Topic: Complete VGA Mod Guide (Diagrams, Hex Edits) (Read 374 times)

leeloo5 · « **on:** July 18, 2005, 02:49:00 PM »

http://antibeat.host.sk/vgaguide/

It took me a while to find various information about vga mods here. people were very helpful, but the tutorials were slightly old and some of the diagrams confusing. also, i only knew about hex editing after stumbling upon it.

To make it easier for someone to get into making a VGA mod to play xbox games on their PC monitors, i've brought together much of this information from the xs forums. I made my own diagrams i thought were more clear, and tried to make it all as simple as possible. Although i tried to keep it simple, i wanted to introduce someone with no information to the terms assosiated with doing the mod so that they could easily search this forum for relevant information.

Includes:
-HD vs s-video comparison with screenshots
-Guide with diagrams on wiring a vga cable
-Quick guide to hex editing the MS Dashboard and other non-HD games to work in 480p
-A list of games with the green-tint problem

This post has been edited by xboxgamer733: Apr 6 2007, 06:20 AM

EverestX · « **Reply #1 on:** July 18, 2005, 03:10:00 PM »

Hey man this is awsome, thanks I have been waiting fora decently drawn diagram for a bit. Appreiciate it..
-EvX-

dethbox · « **Reply #2 on:** July 18, 2005, 10:34:00 PM »

Splinter Cell (the first one) also does the green wash. I wonder why these games in particular all do this?!

leeloo5 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 19, 2005, 06:39:00 AM »

Yeah, i'd assume that maybe the programers wanted to use some type of special commands to the video processor, and when they sent them it over-rides the vga-bios. I'm not too familiar with how all of this works, but it seems that its definitely something paticular groups choose to use since KOTOR and Jade Empire were made by the same people on probably the same engine, and the Splinter Cells were probably on the same engine.

do people have this problem with SOG monitors? also, does anyone know if the x2vga+ has this, i heard its better and maybe the LM1881 is just a crappy sync seperator and these games throw out a weird sync signal.

I was also wondering why the x2vga people even made the 480i Easyview mode. They say its for displaying the MS Dashboard, but you could just as easily hold both triggers and hit both thumbsticks and display the whole image on the screen in 480p. Or is it because they wanted to give people a chance to initially enable HD on their xboxs?

dr_oldschool · « **Reply #4 on:** July 19, 2005, 08:00:00 AM »

QUOTE(dethbox @ Jul 19 2005, 07:45 AM)

Splinter Cell (the first one) also does the green wash. I wonder why these games in particular all do this?!

There are instances when video mode is switched without resetting gpu. In these cases code that sets gpu output to RGB is not called hence it's outputting YCbCr.

Also see my sig for thread with my nkpatcher vga code.
It can patch the retail bios on the fly with vga support and also auto patch 480i only games/applications to output progressive video i.e. no hex patching. It does things a bit differently than all VGA bioses - iND, JunkMonkey, etc that basically use the same Pixel8 vga code.
I have never had any green tint issues with my code in games including Jade Empire and Spliter Cell series.
Of course this is on my 1.4 focus chip, but theoretically it should run even on 1.6 xcalibur boxes.
Only not much people seem to be interested in trying this...

grimlock · « **Reply #5 on:** July 19, 2005, 07:34:00 AM »

First of all, kudos for compiling the info.
Second, maybe you should post it here, as a seperate tutorial.

And now for a question: The photos you have comparing S-video to VGA are taken on the same display?

dethbox · « **Reply #6 on:** July 19, 2005, 10:37:00 AM »

My monitor is SOG and gives me the green problem on all the games listed.

leeloo5 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 19, 2005, 12:36:00 PM »

QUOTE

Second, maybe you should post it here, as a seperate tutorial.

I cant post the pics here since i dont have a host that supports hot-linking.

QUOTE

The photos you have comparing S-video to VGA are taken on the same display?

Yes, they are all taken with a nikon digital camera set up on a tripod. The actual image is produced from my 800x600 digital projector (epson 51c). The images were taken one after another so lighting and everything was the same. All of the digital photos were then corrected for contrast using photoshops autolevel feature. Its hard to take a picture of a computer monitor as you might know, and the results were similar to what i've experienced on my PC monitor, however in reality, HD looks a little better and s-video through the upconverter that i had looks a little worse. actually a lot worse, it had discoloration and other artifacts.

QUOTE

Only not much people seem to be interested in trying this...

I'm checking this out right now. As i said, when i see things like nkpatcher, i dont connect it to vga, so i never knew about this. I'll have to try it out.

spinr34 · « **Reply #8 on:** July 19, 2005, 01:32:00 PM »

very nice, i was about to buy another Vdigi box but now seeing this, i think i'll just make it

leeloo5 · « **Reply #9 on:** July 19, 2005, 01:46:00 PM »

to dr_oldschool

i sent you a PM asking about your method. I couldn't find any precompiled files at the usual places. If it would be possible for you to put one up somehow for all of us windows people, that would be great. If not, as i said in my pm, any help would be apreciated.

dr_oldschool · « **Reply #10 on:** July 20, 2005, 05:46:00 AM »

Added precompiled binary. See here.

--DANNY-- · « **Reply #11 on:** July 20, 2005, 03:25:00 PM »

QUOTE

A version 1.0-1.3 xbox with a modchip or similar mod

Why is a v1.0-1.3 xbox required? Why wouldn't this cable work for a v1.6 xbox?

leeloo5 · « **Reply #12 on:** July 20, 2005, 04:35:00 PM »

The version 1.0-1.3 work with a conexant (sp?) video processor. I think its 1.0 to 1.3. This means that the ind-bios 5001-vga code is specific to this processor. I've heard that other xbox's might work, but supposedly these ones are the only supported xbox types.

if anyone else has any info that would be great, i have only a version 1.0 xbox, so i cant test any of this info.

--DANNY-- · « **Reply #13 on:** July 20, 2005, 04:44:00 PM »

So it's not the cable that wouldn't work, it's the BIOS, right?

So is there any VGA compatible bios that supports the Xcalibur video encoder?

Thanks,
-Danny

leeloo5 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 20, 2005, 04:54:00 PM »

i'm not really sure, but the ones i know of, pixel8, TATX, and the ind-bios shouldn't work, although you could try them.

I've posted a request for someone to incorperate dr oldschools code into a bios since its supposedly better than the ind-bios, so if this is done it might support your xbox, but then i'm not sure about that either.

Author Topic: Complete VGA Mod Guide (Diagrams, Hex Edits) (Read 374 times)