Technika Scart Switcher - oddly designed?

[Coolhand]

I picked up a very cheap manual switch box so I could have 3 classic systems hooked up to my CRT's single RGB scart socket.

Its a real cheap build, before I even used it I took it apart and found tons of loose solder in there and some bridged pins on one of the 4 thru-hole mounted scart sockets.  After some fussing I finally got it to work ok with RGB from all 3 machines but it has a couple of quirks.

firstly, it doesnt seem to pass through the RGB blanking signal, so i have to manually find the RGB channel on my TV - its wired up and current flows through it, I wonder if there is too much resistance?

secondly, it takes the composite out from each machine (pin 20) and sends it to pin 19, i can't get composite to work, not that i need or care about that, just wondering why its designed that way.

I'm not sure i'd go so far as to recommend it, but you may still be able to pick one of these up for about a quid from tesco if you're in the UK, its clunky, simple very "eastern bloc" style design but the switches appear reasonably durable and it works after a fashion, the picture is clean but if you have more than one device hooked up and powered on, you'll get some hum and hiss on the audio.  I'm going to carry on using it for the meantime unless anyone has better advice! hopefully it wont fail in some terrible way at some point.

[carvedeye]

I work at tesco as a technical advisor, and we had a load of the scart splitter switches at my store they where all reduced to clear so you got a bargain as for the build quality, it's not the best but for the price can't complain they are great if you need more than one scart but tv's nowadays only come with one scart connection as it's being phased out here in the uk

[Coolhand]

yep, it seems ok but seriously if you have one, open it up and have a look, it looked like someone had been throwing molten solder all over one of the scart connectors.  its also incredibly easy to put back together and theres basically nothing in there you can break, there's basically nothing in there bar 6 diodes.  

I also didn't get such a great bargain - it was fairly cheap from ebay, but nothing like the tesco price.  I found out about that because it was clear i'd been sent something from tesco instead.

Another dodgy ebayer, who'd have guessed...

[Coolhand]

tv's nowadays only come with one scart connection as it's being phased out here in the uk

Even useful if you have an older tv with multiple sockets, I think commonly only one will be an RGB enabled scart socket. other sockets would be compo%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!e only, AFAIK.  

I was coping with the arrangement but I have an MD i recently modified for PAL or NTSC operation and without further modification of the video hardware it has to use RGB for NTSC mode, i certainly couldn't relegate the A1200 to composite in favor of that (what an insult to madam miggy) or keep changing scarts.  Reaching round a chunky CRT to find an invisible scart socket can be a really painful experience, wearing out the connectors too... brrr.

*edit* oh i see the forum is now auto-censoring posts.. good thing my tv isn't a matsu%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!a, yep.