[SpookyZalost]

Alright so I'm going to keep this simple because the RGB scart mod is probably the easiest way to get the best picture from anything before 1998 but after around 1985 or so
so 3rd through 5th gen, 2nd and 1st gen were coax only and 6th gen on wards has decent high quality cables for it.

a good example of the difference can be seen in this video



right away you'll probably notice the image is clearer, the colors are more accurate, sharper, and most notably, that rainbow effect is gone.

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to start with you will need the following.

1 Scart plug Male.

Typically looks like this


1 Video cable for said console. (this is different for every console so do your research.)

1 soldering iron.

Some lead free rosin core solder.

a good length of wire that you don't mind chopping up. (Old IDE cables are a popular choice but you can get multiple feet of cable in various colors cheaply through amazon.)

Some Capacitors. (get the right one for the right cable mod, this will determine the quality of the image.)

at least 1 Resistor, usually 180 ohm but check the diagram first.

Heat shrink cable sheathe/tubing - for protecting your work and making it look nice and neat.

An eXacto knife/box knife. (this is also important, you are going to need to open the casing around the connector that plugs into your console of choice.)

Patience

I can't tell you how many times I messed up due to impatience, always double and triple check your solder joints.

finally if you don't already have one a multi-meter is super handy, you can use it to reverse engineer what wires go to what pin on the Console specific video cable.

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Step One, Take that knife and carefully travel along the part where the case is closed on either end opening the plastic shell around the connector, you can skip this step if you have a multi-meter and feel like reverse-engineering your cable.

Step Two, De-Solder or make note which wires go to which pins, your choice, I will be posting the diagrams at the end.

Step Three, Slide your heat shrink tubing/Sheath along the cable making sure to leave the ends exposed where they go into the connector casings it'll be difficult to do this after you solder both ends on

Step Four, If you have any capacitors or resistors Solder them to the the correct wires/Scart pins now so that you don't forget later, remember, this will most likely determine if you are successful or not, on some consoles those resistors can be the difference between a dark faded/washed out image and a clear one.

Step Five, Solder your wires to the correct pins, if you've soldered any capacitors and or resistors to the pins connect the wires to the other "leg" of them.

Step Six, Make sure to wire your grounds correctly, if you don't properly ground your cable you'll get a lot of audio and video noise and distortion.

Step Seven, Test your cable, better to test it now and not when you have to take the whole thing.

Step Eight, If your test was successful then attach the casings to the ends of your cable, you're done, congrats, you have an RGB cable for "insert console here"

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Q&A: if you've gotten this far then good but I'm sure you're wondering why SCART?

well... let's be honest it's mostly because SCART is the standard for RGB on everything from a sega master system to a SNES to an atari Jaguar.

there's even SCART for the original XBOX and PS2... though those look just as good through component cables so it's sorta pointless.

plus these days you can get SCART to HDMI upscaler's for around $30 allowing you to play your classic game consoles in glorious 1080P resolution at 60 frames per second, no stretching or fuzzy image, you can blame the yellow composite cable for that.

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Diagrams:

Note on these diagrams the yellow squares are Resistors and the double lines are capacitors.

Resistors are measured in Ohms
Capacitors in Micro Farads















Diagrams Provided by Evil Tim over at optusnet.com.au

there are other setups but I'll leave that to another post as most other consoles either can use HDMI, component, or require actual modding of the game console.

if you have any questions please post them below.

[Guardian]

That RGB video looks great! Nice tutorial.

[SpookyZalost]

I can attest to the difference, it really is noticeable, heck I've got sonic Mega collection for the gamecube, I actually compared the gamecube remake of sonic 1 with the original version via RGB scart, the gamecube version was played on the wii with component cables.

even then the genesis version is still sharper and clearer... not sure what else to say, original console is best?

[brian51]

Im going to have to agree here with Spook,
as i respect his knowledge in this area , and he knows a lot more about this as i would

[SpookyZalost]

just years of research and experimentation lol.

you guys have nam, I have DIY hardware.

[Thomas]

Pretty sick! I'm too lazy and just use emulators...

[brian51]

I think this has been the best thread opened up here this year !