HDMI to VGA on MAG Innovision CRT Monitor (Model 786n)

[OhTheStatic]

Hey everyone, I'm pretty new to the MiSTer project and CRT monitors but felt compelled to scoop one up after poking around online for a bit. I found a MAG Innovision being sold by someone a town over $60 so I figured why not scoop it up?

So far I have managed to get video using an HDMI to VGA adapter. I tried to plug the monitors HDMI cable into the MiSTer's VGA port itself, but it didn't provide a signal (14 pin v 15 pin maybe was the problem?). I am just trying to sort out what sort of video configurations I need to make to the ini file, if any. As of now, the video displays with black borders around it when set to "original" on the Sega Genesis core, but when I make it full screen it distorts it a bit. Are there any tweaks/alterations I can make on the MiSTer itself to make it display the game full screen without distortion, or is that as intended? It's been a minute since firing up my old consoles on a CRT, so I'm legitimately a bit clueless and want to do my best to emulate these as they should be.

Thanks for the great project and outstanding resources. It has been a really blast learning about this project through the forums.

[OhTheStatic]

Hey all, disregard: I'm an idiot and didn't consider that the MiSTer is still detecting it as being an HDMI signal. Figured this out!

[FoxbatStargazer]

I think you mean you plugged the monitor's VGA cable directly into the Mister's VGA port? People may have got confused since you said HDMI...

By default the Mister outputs original analog resolution over the VGA port and scaled to 720p widescreen from the HDMI port. However most cores including the startup menu output 240p, which is not compatible with VGA monitors. You must set forced_scandoubler=1 in the ini to get analog output to 480p, then you can use direct connection to the VGA port.

The black borders you saw when using the HDMI->VGA adapter are because you were looking at a 1280x720 image. By default a 16:9 widescreen square-pixel LCD is expected and so you have black borders on the side to adjust for the aspect ratio difference, however your CRT is going to squish that back down to 4:3 and end up with some big borders. There can also be borders on the top/bottom if using vscale_adjust=1 since that will force horizontal integer scaling (i.e. usually exactly 3x the resolution, so say SNES or Genesis are 224x3=672, leaving a bit of black space inside a 720p screen.) If you want to use the scaler with your VGA CRT, you can either pick a 4:3 video_mode (like 1024x768), or else inside the core's menu change the aspect ratio to full/wide and your CRT monitor will squish it down properly.

Note that you can use either original or scaled resolutions from either port. Set vga_scaler=1 to use the scaler on the VGA port, or direct_video=1 to use original resolution over HDMI (presumably to some kind of analog converter.)

[OhTheStatic]

I think you mean you plugged the monitor's VGA cable directly into the Mister's VGA port? People may have got confused since you said HDMI...

By default the Mister outputs original analog resolution over the VGA port and scaled to 720p widescreen from the HDMI port. However most cores including the startup menu output 240p, which is not compatible with VGA monitors. You must set forced_scandoubler=1 in the ini to get analog output to 480p, then you can use direct connection to the VGA port.

The black borders you saw when using the HDMI->VGA adapter are because you were looking at a 1280x720 image. By default a 16:9 widescreen square-pixel LCD is expected and so you have black borders on the side to adjust for the aspect ratio difference, however your CRT is going to squish that back down to 4:3 and end up with some big borders. There can also be borders on the top/bottom if using vscale_adjust=1 since that will force horizontal integer scaling (i.e. usually exactly 3x the resolution, so say SNES or Genesis are 224x3=672, leaving a bit of black space inside a 720p screen.) If you want to use the scaler with your VGA CRT, you can either pick a 4:3 video_mode (like 1024x768), or else inside the core's menu change the aspect ratio to full/wide and your CRT monitor will squish it down properly.

Note that you can use either original or scaled resolutions from either port. Set vga_scaler=1 to use the scaler on the VGA port, or direct_video=1 to use original resolution over HDMI (presumably to some kind of analog converter.)

Thanks so much for the reply to this, truly appreciate it. This all makes sense; sorry for the confusing language used in this one! Initially I tried to do the VGA from monitor into the Mister but it didn't display, so then I had to resort to plugging an HDMI cable into the Mister, then using the HDMI to VGA to use the monitors built in VGA cable. I don't mind the black borders or anything, honestly. Just was confused assuming it should have been taking up the full screen.