Help troubleshooting my attempts to pass PC VGA into my Framemeister...

DNSDies

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Another Idea after reading some threads on VOGONS.

buy a PCI GeForce FX 5200 with a DVI port on it.
It's compatible all the way down to Windows 95, and you can use a DVI to HDMI passive adapter.

Best of all, they're $15-20 on ebay.
 

BanishingFlatsAC

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Another Idea after reading some threads on VOGONS.

buy a PCI GeForce FX 5200 with a DVI port on it.
It's compatible all the way down to Windows 95, and you can use a DVI to HDMI passive adapter.

Best of all, they're $15-20 on ebay.

That's a fantastic idea.
 

Jibbajaba

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That is a great idea, but I don't have Windows 95 on this computer. Kinda don't really want it either, because that would cause a few problems.

Next time I go over to Teddy's house, I'm going to take my DOS machine and Elgato and try out his XPC-4.
 

DNSDies

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It will still work in DOS, pretty sure. Windows 9x compatibility usually means it works in DOS. Video cards don't even use drivers in DOS either.

The question is, will the Elgato capture a 240p signal via HDMI?
If I had an Elgato, I'd test it myself, sadly I don't have any HD capture devices.

Regardless, getting a digital signal out of the computer alone is EASILY worth the $15-20 you'd spend on the card, as you can run the digital signal through your upscaler of choice, presumably.
 

shadowkn55

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It will still work in DOS, pretty sure. Windows 9x compatibility usually means it works in DOS.

No it doesn't.

Video cards don't even use drivers in DOS either.

Drivers aren't necessary for the basic text only, low color portion of the initial boot up. But if you want to take advantage of the cards extended capabilities like 3D graphics, compatible drivers are most definitely required.

Haven't you ever installed a new graphics card without installing the drivers? In Windows you get the lowest resolution possible (640x480 or 800x600) and at best 16-bit color. It's not until you install the drivers do you get higher resolutions and true color.
 

DNSDies

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If a video card works in 95, it WILL work in DOS.
Video Drivers aren't required FOR DOS.
Most DOS programs use their own methods of communicating with video devices to push things more complicated than text.

What few 3D games exist in DOS usually use a custom software rending that doesn't take advantage of the GPU. There are a few exceptions to this in the way of proprietary APIs for some older Matrox, PowerVR, and 3dfx video cards. You can count the number of DOS titles that require these on one hand.

When using a video card in DOS, it only needs to support the most basic video modes the program's custom driver is pushing, usually in CGA/EGA/VGA.

For higher resolutions above 640x480, you get into VESA modes.
Just about every video card released after 1998 supports VESA 2.0 or 3.0, including all modern video cards.

I'm fairly confident that getting a DVI video card into a DOS machine will push a digital signal out of it in pure DOS mode.

You can test this by using any computer you own to boot a DOS 6.22 boot disk, and running any old single-floppy DOS game and hooking up your video care to a monitor that only has DVI-D/HDMI ports.
 

Jibbajaba

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If that card works in DOS then it would be a cool option to explore. My only concern would still be with the Elgato not being able to keep up with the resolution changes. I tried hooking my computer directly to the Elgato using s-video and even then the signal would cut out for several seconds every time the resolution changed. That's why something like the XPC-4 is interesting. If it can keep up with resolution changes and output at a steady 720p, then that would work. But I am skeptical that it would be able to do so. Right now my best bet is to use my DVD recorder with the s-video output of my current video card. The picture isn't as sharp, but resolution changes are not a problem. Still, for $15 shipped that video card would be worth the risk if I were sure that it would work without Windows 95. I could always try passing the HDMI signal through the Framemeister to see if that helps, although it doesn't usually like sudden changes in resolution, either.
 

Xian Xi

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Just do what I did with my early arcade footage. Svideo to a DVD recorder then import the file on the computer make whatever changes you need to the video before you upload. That's exactly how I did mine.
 

Jibbajaba

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Just do what I did with my early arcade footage. Svideo to a DVD recorder then import the file on the computer make whatever changes you need to the video before you upload. That's exactly how I did mine.

That is precisely what I did with all the footage on my channel prior to getting the Framemeister and Elgato. Sounds like that's what I'm going to be doing with DOS PC footage, and that's totally fine with me.
 

Jibbajaba

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Edit: Gonna re-upload the video after doing some tweaking.
 
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DNSDies

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Nice video. I always wanted to grab a GUS for some of my old PC games.
I'm pretty happy with my MT-32 though.

On topic though, I did some experiments on my main PC in pure DOS 6.22
I have an AMD R9 290x, and have it hooked up to my plasma via HDMI and my ASUS VQ248QE via Dual Link DVI-D.
No analog signal whatsoever.

I made a USB MSDOS 6.22 boot, and used a spare 80GB drive to create a 2GB FAT partition, and installed some games on it. KQ5, QFG2, and Daggerfall.
All of them ran PERFECTLY (no sound though, because dos drivers for modern hardware will never happen), and even weirder, the signal to both my TV and Monitor was 1080p60hz.

My R9 290x was automatically scaling everything up regardless, complete with rectangular pixels.

I kind of want to buy an old DVI-D PCI or AGP video card and pop it in my older computers and see what it outputs now.
 
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Jibbajaba

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OP, if your kenzei supports component input you should try one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/400751305462?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

it converts VGA into component video which is a more "up to today standards" video signal, VGA or RGB just don't cut it anymore, almost 100% of current devices hanlde video in component format, RGB isn't bandwith effective.

If that worked then I wouldn't need the Kenzei anymore. The issue is whether or not it can handle the low resolutions of most DOS games, and how it would handle resolution changes. It also mentions not being an upscaler, so I don't know how my Framemeister would handle that. I'm going to back-burner DOS capture for now because I have too many other things going on.
 
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