#pi2scart

[adelaideretrocomputing-blog]

The fantastic ArcadeForge Pi2SCART board for connecting 15kHz 4:3 RGB monitors to your Raspberry Pi. I’ve been using this for about a year and so far its been great.

[jonathanraychapman]

Raspberry Pi TV-Out Adventures - Pi2Scart

I’ve been working on getting several Raspberry Pi 3′s hooked up to TVs I use down in the basement for retrogaming.  The advantage in using a CRT is that there’s less lag (button press latency) and you get a more authentic experience.  I grew up playing these games on CRTs and they just feel more natural on there.  The difficulty is that a) the RPI3 only displays HDMI (and not really at a resolution the games were meant to be played at) and b) these TVs only accept composite (gross) or Component (acceptable).

The RPI3 has a series of pins on the side meant for general input/output (GPIO).  I bought several TV output solutions that plug into these (called Pi hats).  This one in particular is a Pi2Scart - which is a project that has a sister project called Pi2Jamma (which is meant for setting up an arcade machine with a RPI driving things).  The difficulty in using these TV output solutions is that you must a) have the resolution set so that you can navigate the game selection menu (I’m using RetroPie) and b) have the emulator set the resolution correctly based on the system you’re playing (otherwise Mario looks really weird for example).  

After trying a stock RetroPie distribution image and researching how to set the config.txt in the boot partition, I ended up using an image out there that already has these resolutions set up.  Needless to say, it’s a godsend here - saving so much time with setting up each emulator.  I’ll get to the other RPI TV out solutions I purchased lately but this one is definitely looking promising now with that image.  I have another linux distribution to try with this as well so there might be an update for that.

Other things worth mentioning in the setup here.  I ended up using a RPI enclosure that’s basically a giant heatsink that is attached the the hottest chips on the board with some thermal pads.  And I overclocked my RPI about 15-25% to get the most I could out of it.  Because of the way the enclosure works with the GPIO pins, I soldered the wires on the little fans (which sit under the PI2Scart with an air gap) to the board directly.  With the heatsink, things get warm but are quite manageable without any freezing or lockups.

I also have this SCART to Component box I bought years back that I’ve pulled out and have used here.  I had to open it up and tweak the pots inside to get the desired color (which admittedly is a little on the cool side).  I also decided to add a small copper heat sink to the voltage regulator with a volt (after drilling a hole through the piece of copper).  I don’t know if that’s really going to help, but that voltage regulator is super hot (it was hot with a 1-amp power brick and still hot with a 300ma one).  I’d love to move to one of Mike Chi’s (RetroTink) RGB2COMP units when I can.

TV is a cool Sansui brand TV that my grandmother had in her house before she passed.  It’s a nice TV and I mostly use it for component in solutions.