XRGB-3 scan converter

["Tom Greene" <tom@cowgod.org>]

I got ahold of a Micomsoft XRGB-3 scan converter earlier this week, so
I thought I'd post some results after using it with my IIGS. I have
been using their previous model, the XRGB-2+, for about a year.

This converter seems to actually digitize the input and scale it, it
can output 1024x768, 1280x1024, or 1600x1200 on either the analog or
DVI-D outputs.

The nice part is it was simple to connect the GS to it, It has a 15-pin
VGA-style RGB input connector, and a 15-pin Mac video cable with an
adapter worked fine with it. It can also accept an 21-pin SCART-style
connector, although the pinout of the Japanese connector is supposedly
different from the European SCART. The XRGB-2+ had only the 21-pin
connector, so a special cable was required.

The bad news is I've tried both the 15-pin and 21-pin inputs and the
analog and digital outputs, and in all cases the display is somewhat
distorted near the top of the screen. The digital output is a little
bit better than the analog, but the distortion seems to get worse when
you select the higher output resolutions. At first i thought it might
be a cable problem but the same cable works well with my XRGB-2+. I'm
waiting for a friend of mine to translate some bits of the manual for
me since it is all in Japanese, perhaps there are some settings that
can be tweaked to stabilize the picture.

I haven't tried any other RGB sources with this box, however I did try
the composite input with my IIc, and it had no distortion, although the
XRGB-3 seems to have trouble with video produced by the IIc. The text
display looks like it has the color fringes all the time, making
80-column text difficult to read. The graphics display was not too bad,
Moon Patrol looked nice.