/vr/ - Retro Games

if you're referring to VGA Mode 13, that's just the standard 31Khz at 70Hz. The resolution is 320x200 on paper but it actually has doubled scanlines.

>>5426778
>320x200

well, 1920*1200 is an exact 6x scale for that, although "muh aspect ratio" obviously. It's also a real good panel for displaying 800*600 on with some pillarboxing.

>>5426778
NEC 4:3 (or 5:4) LCDs are usually pretty good in terms of being able to handle weird resolutions / kinds of sync.

>>5427379
Eeeeh, I got a NEC 1550V a little while back, 1024x768 panel, and it couldn't handle 512x384. That was a letdown. Only a 5$ letdown tho.

For 320x200 VGA the best way to display it would probably be a 1600x1200 20 incher. That'll give you the right aspect ratio, stretching the image exactly 6X vertically by 5X horizontally. Can't guarantee either the monitor your video card won't do something stupid like bilinear-filter the image to stretch it though. Older hardware is probably less likely to do that simply by virtue of not having the spare computing power to waste on it.

>>5426778
enjoy your very short thread

Retro LCDs objectively sucked ass. Washed out colors and poor viewing angle.

>>5426778
My 2014 Ultrasharp has literally never had an issue. I’m not sure what the scaling hardware is in it but I’ve set it at all kinds of crazy resolutions without issue. So that’s worth a look into. Same with my OLED and Panny Plasma for that matter

>>5426778
Pic related is a list of all modern monitors good for DOS games

buy a freesync monitor and use dosbox

>>5427736
yup using a 2007FP for a Windows98SE machine and as a second montior for my main, having all the different inputs is priceless and the S-VIDEO is great for those really weird low resolutions (like the Dungeon Keeper intro)

>>5427992
oh yeah, those tv-outs on older video cards always output 480i. this way it doesn't matter what resolution the dos game uses since the tv-out converts everything to 480i.

>>5427660
320x200 VGA is really 640x400. The monitor will bilinear filter, it's computationally really cheap.

>>5426778
I have that f1723, not using it right now but of all my LCDs thats the love of my life. Its not perfect but I played years of morrowind on that screen.

>>5426778
If you're not doing CRT the best thing you can do on an LCD is filters.

>>5427736
>>5427992
Seconding the 4:3 Dell monitors. They can be had for very cheap. Though they have composite and s-video inputs they can't do 240p which is a shame

>>5427992
>>5428329
no don't do this. I bought a dell fpb and it's shit for 70hz and can't scale 320x200 without fucking the pixels up. Also has a decent amount of input lag and can't properly handle win98 games that have odd refresh rates like nfs3 @ 64hz.

>>5428329
>Though they have composite and s-video inputs they can't do 240p which is a shame
Does it choke and throw up an "Invalid Signal" message? What exactly do you mean by "they can't do 240p"?

>>5426778
I use this. which is passable but has component, svideo, composite and VGA so it can be an all-in-one if I need it to be

>>5428421
There's no message, the screen just stays black. It not being able to do 240p isn't exactly true though, sometimes when switching from 480i to 240p it randomly works, but it's rare

The way I understood, if you feed a 240p signal into a flat panel display, it usually just responds by displaying both NTSC/PAL fields in progressive scan while on a CRT, the even and odd fields are offset by half a line.

>>5428554
I don't know how 240p works exactly.

>>5428562
Standard broadcast NTSC is 480i. What this means is, there's two identical frames sent to the TV and the scanlines of the odd frames are displayed half a line from the lines of the even frames. The NTSC color burst also flips 180 degrees each frame.

240p signals are generated simply by playing around with the sync pulses to cause both frames to be displayed in the same position instead of offset half a line. This creates a progressive scan image that runs at 60 fps rather than an interlaced one that runs at 30 fps.

Flat panel displays are fixed pixel so they can't really do interlaced video and 480i is displayed simply by rendering both frames in sequence to create what's effectively a 480p image. When you send them a 240p signal, it's simply rendered the same way--as 480p with the odd and even lines alternating instead of being rendered on top of each other other.

What is the best 720p monitor? I want minimal input-lag, great colors, and a high refresh rate. By now they should have perfected 720p, right? Aside from 4k, I figure a 3x multiplier for my old consoles and my old PCs should be able to handle a 720p resolution very well to maintain some great sharp pixels at a cost effective rate.

I saw a 720p TV at my local pawn shop, but they seemed to have sold it already. At this time 4k monitors don't seem to have the refresh rates and are super expensive. From what I have read, PC is still at 1440p and only the Xbox One X is 4k, so I figure i can continue to wait. I need a modern backup as I am now on my backup CRT monitor and no one in my state knows how to fix CRT monitors.

>>5428904
You sure spent a lot of money to avoid owning a mid 2000's CRT.

>>5428915
its all the tax returns

>>5428904
Just get a plasma TV

>>5428904
>and no one in my state knows how to fix CRT monitors

What exactly is wrong with it? Bad caps, flyback, deflection circuit, worn guns. There's a lot of problems that can happen.

>>5428904
take your pick; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_monitors

>>5428917
Tax returns are returning your own money to you that they 'borrowed' without paying you any interest on it. If you get tax returns you've lost income you could have got by sticking that money, when you got it, in a term deposit.

Back on topic, i don't see the point in old LCD panels. Newer ones are so much better it seems a lot better to simply upscale and display on a modern monitor.

>>5429645
tell that to him

>>5426787
>>5428103
I know that VGA doubles each line in 13h mode, but I was under the assumption the actual output resolved to 720x400? Or is that just for compatibles?

>>5428554
Aside from getting it backwards, I don't think this has anything to do with the thread.

>>5429694
>but I was under the assumption the actual output resolved to 720x400? Or is that just for compatibles?

You probably used an LCD monitor with a firmware unable to make the distinction between the 640x400 and 720x400 dot clocks, the latter being much more commonly used for DOS prompts. It's still 640x400@70Hz in the usual double-buffered mode, but either you get false info from the monitor itself, or it is automatically interpolating to the same 720x400 settings as DOS prompts just so it can keep a consistent 4:3 ratio.

>>5426778
why not just use a CRT

>>5426778
The biggest thing to never compromise on is response time. And I don't mean lag. You want something with a 1ms response time for games with scrolling graphics, otherwise you will get unsightly blurring that can ruin the experience.

Beyond that look for something with a very high brightness level measured in nits or cd/m2. With an LCD/Plasma/OLED you are going to want to use Retroarch + shaders to get the best possible image. Use a scan converter if you absolutely won't budge on not using emulators, but know your result will not be as good. Either way the shaders or scanline generator will reduce the brightness of the image, so you need something extra bright to compensate.

The black levels thing everyone goes on about? Not really that important. Response Time Response Time Response Time. Say it to yourself. This is what REALLY matters and if you get something too slow you will never play anything seriously on it.

Final thing to consider is size. My opinion is subjective, of course, but I firmly -firmly- believe anything under 19" is unplayable in the long term, and less than 25" is not good enough for a personal set up at home. 19" is portable. 25"+ is the home set.

>is there a good list anywhere for more modern monitors (LCD/LED) that would be good for common DOS resolutions such as 320x200 @75Hz?

The newest and best stuff is going to be the best. With LCD there's little reason to dig into anything over a decade old.

>>5428915
Those I got for this very day where my primary computer CRT monitor is dead. I was hoping modern displays have developed enough for no input lag, high refresh, great colors, and an affordable price. I have held onto my CRT monitors I got long ago and was unable to afford any new monitors. However, the dreaded day has come and my daily driver monitor has problems which no one in my area even wants to fix. So those devices should work well for non-CRT screens (except for the XRGB2, I used that back in the early 90s to play console games on my computer monitor, as that's all I had for screens).

>>5429017
I don't think they make those anymore. It was just Panasonic and Pioneer that had plasma sets and I think both went away. My local pawn shop had a small 720P set, but it did not have the thickness I'd expect a plasma to have, and it is now gone with only 1080p sets available at this time.

>>5429116
For low-to-no input lag, fast response times, great colors, etc.what should I be looking for in this chart? Does Dell lack the obnoxious branding at power-on which I have seen from my work computers (it seems like the "ASUS" on the bevel isn't enough)?

>>5429032

>>5429032
The main one has so many problems since it was used almost non-stop for the last 20+ years. It is only sharp for the first minute then gets somewhat blurry, but now very blurry (non-legible text). If it is powered on, it cannot have a bright screen, else it will flicker then die out, but it still needs to "warm up or charge" which it never needed before. Now it also has the added issue, after a second where colors are normal, it just goes to a blue tint (before powering off due to lack of "warmth or charge"). It also recently got a minor scratch, due to my last move, on what I hope is only the anti-glare, but if I look for it on a white screen I can see a rainbow line. Image has a couple of diagonal lines now as you can see in the image. I do have a spare which I have not used yet, but I'd still like to repair my main one first. Now that I know no one even works with the parts anymore, I figure maybe to Frankenstein up a complete monitor between the two of them.

I understand I am asking for a very specialized skillset, and I have saved up to pay for the expertise. However, no one here even dares touch these anymore. I don't want to throw them out.

>>5430321
>Does Dell lack the obnoxious branding at power-on
its not going to kill you

>>5430321
Ignore that chart. Like >>5429912 said the main reason people use CRTs is response time & input latency. You can't tell these things from monitor spec sheets, they need to be independently tested.
For example, https://youtu.be/RbAbzjM2dzo?t=147
He's testing a 32" curved VA panel rated at 4ms against a xowie 27" TN panel rated at 1ms, yet the 4ms VA panel is actually faster.

>>5429694
720x400 is text mode standard running 28.322MHz pixel clock, 320x200 doubled to 640x400 uses the 25.175MHz, an LCD can't easily tell which one is being used since it doesn't see the clock and the sync signals are the same, so optimising for the text mode is probably a sensible choice.

I once had a 1600x1200 monitor which was an early IPS, circa 2003, which had pretty decent color, viewing angles, black levels, and no backlight bleed. It also had phenomenal scaling. I don't know exactly what kind of algorithm it was, but at non-native non-integer resolutions it was sharp enough that I almost couldn't tell it was being scaled, and from what I could see it preserved perfect linearity, no uneven blocky nearest neighbor shit. It was slightly soft, but no softer than a CRT. Problem was, it had atrocious input lag. So much that it was unpleasant to use even as a desktop monitor, let alone a gaming monitor, and it was actually marketed as a gaming monitor with "low response time", back when lots of people didn't know the difference between response time and input lag.

I still don't know enough about the sorts of scaling algorithms used in LCD monitors to understand really what it was doing. All I know it was tremendously superior compared to modern monitors and I would sure as shit like to know how, because it's information that seems lost to time. That was back in the days when it was still common and expected that people would run their LCD outside of native resolution. People always said that was sub-optimal, and I always assumed that I just didn't know any better back then and it always really looked horrible, but that monitor makes me question that.

I used to have that exact monitor with my old HP windows XP machine. It's a shame I got rid of that thing.

>>5430323
It seems like bad caps or voltage issues. The electron guns seem to ok and aren't suffering from low emission.

>I understand I am asking for a very specialized skillset, and I have saved up to pay for the expertise. However, no one here even dares touch these anymore
I heard somewhere that CRT repairs really weren't a thing after the 1960s.

>>5430579
My TV is a Bravia KDL46EX400 and it handles standard def signals really well, the upscaling is very good and it's not blocky or misshapen at all.