Guide: Wiring up a 32x yourself

One great way to help bring down the cost of buying a 32x is to wire up the video cable yourself. You only need to wire four wires which are red, green, blue, and sync. This's pretty simply stuff if you enjoy tinkering with systems and are looking for ways to save a little money. Here're the schematics for doing this.

Wiring up a model 1:



Wiring up a model 2:



Here's how it looks on my system:

What kind of monitor are you using in those screen shots? They look absolutely stunning!

AlecRob wrote:

What kind of monitor are you using in those screen shots? They look absolutely stunning!

RCA F27668 which I bought brand new over a decade ago. Those pictures are s-video from my revised 32x s-video mod:

https://16bitgamer.canadian-forum.com/t129-the-sega-32x-s-video-modded

S-video can and does look just as good as rgb / component video if you engineer the circuit properly (this circuit is pretty much as good as it gets with genesis / 32x stuff).

That is absolutely the best s video I have ever seen.it looks exactly like rgb pretty much!

AlecRob wrote:

That is absolutely the best s video I have ever seen.it looks exactly like rgb pretty much!

Yes that's becuase this s-video circuit is properly done. A lot of people like to knock on s-video thinking that it's a not-so-great looking video format. The truth is a lot of s-video circuits for consoles aren't properly done resulting in a not so great looking picture. However people blame the s-video format for the image not looking great instead of blaming the poorly designed video circuit. I've also read that newer tvs will downgrade s-video internally into composite video, so having a tv that does s-video right is also important. If you have a tv that displays s-video properly and design your s-video circuits properly s-video can and will look just as good as rgb. Going back to that 32x s-video mod here's how it looked with the old circuit that I found on the internet:



And here's how it looked after 2 hours or so of me tinkering with it:



That strange colour pattern won't show up on a tv. This just goes to show how much of a difference making a proper video circuit is. Everyone who did my s-video mod posted that it looks amazing, and that's because it does.

I first discovered s-video back around the year 2001 (2000?) when I bought my first dvd decoder card inside my computer. This card had a s-video output jack on the back, I plugged it into my moms tv and the picture looked so amazing I thought it was digital. I next bought my current tv so I could also experience the s-video clarity in my room. For the longest time I experienced only dvd movies in s-video and all my gaming consoles in composite. Later doing research online I discovered that my snes does s-video and I just needed to buy the right cable. After getting s-video going on the snes and seeing how amazing it looked I decided to get s-video working in all of my consoles. Many years of hobby engineering have passed and I have perfect looking s-video from all my favourite consoles now. In some cases I had to change the video encoder chip entirely to improve the s-video sharpness. And in many cases I had to alter the s-video circuit to again improve the image quality. Any time I wired up some simple s-video console mod from the internet and it didn't look as good as my dvd player looked in 2000, I knew there was a problem with the circuit itself and not my tv or the s-video format.

Most people when they don't get a proper s-video picture they like to blame the s-video format, because they're dumb. If my old dvd decoder card and playstation 2 look perfect on my tv using s-video then obviously anything can have a circuit designed to make it look just as good. The problem I found is that most "modders" like to build the simplest and cheapest circuit, I prefer to make something more complicated with much better results.

Perhaps there would be a way to improve svideo quality on the dreamcast and Saturn then..
Could your circuit be used on other consoles with maybe some modifications?

AlecRob wrote:

Perhaps there would be a way to improve svideo quality on the dreamcast and Saturn then..
Could your circuit be used on other consoles with maybe some modifications?

No this circuit is 32x only. I've never seen the s-video quality from a saturn or a dreamcast, why are they not this good looking?

They are good, but the dreamcast could be better.

AlecRob wrote:

They are good, but the dreamcast could be better.

My guess is it needs a better video encoder. I swapped the video encoder in my snes mini and that noticably improved the s-video quality.