Tuesday 10 April 2012

VGA to SCART guide (preview)

Since I regularly have people email me to ask questions about building VGA to SCART cables, I figured I'd put together a step-by-step guide. It turns out that this is easier said than done... I drafted a guide a couple days ago and it took hours! I'm not entirely happy with the outcome yet so I'm going to revise a few things before I post the finished guide here.

In the meantime, here are some shots of the cable I made while writing the guide. It's based on the schematic found here and is built to withstand lots of plugging/unplugging (heatshrink used as strain relief throughout).

Complete cable (with split video and audio strands)
Top view of SCART plug
Bottom view of SCART plug

Lastly, for anyone thinking of building their own VGA to SCART cable, unless you really enjoy a bit of DIY, I'd highly recommend checking out the new UMSA - Ultimate SCART Adapter over at Arcade Forge. It looks amazing! It'd save you heaps of hassle and guarantee a great outcome...

... but if you have more time than money or simply love the thrill of making something with your own hands, stay tuned for my guide.


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5 comments:

  1. Rob12 April 2012 at 19:02

    Handy, especially the circuit for the combining of h & v sync. What sort of amp setup are you using for pc rgb to scart rgb?

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  2. Paradroid12 April 2012 at 19:19

    As in video amp? None. The signals pass straight through. No issues at all with any of the TVs I've tried. For an arcade chassis, I have an Ultimarc video amp. Worked fine with the Sharp Image I tested out.

    An audio amp, on the other hand, is something still haven't got a good solution for. The Loewes tend to have decent sound but everything else is pretty tinny. Even the giant Metz had crap sound. Audio is the easy part compared with finding a great monitor...

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  3. Rob13 April 2012 at 22:02

    ah now I see, yes video amp, I now see that scart rgb and vga rgb are the same voltage, was confused thinking that scart and jamma rgb same voltage. Must be the arcade chassis that need higher voltage on rgb. Arcade pcbs output more juice on RGB lines, ive ran a few arcade boards direct into scart tv however, didnt have any issues. Will look more into that...

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  4. Paradroid13 April 2012 at 22:32

    Yep, JAMMA to SCART is something I'm interested in too... if I ever get some real boards! There's a schematic here: http://www.geocities.ws/podernixie/htpc/cables-en.html#jammascart

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  5. Kimn16 September 2012 at 17:34

    Hey i have been searching for this for a while, i accidently broke my UMSA before i could get a chance to try it :/ Will this work with PAL tv's and do i need to install soft15khz to run it?

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