@mitu said in Display frontend on VGA666 CRT instead of HDMI with Pi4 and KMS:

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

I'm surprised this configuration worked with fkms, but I think it's no longer going to work on kms alone. I've seen your - similar - post on the RPI forums, the definitive answer if this configuration is supported should come from a RP engineer (6by9 is their expert on this).

Yeah, that's the first place I asked. I was hoping it was some stupid mistake on my side.

EDIT: one thing to note, the RetroPie image is currently based on the legacy RaspiOS buster version, a lot of work has been done on the pure KMS driver on the current Linux kernel. You can get the current RP Linux kernel with rpi-update (not recommended) or by manually installing RetroPie on current RaspiOS bullseye (still in beta at the moment), my recommendation would be the latter.

I did try a rpi-update as an extreme attempt, ready to start from scratch. Unfortunately the situation didn't change.

The other idea is to have a second Pi driving the marquee, which is a solution I have mostly working with one last annoying quirk that I wasn't able to iron out yet.
It would be great to do everything from one device though.

I guess you're using the RetroArch master for the switchres support added after v1.15 ?

Yes that's correct. And it seems to work great, possibly much better than the "old" Pi3-style runcommand trickery based on fbset and vcgencmd.

To anyone having the same issue, I needed to cut the HSYNC trace on the vga666 board for the csync to be strong enough to control the PVM

@thd79 said in tvservice not able to change resolution on the fly:

This has definitely worked in the past for me, has support for it been removed recently? The same settings work fine when specified at boot time.

The tvservice and support for video mode switching are not part of RetroPie, but a Raspbian/Kernel+firmware feature - it was certainly not removed in RetroPie. What does 'in the past' mean ? 1 year, 1 week, etc. , before doing any kernel/firmware updates, using a certain RetroPie version maybe ?

What version of RetroPie are you running (specifically) and how it was installed ? Can you post your config.txt configuration file ?

@djmoss - I have the exact same setup as you (Pi4, pi2scart, mx7000). I have a couple of problems with overscan. Did you fix this through the config?
If too much OT perhaps we can take it in a pm?

Thanks! 😊

Anyone have any experience with this board? It's interesting to see a VGA hat that supports 24 bit colour, was hoping to find someone that has done some kind of comparison between this and other solutions (VGA666, HDMI->VGA converters, RT Ultimate, etc).

Somethink like this, but US based.

You don't seem to run RetroPie, so why post here in the forums ? You can find the list of resolutions you can add in config.txt here.

Is it even possible to change modes on the fly while using composite out? I just tried booting with "good" 15khz hdmi timings that aren't sdtv_mode and it doesnt't work.

I have very little experience with VGA 666 (in fact, I tried for first time today... ^_^U) but I have no problems with any emulator. I can give you some advices, maybe it works with you, if you still have problems.

Set dpi_mode in hexadecimal format, in your case 0x10 as it's listed in this table, just in case:
dpi_mode=0x10

Set framebuffer to your desiere resolution:
framebuffer_width=1024
framebuffer_height=768
Comment any HDMI config line:
#hdmi_force_hotplug=1
#hdmi_group=1
#hdmi_mode=1
#hdmi_drive=2

Kept this lines commented:
#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on
Or if you want, uncomment turning off everything:
dtparam=i2c_arm=off
dtparam=i2s=off
dtparam=spi=off

Try some other VGA modes, like 75hz (0x12) or 800x600 (0x09, 0x0B).
Be sure emulators are not using special scaling resolutions than may be incompatible.

Last one, universal solution to any computer problems: install retropié again and try with default retropié configuration.

@anthonyp555 you can probably buy a converter box and it will work. I have an hdmi to vga adapter and bought a vga to component adapter cable and it did not actually convert to component as it stated. There was no sync in the green connector so it was just a screen full of scrolling blocks of pink and blue

Actually looking at the Mausberry, it says it uses pins 23 and 24. Im no genius with schematics, but those pins above look to be dead considering they are X'ed out. Worth looking into, but even still you better be comfortable with soldering because the vga666 doesn't have exposed pins so you'll probably have to solder the mausberry wires to the pin bases on top of the vga hat