All i'm saying is that i've tested my monitors (all of them with "automatic sync") and i've had people test it for me on their monitors. These are not 5-10 year old pieces. American or european doesn't seem to matter. They all work. As to the matter of FCC regulations, i think that's probably not an issue because there are plenty of old monitors like some models of the commodore 1084 capable of 50hz sold in America.

Okay, perhaps Sparky's monitor doesn't handle it, but before deciding one way or the other i think people should just try it themselves. Try a program like PowerStrip to see if your monitor can handle it.

If anything, new "american" monitors should be more compatible with "european" ones than they used to be, because they're the same hardware! Many new monitors have a 230v/110v switch on the back, making them totally independent of the region they happen to be in.

NTSC scandoublers might not handle 50hz though, but that has nothing to do with the monitors but rather the design of the scandoubler device for reading american video signals.

I might be wrong about all this, but i've checked this out and there doesn't seem to be a problem in most cases.

I have used 50 Hz video modes on several American VGA monitors without any problems. The problem with syncing at 50 Hz is as common in Europe as it is in the US -- it's a problem with certain monitors, that's all. Most do it without complaining though.

BTW? does anyone have scandoubler or modulator for sale? I can pay thru WU.

It's quite hard to find a second-hand scandoubler, especially an external one, as lots of Amiga owners are looking for one... and consequently the price asked is often close to the price for a new one. There are many shops in Europe that sell scandoublers for 100-120 Euros...

Do you realize how old a Commodore 1084 monitor is??

I'm not interested in an older monitor, haven't you been reading anything? Why spend further money on something that can simply be solved in software? That's the point, nothing more, no "Mickey Mousing" necessary, no grandiose schemes required, no going to the junk shop hoping to find a relic from the 80's. In other words, use the capability for which the Sprinter is touted as its major feature, reprogramming the PLD on the fly.

Is that simple concept so hard to understand? The Sprinter team understood it on the first message and made an acceptable reply. What is wrong with everyone else here? What's even funnier is people that do not live in the America's nor have equipment specifically sold here are suddenly experts on them. Just because the same model works and does what it does in Europe is no gaurantee it will do the same in the Americas. Has anyone ever heard of a ROM? You know even if something is manufactured with the same circuitry, does not guarantee it is running with the same software. I can tell you right now that they don't. Heck, even the power frequency is 60Hz at 110 volts compared to 50Hz 220 volts of Europe. Now some may think all that is required is a switch and all is well. Well these people haven't seen a ghost frame roll from mismatched mains frequencies on a monitor running in a region for which it was not designed now have they?

Older VGA monitors are able to show 50Hz only because when VGA came out auto-sync monitors had not yet become the main stream. These monitors had manual sync controls and could be down adjusted for 50Hz if you were lucky. The same goes for the old Atari and Commodore monitors of the day (the 80's).

Now let me let my Europian friends in on a little secret about California. It is the hub of many things high-tech and most people have their Macs and PCs. I challenge anyone to find an old Atari or Commodore monitor sold anywhere here. It's unheard of. Why? It's not profitable. The old and nostalgic has been long since thrown out or sold to someone in Arkansas. The "used", "surplus", or "junk" shops don't even carry things that old. This is where you say "a Spectrum" and people say "a what?". I haven't seen an Atari, Commodore, Timex, Coleco, etc. machine in a junk shop since 1993. Old VGA monitors fall under this category. Do you know what recycling companies do with old computer equipment here? They sell them to China. So, all of these types of monitors you are all so kind and friendly to recommend have been sitting in China for the last ten years.

Old computers and equipment just don't have the staying power like they do in Europe. This is the land where most don't own a car for more than two years, let alone a computer.

Now, please learn a bit about video signals and how they work and relate to each other. This will help greatly in such conversations in the future. PAL video is 50HYz vertical with 15KHz horizontal (approx). NTSC is 60Hz vertical with 17.5KHz horizontal (approx). PAL has more scan lines than NTSC. PAL has a different color encoding scheme than NTSC. There's much more to video than frame rates. There's much more to TV to VGA converters than scan lines. There's much more to RGB video than the vertical sync frequency. The vertical needs to be a divisor of the horizontal, etc. Let's say a monitor in the USA can handle 50Hz vertical. This still does not guarantee it can handle 15KHz horizontal. There's more than one variable here.

Let me also let you in on another secret, not all monitors for every region are made in the same factory. Sony makes American displays in Mexico and not Japan. Monitors are not manufactured equally.

Class dismissed.

"Did you ever feel everone else are tuxedos and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"

If you're going to keep that bad attitude of yours, you should probably work on getting the facts straight.

First and foremost you're throwing PAL and NTSC around without even understanding that these are *video* standards and don't mean squat when you're discussing RGB. Repeat after me: video != RGB. They define things like horizontal and vertical scan rate (just like RGB) but also things like colour and sound carrier frequencies. As for the v/h frequencies, they are

15.734 kHz / 59.94 Hz for NTSC M
15.625 kHz / 50 Hz for PAL B/I/D/N

A monitor that supports either horizontal frequency can most likely support the other, as it'd be within the error margin. The major difference is in the vertical frequency and the colour coding.

But for RGB the problem these days is finding a monitor that accepts a 15 kHz signal -- I'm not aware of any mainstream consumer product that does that today. You find it in professional video monitors (commonly $800 and up), in projectors ($1500 or thereabouts for a "cheap" one), and the odd LCD display. 15 kHz RGB is usually undocumented though, and only available as a side effect from the monitor having S-Video, Composite, or RF input. I consider myself quite lucky to own a Nokia 417TV VGA monitor that accepts 15 kHz RGB.

Your comment about "the vertical needs to be a divisor of the horizontal, etc" is also an interesting one. The vertical frequency is derived from the horizontal frequency: hfreq = vfreq / numlines. 15625 / 312.5 = 50, 15734 / 262.5 = 59.94. Not that it really matters though, as a multisync monitor (like all monitors sold in the last 10 years) can accept any frequency within the vertical and horizontal range.


But to go back to the issue here, your claim that American monitors don't support 50 Hz, that's just plain wrong. There is no standard. VGA monitors don't care in the least about video resolutions. 31 kHz and 35 kHz at 60 Hz are the only resulutions you can be sure that it supports, as those are the standard frequencies for BIOS screens, DOS, and Windows safe mode. 50 Hz is never guaranteed to work, whether you buy your monitor in the US, Europe, Asia, or wherever. However, it seems to work on most monitors. It's worked on the monitors I've tried it on in the US, and the ones my friends have tried it on. As simple as that. If 50 Hz is not available it's usually just because the video card driver doesn't list it. A utility such as PowerStrip (or PowerDesk for Matrox users) can usually solve that problem.

Bad attitude only results when nobody bothers to read the original question. My only issue was people offering "hammers, glue, silicone sealant, a finger, sticks, etc." to stop up a "bottle" when all that was needed was a "cork". Sorry for the alegory, but that was what the point of the last message was. No, it wasn't video standards. No, it wasn't my monitor can see more than your monitor. No, it wasn't any such thing. It was a flabbergasted individual that was dumbfounded at the rediculous "solutions" to a very simple and easy question asked. Do you care to go and read it?

Spending outrageous amounts of cash to find a:

1> Far too overpriced TV-VGA converter (which cannot be had here for a PAL source). A TV-VGA converter is only going to accept S-VIDEO or composite here and thus the RGB must be converted to compose first for it to succeed in the conversion anyway.

2> Old 7-15 year old monitor that MIGHT take RGB as input with such a low horizontal scan rate, let alone the vertical rate. The Atari SC1224 and the Commodore equivalent for the Amiga were the only analog RGB monitors I recall with this capability. Nevertheless, finding one is a moot issue and far to ridiculous for a $170 computer and the loss of workspace.

3> Some no longer made Commodore, Atari, or other composite computer monitors capable of those frequencies for at least a composite display using a MC1337 based RGB to composite converter. Waste of time and money.

4> And most rediculously... A replacement brand new monitor that just MAY have the right horizontal and vertical auto-sync range.

These "solutions" are absurd for a $170 computer that is touted with a "TV" output. The only intelligent answer I got was from the Sprinter team themselves. They answered the question intelligently, friendly, and most importantly, with an understanding of what I was originally saying/asking.

These other "solutions" to the "symptoms" of the issue and not the cause were based on ignorance or at least a lack of reading what the original question really was.

To humor you, I have done some more research of my own and there is not a PC monitor sold here in the USA that has a horizontal frequency range lower than 31KHz and the lowest vertical rate I have been able to find is 55Hz. I have checked many of the popular brands out. Why don't they? Because VGA and SVGA do NOT have horizontal specs lower than 31KHz and vertical specs lower than 55Hz (the 1024x768 interlaced mode). Since these new monitors are digitally managed for their sync locks, all they will do is turn off when the limits of their range are exceeded. Also, frying a flyback transformer to "check it anyway" isn't my idea of fun either. As you admitted to being "lucky" to have a monitor capable of such low horizontal rates, is an indication to me that you do grasp the point of the exercise as well, while understandably defensive of the crowd.

The suggestions given, while I understand as friendly in their intent (except for one), were like a doctor giving open heart surgery for hiccups. Once again, the solution isn't buying more equipment, raiding junk shops, nor etching and drilling a new converter PC board. The solution is merely to have the capability programmed into the Sprinter's PLD to generate the timing necessary for equipment made within the last seven years and compatible in all areas of the country now.

I am sure you will agree that the display timing for the RGB output of the Sprinter is only compatible (today, not 10-15 years ago) with PAL monitors/TV's with a SCART input. Frankly, I'm not giving up my 22 inch NEC for a 14 inch POS found under a pile of motherboards somewhere just to see non-standard (in America) video display when I know the Sprinter PLD can generate a display compatible for today's monitor standards here, with just a simple program. No gadgets, no gizmos, no soldering, no "Mickey Mousing", nothing, but plugging it in.

Speaking of that, if the Sprinter did have the ability to display NTSC compatible video (once again, a software change here), then a simple MC1337 circuit could be used for NTSC TV's. This brings us back full circle again. It doesn't matter if the video is composite, Y/C, or RGB coming out. It's not going to work on modern NTSC TV's and modern (mainstream) PC monitors. Your's, by the way, has "TV" in its model number for a reason.

I hope that explains things for you, and why I may have seen a bit sharp towards the end. Also, next time, when being brave and expressing "chivalry", try not to hide behind anonymity. It makes the argument less believable.

Oh, I forgot one more thing. VGA is a "standard". XGA is a "standard", SVGA is a "standard", PAL is a "standard", SECAM is a "standard", and NTSC is a "standard", and all have their various standards defined by the government agencies and private entities for which they were created. Their standards are specified quite clearly as to all signals and their frequencies involved, including the resolutions of which they represent. Just because a company may be "lax" in following those standards does not make them any less of a standard. PAL-RGB is a standard known most commonly as the signal going into the SCART connection of a Europian television. There is no such similar standard for a NTSC compatible display device here. Live with it. Accept it. Believe it.

Oh by the way, I'll paraphrase (a lot) my original question: "Is the Sprinter ever going to have a video output compatible with NTSC displays?" The answer was, "We are working on it." End of discussion.

Rich

"Did you ever feel the world was a tuxedo, and you were just a pair of brown shoes?"