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Electronics Mad Catz 7.0" TFT

Discussion in 'Modding' started by Yraen, 23 Dec 2005.

  1. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    Hello everyone.

    I've been lurking around these forums for a very long time now, enjoying what I've read and learning a lot. Now I finally get to come to all of you with a question.

    I recently got ahold of a Mad Catz 7.0" TFT widescreen that is able to be used on pretty much any console. What I would like to do is mod this into my computer as a second monitor. It works fine as a tv screen off of my video card. My problem is that it only has s-video and composite connections and no RGB connections. I don't have enough knowledge to know if the RGB connections are on the controller card and I can connect to them or not. I've searched for any details I could think of about these boards but have come up empty handed.

    All images link to a hi-res version.

    Mad Catz screen
    [​IMG]
    Back of LCD
    [​IMG]
    Controller?
    [​IMG]
    Brightness/Contrast/Volume controls
    [​IMG]

    So, does anyone have any suggestions for me or should I start looking for a PSOne screen. I really like the idea of having a 16:9 LCD screen modded into my case though.

    If you need a higher res version than posted I have them, I just didn't upload them as they weigh in over a meg apiece.

    Thanks.

    All images hosted by http://www.putfile.com
     
  2. Smilodon

    Smilodon The Antagonist

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    that one seems to be plug and play (pray).

    that yellow connector is probably video in.

    i don't know how it's powered, though.
     
  3. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    It works fine running off of composite or s-video. It's just in that mode it mirrors my desktop and I'd rather extend my desktop to it. :sigh:

    It's powered by a 12VDC 1.2A adapter.
     
  4. MrWillyWonka

    MrWillyWonka Chocolate computers galore!

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    It's simple to change, right click your desktop and go to properties, under the settings tab click on the second monitor and make sure the "extend my windows desktop to this monitor" is checked. Then you are done.
     
  5. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    On my ATI X800XL AIW it's only registered as a TV and I can't extend my destop to it. Every thing I've tried to do to extend my desktop to it (short of getting a PCI video card to drop my system) just results in no video on it.
     
  6. MrWillyWonka

    MrWillyWonka Chocolate computers galore!

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    You should be able to in Windows. I've always had nVidia cards so am familiar with the nview utility, but not sure about the Radeon utilities, are there any options in there to extend your desktop to the TV.

    When you say you can't extend the desktop, what happens if you tick the checkbox to extend the desktop?
     
  7. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    There's no options to extend the desktop to the tv. I can extend my desktop to a second monitor. If I check that box I lose video to the screen. The ATI has DVI and VGA connectors on it and a third connector for video in and out (s-video, composite, sound).
     
  8. Confused Fishcake

    Confused Fishcake Minimodder

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    First of all, you aren't still using the power adaptor it cam with are you? Run it off a molex. Also, are you going to keep it in its casing, or just mod the parts into your pc?
     
  9. Smilodon

    Smilodon The Antagonist

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    does your gfx card support 2 outputs? and do you have the right drivers installed?
     
  10. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    When it's done it will be powered by a molex, but for now and testing purposes I'm still using the adapter. My gfx card does support two outputs and s-video/composite and I'm using the latest drivers for the AIW from ATI. That appears to be the problem. Unless I can connect it to the dvi or vga connector - it connects via a dongle that has it's own slot - it's only seen as a television and not a monitor. In that mode it only clones the desktop and will not extend it.

    I can play a dvd/video, minimize it on my monitor and it will still play full-screen on the lcd. I do love the wide-screen aspect of it but if I can't get it to do more than clone my primary display it's almost worthless to me in this respect.

    I was going to try it on a second video card this week but something came up to siphon off some of my finances. My motherboard took a nose-dive this past week and I've been getting my main computer back up and running.

    Hopefully in a week or two I'll be back to looking at this again as I think it would make a nicer lcd display than a psone lcd would.

    If anyone has any links/tips on finding out if I can connect this to a d-sub connector like the psone let me know and I'll be willing to try it.
     
  11. Captain Slug

    Captain Slug Infinite Patience

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    You're problems are driver setup related. Yes it shows as a television, that's just the driver and timings being used. If you use the regular display control panel you should be able to set it up as a nother monitor/desktop. You'll only need the ATI specific settings if you want to adjust the picture or change the resolution to something the regular windows settings won't output in.
     
  12. iamnafets

    iamnafets What's a Dremel?

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    Captain Slug has it, go to your desktop, right click, and go to settings. Click on the number 2 monitor (should be smaller, and it's not real clear that it's clickable), and a checkbox should light up below with the option "extend my windows desktop onto this monitor". That's the one you want. I've done this before, you'll find a few technicalities with playing videos on both monitors (most cards wont support it, and videogames and videos will be just black on one of the monitors (secondary, not primary) unless you're doing that mirror thing. Nonetheless, you can do it with at TV and ATI cards, but it's not in the ATI settings pages.
     
  13. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    I've tried the drivers from 5.10 to 5.13 CATS and none of them work. I get no video as the second monitor on the screen. The checkbox for extend my desktop does not stay checked. No resolution changes nor color quality will remain either, they both go back to the default settings (640x480, 8 bit).
     
  14. Firehed

    Firehed Why not? I own a domain to match.

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    Sounds like it's something specifically related to ATI cards then. I'm fairly sure you can do it with nVidia drivers. If you know anyone that has a nVidia card, see if you can take it over and try it out.

    You say it can connect to multiple consoles - can it only connect via the RCA jacks, or can it plug directly into a console (the ps2, specifically)? If so, find out how/where it connects, and the pinout for the PSOne screen should be the same. My bet would be that bottom-left ribbon cable, especially if it's twelve wires (as the input board for my ps1 screen has).

    However, you should be able to do desktop spanning with a "TV". ATI doesn't have very good multimon support, so that is probably the main issue.

    Out of curiosity, how much did that cost?
     
  15. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    I'm pretty sure it's something to do with the ATI card/driver itself. I've tried everything I can think of to get it to extend but no luck.

    It was given to me so I'm not sure how much it actually cost. When I first got it I looked around and found it for $99, now I see it's at $49.99 here.

    I can't find a shot of the cable it connects with anywhere so I'll just describe it. On one end you have 3 different console connectors (x-box, PS2, and game cube). On the other end you have s-video and composite video, left and right audio.

    I did discover a review on it at Wired here. 1440 x 234 resolution does sound sweet. I will say that watching movies on it isn't hard. Everything is sharp and clear.

    The funny thing is that when I went to look on Mad Catz site I couldn't find it now, but it was there when I first posted about it. I did find a cache of it on google here.

    I also think it's that bottom-left ribbon cable. It has fourteen wires though and I'm unsure what to check for. Once I get this motherboard problem fixed I might look into picking up a nVidia pci card just to power this thing with. I think it would be worth it.
     
  16. Firehed

    Firehed Why not? I own a domain to match.

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    In that case, I'd take a multimeter and find out which pin of the PS2 connection goes with what on the other end. Compare that to the pinout of the PS2/PSone output, and you have your RGB pinout. Tedious, certainly, but it should get the job done.

    http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2004/07/07/psone_lcd/2.html

    It's not the complete pinout, but enough to figure it out I think.

    However, I think you're infinitely better off just using S-video and screwing with drivers till it works.
     
  17. Yraen

    Yraen What's a Dremel?

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    After lots of looking at the pinouts for both the xbox and the ps and comparing it to the cables that came with the screen it's a pretty safe bet that I cannot get RGB to the lcd. The pinouts for both the xbox and ps support composite/s-video and those are the only pins on the cables. None of the other pins are used save for sound. So unless I can find schematics for those boards it looks like my only option is composite/s-video connections. I'm going to try and get ahold of a pci video card to test with and see if that will allow it to work as a second monitor since my ATI won't.
     

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