MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi. I am researching the Mister as a novice and I am particularly confused regarding display options. I believe a really great way to output from the Mister would be via RGB to a CRT TV or PVM, but even then I am not completely sure. In the meantime I do have an ASUS VB199 monitor with DVI and D-Sub inputs that I could use with the Mister. The available resolutions and timings are underneath.

I suppose the question I am asking is does this monitor offer any good options for Mister cores? And how should I connect the Mister to the monitor to access them if they do .... DVI or D-Sub?

Or, is this monitor no better than connecting the Mister to a regular 4K LCD TV? Please be gentle, I am learning about displays! I at least know a little about console output resolutions and how they compare to the monitor resolutions (I think) but the V(Hz) and H(KHz) not so much!

Resolution V(Hz) H(KHz)
640x350 70 31.469
640x480 60 31.469
640x480 67 35
640x480 72 37.861
640x480 75 37.5
720x400 70 31.469
800x600 56 35.156
800x600 60 37.879
800x600 72 48.077
800x600 75 46.875
832x624 75 49.725
1024x768 60 48.363
1024x768 70 56.476
1024x768 72 57.7
1024x768 75 60.023
1152x864 75 67.5
1280x1024 60 63.981
1280x1024 75 79.976

If I understand correctly, that's still a flat panel/digital monitor, so you'll be better off using an HDMI->DVI adapter to drive it, which should be only a few dollars. That should give you the lowest latency, because driving it in VGA will require a conversion step back to digital, which takes time. Sending digital directly should get the pixels output as quickly as possible. (which may still not be very fast.)

If it's a fixed-frequency monitor, you may struggle getting it to work correctly. You will probably be able to display the main Mister menu no matter what, but the individual cores could potentially do weird things. If you set vsync_adjust=0, that's the most compatible output, but it can be a couple frames behind, and the monitor could be a couple frames *more* behind. vsync_adjust=2 is the fastest mode (about four scanlines of latency), but your monitor may have real trouble with the output, particularly with cores that don't natively output 60Hz.

Basically, you're probably gonna have to just try it and see if you can make it work. You may be able to get reasonable output from it, but my suspicion is that you'll never be all that happy with it. A newer monitor with variable-rate refresh support (Freesync or GSync) is likely to work much better, and flicker less when video modes change.

Don't, however, buy a new monitor before trying that one to see what you think. There's no sense solving a problem that's not visible to you. If you have to use vsync_adjust=0, but you don't notice the lag, then you're probably good to go.

16:9 cores will probably end up with black bars on the top and bottom. Many cores support 4:3 just fine, however. In some cases, it may end up looking better than it would on a 16:9 monitor.

This is a 1280 x 1024 monitor so pretty old, 5:4. Still it should work fine with an HDMI->DVI adapter. In mister.ini you might try the following settings

dvi_mode=1
video_mode=1280,1024,60
vsync_adjust=2

According to specs the monitor can go up to 75 hz, though I wonder if it can do that at 1280x1024. The above is a reduced blank resolution so it might work for that.

Thank you both so much. I am so grateful for your expertise. I feared the monitor may not be good enough to pair with the Mister although sometimes older monitors are OK for retro gaming I believe. In this case I will just have to use your advice and hope for the best. In the end I hope to buy a CRT TV anyway.

Excuse my ignorance please! I have just got hold of a Mister arriving on Tuesday so I’m really pleased!!

If I connected the Mister to the monitor via the analogue io would that still introduce conversion delay?

Any delay would be on the monitor's side trying to convert analog to digital... there's no difference in the Mister's output speed. Usually the bigger issue is a less clear/accurate image than a digital connection, especially at high resolutions.

For this monitor I would use vga_scaler=1 along with the other mentinoed settings to get the 1024p going over VGA.

Thanks again for all the help. I’m expecting to have lots more questions on Tuesday!