megatron-uk

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  • June 16, 2020 at 3:54 PM in reply to: Hydra scart switch – no signal for virtually all systems #38970
    megatron-uk
    Participant

      Holy thread necromancy Batman!

      Just to say I never got a solution to this and I ended up junking the 16 port Hydra-W…. I’ve since switched to a 8 port GScartsw and every single system I’ve tried on it (using exactly the same cables as on the Hydra) has worked.

      I didn’t have to buy expensive RGC cables either – I’ve got a mix of new ones I’ve bought from Retrocomputershack (nothing wrong with them when used with the gscartsq and ossc), original manufacturers RGB cables and no-name cheap stuff I’ve had for 20 or 30 years. Apart from a single Mega Drive cable that had no caps on the RGB lines, every cable I’ve tried has worked first time.

      The Hydra ended up being a huge waste of money. The only problem I have now is waiting for the GScartsw to re-stock, since I need (minimum) 15 sockets!

      May 30, 2019 at 10:36 PM in reply to: Hydra scart switch – no signal for virtually all systems #26420
      megatron-uk
      Participant

        So following some advice from Lotharek I’ve opened up the scart connectors of several of the above consoles (MD1, SMS1, SNES) and measured the voltage of the sync line (scart pin 20), some worrying results:

        MD1 (fitted with 220uF cap and 470Ohm resistor – and my multimeter confirms as such) : 3.22v!!!
        SMS1 (as above) : 1.13v
        SNES (wired as sync-on-luma) : 2.02v

        Since the lotharek states the Hydra follows the scart spec of a 1v max sync signal these are all out of spec.

        May 30, 2019 at 8:27 PM in reply to: SCART cables for Hydra #26416
        megatron-uk
        Participant

          Ditto. Mine is proving to be far more trouble than it is worth. Of 16 systems I can only get 5 to work – the rest refuse to to sync, even though they work perfectly when connected directly to an OSSC.

          May 30, 2019 at 8:25 PM in reply to: Hydra scart switch – no signal for virtually all systems #26415
          megatron-uk
          Participant

            It’s brand new from Lotharek about 6 weeks ago.

            Just bought two new csync type cables from https://www.retrocomputershack.com/ for the MD1 and the SMS1 and now the OSSC is happy with those, though still nothing when they’re connected through the Hydra, and those cables definitely seem to be in-spec; they have the resister and capacitor on the sync line to bring it down from TTL levels (which supposedly the Hydra doesn’t cope with).

            Also managed to test my Amiga 500 and 1200 – the 500 works but the 1200 doesn’t, thought I haven’t had the time to see if there is any physical difference between the two scart cables.

            I’m now sitting here with a full 16 port wide-Hydra switch and I’ve got less than 6 devices of my original 16 that will work through it.

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