a1200 display sync problems with VGA cable

[Richard42]

I have an A1200 with a DB23<-->VGA cable and can't get it to work with my video converters and VGA CRTs.  I have a GBS-8220 and an Ambery (http://www.ambery.com/rgbcgatovgac.html) and neither of them will sync to the A1200 display.

I took the cable apart and found that it was wired to take the A1200's CSYNC composite sync signal and route it to the HSYNC pin of the VGA.  The converters are supposed to handle composite sync as well.  So I hooked up a scope to the csync signal and found this:



The hsync component of the composite sync doubles in frequency (to 31khz from 15khz) around the time of the vsync pulse.  Is this normal, or a problem with my Amiga?

[Richard42]

Thank you for your answers.  I got it working today, and there were 2 issues causing my problems.  First, the csync voltage was too high.  The input impedance on the GBS-8220 is about 500 ohms.  By putting a 570 ohm resistor in series it knocked the voltage down to around 2v.  The other issue is that the GBS-8220 appears not to be able to handle 50hz.  It will only sync to the signal when the Amiga is in NTSC (60hz) mode.

I had this working a few months ago with an Ambery AV-1 converter, and it could do the 50hz modes as well, but now it doesn't work.  I think that this converter is dead.  I'll have to get another one and try it again.