Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing, just in from Belgium!
I was psyched to receive this pre-production review unit from Serdashop because this is
their version of the MCE2VGA project.
It’s set to be sold in various kit forms through Serdashop, like this one I received
with a 3D printed enclosure, and is based on the open source work by Luis Antoniosi.
What’s so exciting about this is that it allows you to finally solve a decades-old
problem: getting monochrome, CGA, and EGA graphics cards
to output through a standard VGA monitor.
And I don’t mean by using a VGA card and relying on backwards compatibility, I mean
using the original graphics hardware with 9-pin d-sub connectors meant to drive a TTL display.
While I get a kick from using each purpose-built monitor for each graphics standard, I admit
it’s a pain to swap bulky CRTs so often.
Plus these vintage displays are getting older and more costly all the time, so alternatives
are a welcome thing.
This is the problem the MCE2VGA attempts to address, accomplished by combining a custom
main board with a CoreEP4CE6 FPGA boasting a specially-programmed Altera Cyclone IV.
There are a few buttons and switches to mess with, but for the most part it’s as simple
as plugging your retro graphics card into the RGBI port
and the VGA output to your display of choice.
Now I’ve tried tons of TTL converters over the years, from cheaply-made Chinese scaler
boxes to the venerable GBS-8200 converter board.
So I’m not saying there haven’t been any solutions, some of those things are how I’ve
captured low-res PC game footage for years.
But the MCE2VGA is the first time I been able to convert RGB video signals from IBM PC compatibles
with this clean a signal and with so little fuss.
Finally I can use a single VGA monitor to display MDA and Hercules graphics cards, 4-color
CGA cards, and 16-color EGA cards.
That’s a lotta retro computing in one place.
Then there are things like the Tandy graphics mode found in computers of the same name,
and composite CGA graphics which uses artifacting
to show 16 colors when connected using an RCA jack.
Yep, the MCE2VGA can work with those too, converting all of these old display modes
into a standard VGA resolution and horizontal refresh rate, with a few tricks up its sleeve as well.
So let’s go ahead and try it out, which for me
began with fastening the boards into the enclosure.
This is a pre-production kit so the final version may change a bit, but even as it is
here the process is easygoing.
Only four screws for the PCBs, four buttons to drop into the top of the enclosure, and
four screws to sandwich it all together.
You’re left with handy openings on the top, left, and right hand sides to hook up your
displays, plug in a standard mini USB cable for power, and adjust the display settings
on the FPGA.
One issue I didn’t anticipate though is how to hook up the RGBI side to my retro PCs
because, well.
I dunno about you but all of my TTL displays have the video cable permanently integrated
into the monitor itself.
So I grabbed one of these 9-pin male-to-male d-sub cables, which thankfully are still easy
to find online.
However, do make sure that it’s a straight-through serial cable, not a null-modem serial cable,
because the wiring differs and won’t work for what’s needed here.
Anyway with that sorted we can now plug the MCE2VGA into a PC.
All you need to do is flip these four switches into the proper position and yeah man.
We’ll start with MDA and Hercules graphics.
Straight away it works fantastically!
When going through a CRT I honestly can’t tell it’s being scaled or converted at all,
it simply looks crystal clear with no noticeable lag whatsoever.
And with monochrome in particular there are also options to switch between emulating the
three most popular phosphors: white, green, and amber.
Hehe, yeah this feature was one of the things I was most excited about -- if you’ve seen
my numerous videos gushing about amber and green monochrome
then you know how much I love this stuff.
And while it’s not a perfect recreation of the experience, the fact that I can display
an actual Hercules card in amber monochrome on a modern ultrawide display made my day.
Speaking of which, the experience changes somewhat when using an LCD panel, although
how much varies depending on the model of monitor you’re using.
But on the LCDs I tried, most DOS software was scaled to 640x480, even though the MCE2VGA
itself was outputting more appropriately-scaled resolutions like 720x480.
So yeah, there’s more than likely going to be an adjustment period on both the LCD
panel and the converter itself, but you can likely still get it looking pretty good.
And even when some things just look a little wonky, like pixel shimmering while scrolling
vertically or uncooperative overscan, it’s still an overall better result than most other
RGBI scalers I’ve used.
CGA looks wonderful as well, or at least as good as CGA can get.
It’s still CGA after all, hehe.
Personally I love this aesthetic more and more the older I get, in both warm and cool
color palettes.
You can even display some of the more obscure CGA modes like the tweaked 80-column text
mode providing an effective 160x100 resolution at 16-colors.
But yeah, on both CRT and liquid crystal displays I was more than happy with the CGA results here.
You can even enable some convincing scanline emulation on certain display modes as well,
a nice touch if you’re into that kinda thing.
It’s pretty much of no use on a CRT of course, but the result looks quite nice on a 4:3 aspect
ratio LCD, though I still prefer the unfiltered look myself.
Another thing I was really excited to mess with is the ability to display composite CGA,
which is something you’d normally be unable to do over a VGA monitor.
Pressing the reset button will enable emulation of 16-color composite CGA mode on the games
that support it, meaning that you no longer need to rely on an old TV.
Even though there aren’t a ton of DOS games that make use of this I love that they went
out of their way to include support for it anyway.
And we still have EGA to try on this, which is perhaps my favorite retro PC graphics mode.
What, you don’t spend entire afternoons arguing the merits of quality EGA graphics
with your friends?
I do, EGA’s awesome, and as you’d expect by this point the MCE2VGA performs admirably
in both low and high-res EGA modes.
Again you can enable scanlines, but whether you like it raw or filtered you’re gonna
get some lovely results in EGA.
And yes, being that Tandy graphics will display on a traditional CGA or EGA monitor, the device
handles games running in Tandy mode, no problem.
Which is great because I have some older VGA monitors that look quite nice sat on top of
a Tandy 1000, so I look forward to making greater use of them now.
Sadly, the MCE2VGA does not do many favors for persnickety VGA capture devices, a bit
of a bummer as someone who’s frequently capturing retro PC gameplay.
Chances are, if your capture device doesn’t already accept CGA or EGA rendered through
a VGA card, it probably won’t accept the MCE2VGA either.
This really depends on your capturing setup of course, but I didn’t have any luck with
the devices I have that dislike 70hz video at wider aspect ratios.
I have other devices that it works just fine with, but then, they already captured low-res
video no problem so it’s not surprising.
But yeah, that’s about it!
I just wanted to share my experience and let more people know that the MCE2VGA exists.
I’m continually receiving questions in my LGR inbox about graphics cards, monitors,
and RGB scalers for DOS games, so I’m happy to recommend this one for certain situations.
As with most competent scalers though it’s not super low in price, currently costing
59 euros for the main board only, 89 euros for the main board and the requisite FPGA,
and 114 for the entire bundle I showed in this review from Serdashop.
So it’s still a whole lot less than buying original TTL monitors, but depending on your
planned range of uses it may not be worth that kinda cash.
For me though it is a no-brainer considering the work I do and the hundreds of old PCs
I have, all of which need a display.
After all, vintage CRTs won’t last forever, so if anything it’s a bit of future-proofing
and I’m glad to have it.
And if you enjoyed this retro PC stuff then maybe you’d like to try some other retro PC stuff.
LGR is a show that’s all about that kinda thing so subscribe if you’d like to keep
up with the videos arriving weekly.
No matter what though, as always, thank you for watching!