MAME SCART

If you do not have access to an arcade monitor you can cheeply buy 21" screen TV's with SCART inputs. Standard TV's are virtually the same as arcade monitors, with the addition of a TV tuner.
My arcade cabinet runs AdvanceMame via a Matrox G400 and a VGA to SCART to a UK spec PAL TV

Obviously to display a picture there has to be a trade off between functionality and 'arcade' quality

Normal VGA cards run at a frequency too high to display a picture on a PAL/NTSC Tv or arcade monitor via the VGA port

To achieve the correct frequencies so I can see DOS, I use a small driver called VGA-TV

This converts the scrambled VGA pictures to PAL/NTSC/Arcade (see pictures at the bottom of the page)

On the down-side to this configuration, I am unable to view the BIOS or anything BEFORE VGA-TV loads - I use a TV-OUT card to modify the BIOS....which is never really!

I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE SHOULD ATTEMPT THIS. TV & ARCADE SCREENS CAN KILL IF NOT HANDLED CORRECTLY EVEN WHEN NOT PLUGGED INTO THE ELECTRICITY SUPPLY

I CAN NOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE DISPLAYING MAME ON AN ARCADE/TV MONITOR MAKES. GAMES WHICH LOOK OLD, DATED AND BLOCKY, COME TO LIFE AS THE LOW RESOLUTION OF THESE DISPLAYS SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE THE BLOCKYNESS AND THERE IS NO NEED TO MESS ABOUT SETTING UP MAME TO EMULATE THIS "LOW RES" EFFECT BY USING SCANLINES OR OTHER METHODS WHICH ULTIMATLEY HAVE A PERFORMANCE HIT ON YOUR SYSTEM

The video card is connected to the TV using the composite video out socket of my video card directly into the TV's SCART socket which accepts composite video in

21 Ground/Shield 19 Composite Video Out 17 Composite Video Ground 15 red / Chroma 13 Red Ground 11 Green 9 Green ground 7 Blue 5 Blue ground 3 Audio out L & mono 1 Audio out R		20 Composite Video In / Luminance 18 Blanking Signal Ground 16 Blanking Signal 14 Data Ground 12 Data out 10 Clock out 8 Audio / RGB Switch16:9 6 Audio In Left & Mono 4 Audio Ground 2 Audio In Right
1 Red Video 2 Green Video 3 Blue Video 4 ID Bit 2 5 GND N/A Ground 6 RGND N/A Red Ground 7 GGND N/A Green Ground 8 BGND N/A Blue Ground	Pin Side	9 KEY N/A Key (No pin) 10 SGND N/A Sync Ground 11 ID Bit 0 12 ID Bit 1 13 HSYNC or Composite Sync 14 VSYNC Vertical Sync 15 ID Bit 3

To connect a VGA card to a SCART socket, simply buy a cheap VGA extension cable and chop off the end that does NOT connect to the VGA card - the chopped end will become the SCART side.

Measure out with a multi-meter, the bare wires from the VGA side (table below, left) and solder onto the SCART side (table below, right)

If you experience problems with sync-ing AFTER you run the TV-VGA driver, try connecting pin 20 (Composite Sync) to Pin 16 (Blanking Signal)