Building a new MiSTer would like to know what's a good monitor and audio device

[Lostone98]

I will be building it myself as it cheaper and more fun than buying it prebuild. I found an amazing eBay seller from Australia but I'm located in the UK. He was selling at a great price but the Tax/vat is not worth it.

He tells me a screen is not so important but I would think it would be as important as the device itself. I got an old 4k TV but I just bought a PC monitor (BenQ RL2755-B 27) that I was going to use for a raspberry pi project but would this be a good choice?

I have a very oldish screen BenQ XL2720Z 27 inch 144 Hz. I'm not sure if this is good.

Could someone explain me in simple terms in what screen I need, I don't do technical things very well. I'm more of a I see I do person. I'm autistic and I get lost easy but the mister seems ok to use.

Would it be better if I had a screen with free sync?

And for the sound, I was going to go for old PC speakers. I was going to get a MiSTer MT32-Pi Hat for midi based games but the seller for mister said that it's not needed. Just sounds cool thing to have.

Sorry if I'm not asking the right questions I'm very new to this, I should have no problem building this but I'm not good at the programming side of things but have used a bit of Dos box with so and so success. Was trying to play quest for glory but that's a whole different issue.

Also to add I'm going to throw everything at it when it comes to cores, looking forward to the ps ones as I had so much fun with that growing up

[AngelicLiver]

Either of those monitors should be more than adequate for MiSTer, monitors in general tend to be more accepting of arbitrary refresh rates put out by retro cores. Your mileage may vary with the 4k TV but typically I've not run into any problems with anything semi-modern.

Freesync support is irrelevant for MiSTer.

mt32-Pi is great to have and fun to tinker with but is not a must-own. There's a good video that goes into MIDI on the MiSTer here.

[C-R-T]

4K tv is not ideal as the Mister cannot upscale to this resolution so the Tv will have to do it, and that rarely looks good. Your 1080p monitor should look a lot better.

[pbsk8]

for monitor:I use a samsung 27'' fullHD 5ms 60hz (but incredibly for snes it shows 60.1hz )

audio: aiyma dac-02 with headphone or small stereo box

nothing fancy

I also have a crt 21'' but only svideo (no component) and no way I am spending 35 euros in a simple adapter to use it with mister.

If there is a way or cable vga->svideo or hdmi->svideo would be great

[jlancaster86]

Freesync support is irrelevant for MiSTer.

No, it's not irrelevant. While MiSTer doesn't support variable refresh rate (VRR), VRR monitors are likely to accommodate the arbitrary refresh rates native to the systems MiSTer emulates.

[pacoarcade]

Topping E30 DAC (no headphones, just pure DAC) works fine with MiSTer. Be sure to get the new version that corrects a problem.

In standby mode (where a dot appears in the screen) keep the tactile button pressed, then after 3 seconds it will appear the actual mode, then keep it pressed until it changes from PRE to DAC.

[AngelicLiver]

Freesync support is irrelevant for MiSTer.

No, it's not irrelevant. While MiSTer doesn't support variable refresh rate (VRR), VRR monitors are likely to accommodate the arbitrary refresh rates native to the systems MiSTer emulates.

Yes apologies; I mean Freesync as a feature is irrelevant but you are right, VRR monitors are more likely to handle typically out-of-spec refreshes. That said I've yet to have any issues on over a dozen monitors without VRR, whereas TVs can be a can of worms.

[FoxbatStargazer]

I have yet to see evidence of a VRR monitor that actually displays 50 or 70hz from Mister so remain unconvinced that this is a good recommendation. Its nice to know the panel itself can handle different refreshes but if the scaler converts those to 60hz when there's no VRR handshake then it isn't going to help at all. I've had more success with old DVI/VGA LCDs that are too dumb to buffer multiple frames and convert the refresh rate, so if it displays anything without glitching then its got the correct refresh at least.

[ash2fpga]

Sounds like we need some sort of video test. Perhaps 240p test suite and a high speed camera could be used to test 50hz at least? Not sure what might be out there that could run on ao486 to test 70hz.

[retro]

4K tv is not ideal as the Mister cannot upscale to this resolution so the Tv will have to do it, and that rarely looks good. Your 1080p monitor should look a lot better.

It depends on the quality of the TV's upscaler.

Plus manually editing the mister.ini can yield 1200p and 1440p outputs (see https://www.retrorgb.com/mister-1440p-1 ... aling.html)

My MiSTer is configured to output 1200p to my 4K OLED, and the games are gorgeous! The LCD filters on the Game Boy and GBA cores look absolutely stunning!

[ANARCHY_MIKE]

I am curious about how well Mister works with a PVM/BVM. Would they be able to handle the different resolutions and refresh rates that Mister can output?

[akeley]

I am curious about how well Mister works with a PVM/BVM. Would they be able to handle the different resolutions and refresh rates that Mister can output?

In general yes, though I've seen some troubleshooting threads around here too. But it's probably down to individual configs.

I'd much rather recommend looking for a decent consumer CRT TV. You'll save yourself hundreds of pounds/dollars/rupees, and the quality difference is not really that great.

[FoxbatStargazer]

If you're worried about resolution/refreshes most American consumer CRTs are quite limited to 240p/480i and near 60hz. You're unlikely to enjoy PAL stuff or even some arcades and just forget rotation. Even finding multisync PVMs that can do 480p or beyond can be a challenge. And yes the era of HD CRTs can accept a much wider range but most of them scale everything, including scaling 240p as badly/incorrectly as a modern TV.

The real budget alternative to PVMs are SVGA monitors, those will give you even more resolution/refresh versatility, and are more than sharp enough for low to middle res content. The trick is you need to pick up a bright/low use one for artificial scanlines to be useable, otherwise if you skip the scanlines you get a blocky look that isn't that far off from flat panels (though you still get features like zero lag and low motion blur.)

But really that's the same catch-22 with PVMs or even better consumer CRTs in general, you see people talking up how devs crafted low-res art that was "intended" to be filled out and smoothed over with the analog weirdness of CRTs, and then retro enthusiast go for displays and connections so sharp and high-quality that it basically negates that point.

[akeley]

But really that's the same catch-22 with PVMs or even better consumer CRTs in general, you see people talking up how devs crafted low-res art that was "intended" to be filled out and smoothed over with the analog weirdness of CRTs, and then retro enthusiast go for displays and connections so sharp and high-quality that it basically negates that point.

That's not really the case with quality TVs. They don't have the over-pronounced scanline/pixel separation of PVMS, and lack the super sharpness of PC monitors, yet still produce extremely good image thus making them ideal for 240p/480i gaming. I have several Trinitrons from late Nineties -early Noughties which fit this bill. Of course, the TV itself needs to be in a good nick without some serious geometry/convergence issues.

I guess in the NTSC land it might be a bit trickier though.

I've tried applying scanlines to PC VGA monitors (both software & hardware) and while it produces an okay-ish effect, I wouldn't enjoy gaming on this. The colours are just too dull, image dimmer and the lack of shadowmask is also grating. Maybe it's a bit better on top-range pro monitors, but these are also very costly these days and if I was about to spend this kinda dosh I'd rather get a PVM.

[FoxbatStargazer]

That's not really the case with quality TVs. They don't have the over-pronounced scanline/pixel separation of PVMS, and lack the super sharpness of PC monitors, yet still produce extremely good image thus making them ideal for 240p/480i gaming. I have several Trinitrons from late Nineties -early Noughties which fit this bill. Of course, the TV itself needs to be in a good nick without some serious geometry/convergence issues.

I'll admit I have yet to see this in person, but probably more due to limited CRT experience. It's either so sharp that its not far from HDMI w/fake scanlines, or its crap! I'm surely part of the problem of overly sharp retro...

I've tried applying scanlines to PC VGA monitors (both software & hardware) and while it produces an okay-ish effect, I wouldn't enjoy gaming on this. The colours are just too dull, image dimmer and the lack of shadowmask is also grating. Maybe it's a bit better on top-range pro monitors, but these are also very costly these days and if I was about to spend this kinda dosh I'd rather get a PVM.

This is also my experience, BUT I've heard favorable comparisons with CRT+scanlines vs PVMs from others, so it may come down to getting one in great condition. 240p/120hz also looks pretty neat, very bright and crisp, unfortunately you eat a bit of lag from the Mister doing that...

That said, when you lead with "all the resolutions/refreshes", well it really leads me to think of all the corner cases on mister. Maybe OP is in EU, but if not, NTSC TVs are really lacking on the refreshes, and all SD TVs are going to be lacking on the resolution end, if you want TATE arcades without physically rotating the display, or using SVGA on PC or RTG on Amiga, even some normal arcades can be a problem with cut off HUD if you can't adjust the overscan. NTSC TV will have you covered on consoles but other displays are better if you want to get into the computer side.

[Insert Disk Two]

Yeah monitors should make it clear on how well they support Mister

[mong00se]

In my life i have tried pvm bvm jvc panasonic crt and then i tried plasma lcd oled and i can honestly say. Crt is the best. Which CRT is down to complete luck now. If you can find an old crt in a warehouse that has never been used rip the guys hand off. I found 2 last year. Another thing i have noticed is if you can find a plasma screen with low use you can get really good colours and response time and just hit the scanlines. Trust me i am looking at a really good crt and a plasma with scanlines right now and the plasma looks just as good but bigger. Its all about the darks in between the light if you know what i mean. Anyway happy hunting.