exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi, I bought an A500 on impulse having no experience :lol: . I connected to a VGA monitor that is 15khz suitable but no signal. The monitor is known not to be faulty. The mono output works and I get the floppy disk workbench screen. I have unfortunately no Workbench disks. I can send the Amiga back, it was sold as 100% working. However, I cannot open the case, for example to try a Gotek, which would get around the Workbench floppy problem, without voiding the possibility of returning it. I am mainly concerned about the black VGA display and wonder if it is likely a problem with the adapter or something more serious. A mono Amiga would be missing the point, I think. Would appreciate an opinion from someone who has some idea, unlike me.

Hi.
If you have never connected an Amiga to that PC monitor and got a picture, I would not rule out it being the monitor connection.
So I guess you are using an Amiga 23 pin dtype to VGA adapter?
Do you have any TV's with SCART? It would be worth having an Amiga to RGB/SCART cable, and then you can test another way.

Yeah not all monitors will be Amiga compatible...

Is your monitor listed here?:

http://15khz.wikidot.com/

Hi,
yes it is a BenQ BL2205PT.

https://www.amibay.com/forum/want-to-se ... pin-conns=

On the above website it says the following:

BenQ BL2205PT (tested by me. This monitor is widescreen, and also has integrated speakers. Picture fills entire screen and can not be stretched to 4:3 ratio. Wired adapter works fine with A500/A600 and 1200 for bigbox amigas you need buffered adapter.)

Thanks, I will think about whether I want to order myself a SCART cable, could get the workbench disks at the same time. That is what you get when you mess with things you know nothing about. :P

Another thing to think about - while model numbers of monitors may stay the same for many years revisions of the hardware don't. Lenovo sell a monitor "T22i". I have one made in 06/19 and it works very well as a 15kHz monitor for my Amiga. However later revisions do not support 15kHz at all! Both versions support all the standards they advertise it as supporting but early hardware is more capable. T22i-20 is common right now; T22i-10 is less common and sometimes is being sold at inflated prices for this reason.

So your BenQ BL2205PT is possibly not the same monitor as the BenQ BL2205PT that was tested for that list.

Yes, it is not so easy trying to find the right monitor. I have tried another monitor and I get no signal. Both do 15kHz but never tested on an Amiga before. I assume it is most likely the adapter or the Amiga. We will see. Thanks.

@russellnash I got myself a GBS-8200 which converts the amiga signal into VGA. It gets rid of the flicker in interlaced mode too.

They are reasonably easy to install and should work on any Amiga monitor. I found the picture on that to be better than directly connecting to my 15khz monitor.

Good to know, I wasn't aware of that option.

PhilC wrote: 09 Nov 2021 08:59 @russellnash I got myself a GBS-8200 which converts the amiga signal into VGA. It gets rid of the flicker in interlaced mode too.

This is a very good option and the quality and user interface improves dramatically if you add the ESP8266 board - here’s the first page I found: https://www.retrorgb.com/gbs-control-in ... rview.html

A custom GBS- is good, I've built a couple which was fun, adding on extra mods over the years when Rama found improvements. Although when the Clock Generator mod came out, it locks to the exact input frequency to avoid screen tearing, and I found many of my LCD monitors wont do 50Hz. Most of my consoles have been 60Hz modded, but was a bit stuck with a 50Hz Amiga.
I've not played about with them for a while, as I repaired my 1084s monitor and have a 20" TV for other consoles. I think my phone GBS Control GUI looks outdated from what I have seen recently.