Falcon flat screen

[Mr.JT]

Is there anyway of connecting a flat screen to my falcon? ie. does a dvi/vga converter box exist? If i could connect it to my mac dvi flat panel that'd be incredible!!

Cheers

JT

[unseenmenace]

I know a simple adaptor exists to attach a VGA monitor to a DVI socket on a PC so presumably this would also work the other way around allowing a DVI monitor to be attached to a VGA socket. Assuming this is the case there are freely available VGA adapters for Falcons so hopefully that would do the job.

[Mr.JT]

this site offers a converter (for quite a price) as it is not simply a matter of connecting the cables apparently...

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/DVI_ ... erter.html

But it suggests that the computer must support the native resolution of the screen. The minimum of most LCDs i believe is 800x600 which is higher than the falcon (640x480) can manage... Can anyone shed anymore light on this/has anyone actually managed it. With a falcon or ST?

Cheers

JT

[mouse_master]

Well.....

I have my Falcon hooked up to a 42 Plasma TV through the VGA port. It works pretty well, do have some screen shifting problems sometimes, but that is correctable with the TV.

I use 800x600 with 256 colors most of the time, using centvid3 (software) to allow for that resolution. Thats the desktop in Xaaes/TeraDesk, and also regular TOS. Other than that, STHigh (for speed) without the AES going in MiNT. Why no AES sometimes? More RAM for development.

[CiH]

But it suggests that the computer must support the native resolution of the screen. The minimum of most LCDs i believe is 800x600 which is higher than the falcon (640x480) can manage... Can anyone shed anymore light on this/has anyone actually managed it. With a falcon or ST?

YES!!

My little Proview 15 inch LCD was just fine with every resolution, including ST modes, as well as standard Falcy VGA and extended Centscreen modes.

The only reservation I'd have with an LCD display is with the frequency. You have to treat an LCD/SVGA as if it were an old fixed-frequency 60hz screen, which is fine for the majority of stuff, but some games and demos like to use weird screen-busting 100hz modes, which an LCD cannot display.

So a good idea to keep a good quality CRT in reserve

[Mr.JT]

YES!!

My little Proview 15 inch LCD was just fine with every resolution, including ST modes, as well as standard Falcy VGA and extended Centscreen modes.

Sounds good...what exact model is the proview you have? I want to buy a cheap lcd from ebay but am worried it might not work. would it be safe to assume any monitor that quotes a max resolution of only 1024x768 can probably handle low res (ie 640x480)? now if i could just find out if my mac monitor could handle an analogue input....

[unseenmenace]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but all (PC type) monitors can do 640x480 as otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the BIOS screen when you boot up your PC

[PaulB]

all (PC type) monitors can do 640x480 as otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the BIOS screen when you boot up your PC

That is very true!

[030falcon030]

my falcon works fine on my 17 inch lcd monitor.

[Womble]

My falc wouldnt work on my 19" LCD screen - just got an "out of range" message up. I dont own a CRT vga screen so have never confirmed that the falcs vga works. I have the 2 pins on the adaptor wired to set the output to VGA but I have never seen it work.

[christos]

Womble, it seems to me that your falcon has been set up for rgb. I' ve tried mine at about 5 different svga monitors (lcd, tft, crt) and I had no problem. You might need to get a new adaptor.
The falcon seems to provide a 640x480 resolution no matter what the selected from desktop resolution is (put the falcon on st low and use the status button on your monitor). That way you can play a lot of st games on a svga monitor. However there are some falcon productions that demand for rgb.
However I wouldn't advice on a tft for the falcon. If I were you I would go for a 15" crt that can do 100Hz...

[Womble]

I built my own adaptor and have double checked that M1 and M2 are set to indicate VGA, I have even wired in a switch to allow me to select all three modes (bar TV), and the LCD still says its out of range.

[christos]

The only other thing I can think off is probably something to do with the nvram settings. Try to set it for vga. If that also fails I can't say what the problem is. One test you can make is switching monitors while on. If the falcon reboots than you can be sure your adaptor works.

[PaulB]

I don't own a Falcon so can't say for sure but maybe the lcd monitor you have isn't capable of syncing as low as the falcon screen refresh outputs. Hence the out of range message.

[christos]

I don't own a Falcon so can't say for sure but maybe the lcd monitor you have isn't capable of syncing as low as the falcon screen refresh outputs. Hence the out of range message.

Yes PaulB that is what happens. But this shouldn't happen. The falcon has three different types of display. SVGA and RGB (color and mono). The SVGA mode is as standard as it gets. So an lcd monitor should display it. The picture is really stable and much better than in a CRT monitor but a CRT monitor is a better choice beause of the fact that many demos such as Hmmm, _ , out use a videl trick to set the resolution into something with 100Hz. That I' ve read makes the data transfer faster even then in RGB (mode). And since the falcon nowdays is mostly about demos it's sad not to be able to view them. For an article regarding flat screens and the falcon check here:
http://alive.atari.org/alive7/lcd.php