From: jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella) Subject: TECH: VGA to PAL or NTSC: more info Date: Thu, 3 Dec 92 10:11:26 EST I have had a number of queries following my somewhat vague posting about the VGA to PAL converter that I bought some time back. Here is some more substantial information about the company I got it from, the manufacturer, and the unit. (Thanks Shane and Matthew for some leg work :) Some detailed information about the newer units available may be being posted by others soon. The `crowd in Sydney' I referred to is: Diamond Technology 419 Gardners Rd Roseberry NSW 2018 Ph: (02) 667 4068 (02) 667 4069 (Replace (02) by +61 2 outside Australia.) The unit that I bought, called a `Demokey', really *is* two match- boxes in length. It cost A$350 including 20% Aust. sales tax at the start of 1992. (About US$200 ex tax) The unit plugs into the VGA port (DB15) of any 100% IBM-compatible, comes with a 9V plugpack adapter, a 9 kB TSR driver for DOS, and has PAL and S-VHS video outputs. It converts all VGA video modes to standard PAL output. The instructions (in highly amusing Taiwanese English :) state that the unit complies with US FCC Class A rules. Since many of the readers of this group are in the US, it should be noted that a VGA to NTSC version of the unit is also made by the same manufacturer (but not, of course, sold in Aus). The name of the manufacturer listed on the box is: Yuan Yuan Enterprise Co., Ltd. No. 54, Alley 2, Lane 76, Sec. 6 Hsihyi Rd., Taipei, Taiwan, R. O. C. TEL: 886-2-7590370 FAX: 886-2-7268845 The unit I have works fine with the genuine IBM I have here, as well as several 100% clones in at the Uni. However, I found out recently that it has troubles dealing with at least the following VGA outputs: (1) Output of Video Blaster-connected VGA card: spat the dummy; didn't work at all. (2) Output of Tseng Labs Super-VGA card: 320x200x256 mode was shown half-width (seems like different memory handling of card); 640x480 modes refused to go. However, time constraints meant that extensive tweaking of Tseng Labs card was not carried out. (3) MS-Windows: You have to be sneaky to get it running: switch it off when starting Windows, then switch it on half way through load-up. (Hmm.) Given all that, it does a fine job with standard VGA machines, with all DOS apps, and with all Windows apps with the above trick. To make life confusing, it appears that Diamond Technology no longer has the small unit that I bought. Rather, they have newer, fancier versions: bad news is that they are quoting A$599 as the lowest price of these new units. I think some (all?) of the newer models are bus-based, and let you keep your existing VGA monitor going at the same time. They may also deal with some of the above problems (Super-VGA, Windows, etc.). I do not know if Yuan Yuan still manufactures the smaller, cheaper units. I hope that this information is of assistance to those in Aus seeking one of these units, and to those overseas who may wish to contact the manufacturer for their local distributor. Apologies again for the vagueness of my first post. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John P. Costella School of Physics, The University of Melbourne jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au Tel: +61 3 543-7795, Fax: +61 3 347-4783 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------