possible to reduce, if not completely get rid of the ghosting....BUT....someone needs to find out what caps are needed AND where they are needed. But for sure, its possible (vertical bar fix has already been done with caps, so next step is the ghosting!)

SNES_Is_Best said:

More on that......

You mentioned that it doesn't show up on XRGB-Mini due to filtering the image. So I got the idea to try hooking up my SNES Mini to my Pioneer Plasma, because it has DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) and its able to be turned on or off. So I used Super Mario World for my test, and sure enough the ghosting very noticeable. Then I turned on DNR (set to "High") and BOOM the ghosting was nearly completely gone!!! I was stunned to see that!

So this is undeniable proof that its 100% possible to reduce, if not completely get rid of the ghosting....BUT....someone needs to find out what caps are needed AND where they are needed. But for sure, its possible (vertical bar fix has already been done with caps, so next step is the ghosting!)

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The vertical bar "fix" by putting caps between vcc and ground does not fix the center bar, it is just reducing it to the point of not being able to see it on most displays. See my comments on ghosting visibility in my posts above. Like the ghosting HDTV's can also reduce the center bar via DNR, which is what I see people using in test videos for that method online. The vertical bar is caused by noise on the PCB, this is why sticking a cap between VCC and ground reduces the issue. I have also tried this, and like the ghosting problem, is still visible on some TV's/monitors. The RGB bypass is the one current known way to get rid of the center bar entirely.

The big thing to understand when interference is involved in the old game systems is that just because it is not visible on your setup does not mean it wont be there for someone else. The goal is to actually fix the problems and not just mask them. One of my biggest pet peeves when the PC10 PPU was the big deal were modders claiming to have jailbar free systems. This was not correct, they simple did not EXPERIENCE the issue with their display/setup but the problem was still there. Drakon was a big example of this. He claimed his mods were jailbar free but every system of his I have seen on an actual RGB monitor (using RGB or S-Video) were riddled with jailbars (far worse than anything I ever did). Caps between VCC and ground is not a new solution, its been used across all the game systems to reduce interference such as jailbars and the vertical bar in the SNES. All this does is reduce it significantly but its not solving the problem.

Caps wont fix the ghosting issue, all they will do is blur the picture enough to where you cant see it. You would need some sort of filter to fix the ghosting issue. If I remember correctly Tim Worthington was working on a device that would filter the jailbars out of a Genny completely, maybe this will work for the SNES ghosting once/if it is released. The XRGB and HDTV are processing the image so that is not proof the problem is fixable by modding the SNES itself. It just shows you can stick it through some sort of external filter and scrub the problem out.