Commodore 128 in 80-column mode using the
Y-Plus RGB-to-Composite Converter

I recently ordered and received the new Y-Plus model A-22 RGB-to-Composite Converter. A lot of people have been curious to know how it compares to some of the other options such as RGB-to-VGA, when connected to the Commodore 128 in 80-column mode. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, so I've included a few pictures below.

The kit was pretty modestly priced at only $25 on eBay, and included not only the board and information leaflet, but also the power cable, RGB cable, composite cable and even S-Video cable! The only caveat was that the RGB cable fits the 5-pin connector on the board, whereas the 6-pin type was needed due to the C128 outputting the vertical and horizontal sync lines separately. Fortunately, the cable I needed was included in the CGA-to-VGA board kit I bought last year. Since I'm no longer using it, I simply unplugged it, snipped the intensity line and in less than five minutes I was able to see the results with the new board!

Using the S-Video output, the quality is much better than I expected, if not as good as with the CGA-to-VGA adaptor, pretty close – especially since up-scaling is usually involved, and most LCD monitors only render distortion-free when viewed at their maximum supported resolution. Some of the colors look rather heavily-saturated – hopefully that can be corrected using the individual R-G-B trim pots on the board, although I haven't test this yet.

In my case, the advantage this board offers over the Highway board is that my LCD TV includes both composite and S-Video inputs. I'm using the composite line for 40-column output, and S-Video for the more signal-intensive 80-column output. It's also one fewer component in the chain, compared to the CGA-to-VGA solution, which required not only the Highway board, but also the Composite-to-VGA converter.

I haven't yet routed the intensity pin to the circuit, so what you see below is what you can expect if you decide to use the board with no modifications. Check back periodically as I'll be posting the results once the intensity pin mod has been made, although the difference should involve mostly just the color mapping – the overall image quality should still remain roughly the same.