The more or less universal judgment on yesterday’s post is “no, sorry, tough luck.” The particulars of my setup and needs mean the solution won’t be as simple as finding a cable.
So… now I’m browsing Sony PVM monitors for sale online and trying to lock down precisely which cables will be necessary to do an analog passthrough, and I can actually feel my soul leaving my body.
I’m not following. While playing on an RGB monitor will probably look pretty nice (I used a broadcast monitor to play Saturn once, but it was pretty small and I only had the composite cable that came with the system, so I can’t make an quality assessments from personal experience), doesn’t the problem of splitting the signal to go to your display and capture device remain the same? I think the key to the problem is probably finding the right point at which to spilt it. To that end, I’m curious. What sort of cable is actually coming out of the Analogue NT? I can’t tell much from their web site, especially as I’m on my phone, but is that a VGA port on the back of it? Because that might be pretty easy to split, after which it should just be a matter of having the right cables.
We’ll never forget young Jeremy Parish 197X-2015
Have you talked to your children about the dangers of high-fidelity classic gaming?
Jeremy, I’m a longtime reader of your work but never commented. I have a Sony PVM 20L2MD (2004) cluttering my apartment that I can provide to the cause, but I’m not sure where you live. This guy is beefy. I’m in Los Angeles. Let me know if you’re somewhere near???
Wow, that’s incredibly generous of you. Unfortunately I live on the wrong side of the country…. I would be more than happy to cover the cost of freight if you’re serious and wouldn’t mind boxing and shopping it, though.
This guy is heavy (probably 150 pounds with the case), so not sure what the cost might be as I’d need whatever shipping service to pick it up from my apartment (a sportscar is not conducive to lugging around obsolete cathode ray tube boxes). If you look into it and can find a service who can do that, let me know. It might be easier to find one locally and pick it up yourself — but I know these aren’t always easy to find.
Nope, I’ve been watching local listings for PVMs and haven’t seen anything that suits my needs. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Mind if I drop you an email? (And FWIW, retailers have this model listed as weighing in at 30kg or 50 lb., variously — heavy, but thankfully nowhere near 150 lbs.)
Email me. I was factoring in the weight of the case, which I suppose you don’t need.
Don’t worry, no need for the soul-leaving-body-part and all. For the easiest and most trivial passthrough setup including a PVM/BVM you’ll need the following cables – assuming the Analogue-NT outputs RGB + C-Sync through the D-Sub 15 (commonly refered to as VGA) connector and also assuming analogue interactive weren’t mean enough to use their own custom pin-out (couldn’t find a pin-out anywhere) to force their own BNC-cable on you (which would explain why they charge 29.00$ for that on their website, but it’s probably nothing):
– One of these cheap and readily available D-Sub-15-to-5x-BNC (RGB + HV-Sync) cables. The C-Sync you need for the PVM/BVM will be on the white H-wire. R, G and B will be on the red, green and blue wires (duh).
– Another D-Sub-15-to-5x-BNC cable to go from the passthrough back to your Framemeister, but with a female D-Sub-15 connector, that you can plug your RGB-21-calbe into (I’m assuming your existing RGB-21 cable already has a male D-Sub-15 connector on the other end).
I know, so many (reasonable) assumptions, but that would be it.
Or alternatively I could recommend you multiple more flexible setups for consoles that don’t output C-Sync, but involving Extron or Kramer video processors, distributers, transcoders, an Arcadeforge Sync Strike, that kinda stuff. But even then it’s easier as you might think, if you have the right equipment available, so you can conveniently keep your soul inside please.