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[Arakon]

the outter casing is clipped together.. to fully access the contacts you will have to slightly bend the shielding open, but it'll bend back into shape fine.

[unspoiledpuma]

anyone has done their own vgs cable?

[Foe-hammer]

I will come 12:30 AM Tuesday with the component cables that come with the 360.  

That''s if i can find a 360 to buy.

[Foe-hammer]

For those who are going to do this mod, save yourself a lot of time and frustration by getting a Ohm meter to map out each wire.  With one you will not need to crack the 360's AVIP plug, and you'll know exactly what wires to solder to in the vga plug.

Take it from someone who doesn't have an Ohm meter, and tried half the night with no success.  Good news is i have a 360, bad news is it's just sitting there, because i will not play it tell i can make a vga cable (cannot bring myself to play it on my regular TV in 480i).

[Foe-hammer]

QUOTE(Foe-hammer @ Nov 22 2005, 03:18 AM)

With one you will not need to crack the 360's AVIP plug....

I typed too soon/without thinking...

You will definently have to crack open the 360's AVIP case in order to link the two pins together, and solder wires to the H&V sync.



Questions:

1) Is the H&V sync wires present in the component cable (i.e.; can i cut the cable and find the H&V wires there)?

2) How do you crack open the 360's AVIP casing without breaking it?  When you say clipped together, Arakon, how do you unlatch the clips?  I don't know where even to start, besides prying on the joint, and possibly breaking it.

This post has been edited by Foe-hammer: Nov 22 2005, 01:44 PM

[Arakon]

QUOTE

1) Is the H&V sync wires present in the component cable (i.e.; can i cut the cable and find the H&V wires there)?

no, since component doesn't use H/V sync.. in fact it only needs 3 video signals + grounds + audio.

QUOTE

2) How do you crack open the 360's AVIP casing without breaking it? When you say clipped together, Arakon, how do you unlatch the clips? I don't know where even to start, besides prying on the joint, and possibly breaking it.

yeah, that's the big trick.. there's 2 clips on each side, but since the case is made from hard plastic, they may end up breaking.. try pushing with a wide, flat screwdriver against the small gap between the two halves.. if all fails pry it open by force and either add a drop of glue later or wrap some tape around it after the mod, it'll work fine that way.

[Foe-hammer]

Cool, thanks again Arakon

I just applied even force downward with the back side of a razor blade, to each side of the AVIP case, and it snapped right open.

[Arakon]

let me know if the mod worked out fine when you are done.

[Foe-hammer]

Just to be sure,

Do i connect all 5 vga grounds to all 8 360 AVIP grounds?  Having all 13 conglomured together?

[Arakon]

the more the better, as grounded wires also have a shielding effect and reduce interference.
if you are using seperate wires and don't want to hook up 13 of them, use at least one for each color ground (R, G, and use a thicker wire for another ground if you have interferences.

[Foe-hammer]

Well, i finally finished the vga cable, and it works like a charm.  I had to desolder the wires from the AVIP tah went to the small plug that attaches to the pcb board for it to work.

360 vga conclusion:

I had only 6 resolution options to chose from; 1280 x 1024 was not one of them.

The contrast level was too low, making everything not as vibrant, kind of washed out.  I expected better.

In order to get true blacks, i had to turn down my brightness much lower then normal (35-40 range).

I have been playing with the original xbox on my pc monitor for years now via the vga bios, and also with a transcoder (x2vga).  The contrast level, and color vibrance is better then what i'm getting with the 360 in vga.  I compared halo 1 and 2 side by side.  But this also goes for the only 360 game i tried; PDZ.

I don't know if the ms factory vga cables would produce a better picture; i wired everything correctly, and am not getting any interference, so i'm guessing prob. not.

[Arakon]

QUOTE

I had only 6 resolution options to chose from; 1280 x 1024 was not one of them.

hmm.. is your 360 set to 16:9 or 4:3? maybe that makes a difference.

[CooLJoE]

Well, I can tell you that the factory MS VGA cable does have a wide range of resolutions. Honestly, it shouldn't matter whether you wire up the VGA connector yourself or use MS's one. The resolution list in either situation should list alot of possible choices including 1280x1024 (which is what I'm using on my 17" LCD). That or the Xbox360 doesn't detect that your monitor can use that resolution using that VGA wireup.

[twistedsymphony]

QUOTE(Foe-hammer @ Nov 22 2005, 11:04 PM)

...  But this also goes for the only 360 game i tried; PDZ.

PD0 has options for display type within the game... I set mine to DLP (because I'm using a DLP display) they might want to try changing that to see if you can get a better picture out of it.  

[Foe-hammer]

1280 x 1024 res was not included in the US 360's.  I had to connect to live, and it updated my 360 for 1280x1024 res support.

Ya, i noticed the different TV options for picture quality in PDZ, all it really does is adjust the brightness setting in the game, so either way the best i can get it to look is on 6 brightness level.

Things are looking better on my 360 via vga cable and pc monitor.  With the added 2xAA to halo 1 & 2 emulation, in the latest live patch, the two games look much better then when i first viewed them on the 360.

Colors and overall picture quality looks good now, but there still is not enough contrast to brighten up my display (i have my contrast level maxed out at 100).  Increasing the brightness setting just washes out the picture.  Not enough contrast seems to plaque all CRT pc monitors, although i never had this problem when playing pc games, or xbox games via a transcoder (x2vga).  

I'm tempted to buy the VD-Z3 transcoder, as it accepts any component cable input.  Maybe it would produce a more vibrant picture for the 360 on my crt monitor.