happy_blimp wrote:I wanted a big screen, so I ordered a 7 inch widescreen display. (
Ebay link) its 480x234, and 30ms response time. So its not great, but you cant beat the price! It will be hooked up using composite video to prevent the green issue.
I like the use of a large screen, sounds great. Let us know when you get the screen what the quality is like (dead or stuck pixels, contrast performance, brightness, pure whites, good reproduction of reds) and whether the screen will accept Composite video in either 525 lines @ 60 fields/sec interlaced with NTSC color @ 3.58MHz and/or 625 lines @ 50 fields/sec with PAL color @ 4.43MHz.
I have just got a PSP 1003 and the screen is about 2 inches too small I feel, and having only one poor quality (IMHO) analog "stick" (nub) really sucks in e.g. Tomb Raider Legend (TRL) where having 2 very good quality sticks on the PS2 (to control movement of character and the camera simultaneously) is a huge advantage.
I have a TRL (USA NTSC version) game backup running on my soft modded (via PS2 memory card, ESR and FreeMCBoot) PS2 slim from a USB memory stick (OPL Loader) but the loading times really suck (because it is at USB 1.1 speed since it doesn't have a USB 2 port), the loading times are similar to from it's DVD of the same game.
In contrast, I have a hard modded Fat PS2 with laptop 5400RPM HDD and wow it loads my TRL game backup (i.e. when you die and restart the level at that point) in a few seconds, maybe 20x or more faster!
So I just bought an IDE HDD adapter for the PS2 slim (only works on 7000x) and I hope to make a portable based on that. Then the loading times would be short with everything and I could have quite a lot of games on the HDD, and I could maybe use a miniature 1.8" HDD drive (e.g. 40 GB is available for reasonable prices) and still have a nice portable PS2 made out of it.
I notice that the Composite Video output is very sharp with zero noise or interference or diagonal lines etc on my SNES JR (NTSC USA model, SNN-CPU-01, Rohm 9729 BA video chip) but quite blurred on my older, large SNES (NTSC USA model, SNS-CPU-RGB-01, Rohm BA6596F video chip), and blurred on my hard modded PSX (SCPH 7502, UK model, Rohm BA5977FP video chip), and blurred on my hard modded Fat PS2 (30003, UK model), and blurred on my soft modded Slim PS2 (75003, UK model), when all are fed via my Sony STR-DA1200ES amplifier and then into my IN76 video projector, via a cheap Composite cable between projector and amp, and using cheap PS1 and PS2 and SNES Composite cables.
The RGB output of both my Fat and Slim PS2 are very dissappointing, my Fat PS2 has noise and interference (vertical wavy lines on black screens), and has diagonal lines on large areas of color, but at least it's very sharp, and my Slim PS2 also has the herringbone patterns on large areas of color but again at least it's very sharp and this time has has no noise or other interference. I have tested this going straight into the back of the projector on RGB + Composite Sync, and I have no noise or diagonal lines on colors when I test e.g. my Pioneer LX60D HDD / DVD recorder, so it would appear to be an unshielded / ungrounded cable issue on the Slim and the Fat just has noise that you can't remove.
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Later UPDATE: when using RGB SCART from my PS2 Slim, taking C-Video as sync half way along the cable from the C-Video socket on the RGB cable, INSTEAD OF taking C-Video as sync from my SCART adapter block that I have to use with the IN76 projector, picture looks nearly perfect in 625 lines @50Hz with only sometimes faint diagonal lines on some colors, and totally perfect 525 lines @60Hz, and no noise or wavy lines, using the same cheap 3rd party RGB cable as I used with PS2 Fat. Not quite as sharp as the PS2 Fat though on RGB, about the same sharpness as S-Video from the PS2 Fat.
Component from my Slim is pretty nice in 625 lines @50Hz with only very faint diagonal lines on certain colors, but at 525 lines @60Hz has some problems with quite a bit stronger diagonal lines on some colors, but there is no noise or wavy lines , again using the same cheap 3rd party RGB cable as I used with PS2 Fat. However if I remove the C-Video from the socket half way along the RGB cable (RGB cable becomes Component in Component video mode on the PS2) then the 625 lines @ 50Hz picture's faint diagonal lines become noticeably more pronounced, and the 525 lines @ 60Hz picture becomes a diagonal line tastic picture, not good, even though my Pioneer LX60D gives me a perfect picture in Component on this pj using the same cables when in 525 lines @60Hz. Again this Slim via Component is not quite as sharp as the PS2 Fat was though on RGB, about the same sharpness as S-Video from the PS2 Fat.
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I will order an official Sony cable for RGB if I ever find one at an affordable price. I have just ordered an offical genuine Sony S-Video cable for PS3 (for use with my PS2 and PS1, to sidestep the crappy picture problem via Composite) and I'll see what that's like when it arrives. I have tested the S-Video output direct from my Pioneer LX60D to my video projector and out of my 3 S-Video cables that I have, 2 showed diagonal lines on colored areas and one didn't (must be a shielding issue on the 2 bad quality cables?). Also I will order an official Sony Component cable (my usual method of linking my Pioneer to the projector since I get a perfect picture) for the PS2 and see if I can sidestep the RGB picture problem of my PS2's.
PS Vita would be very nice but there's no Tomb Raider Legend for it yet (my favourite game) and now I have used the PSP I feel that the 5" diagonal screen is still going to be too small, even if it has got a beautiful OLED screen. So even a normal LCD 7" screen would be better for me since you see everything much better when the screen is bigger.
I will be following this and other people's PS2p portable PS2 projects and hope to follow in their footsteps with a super sharp 7" display and a 1.8" HDD for super short loading times. Someday LOL.
Cheers,
Alistair G.
