Monitor test 1.0 Made By: NYYRIKKI (2009)

First of all check that your browser does not scale these pictures... else some of these picture examples are pretty useless.

When you start the test, you are requested if you want to run these tests in 50Hz or 60Hz mode. I recommend to try both. When the test ends, you can start over by pressing F5. (RUN)

Here are descriptions of the tests and their purpose:

Test 1: Colors

If you can't see standard MSX palette on this screen then the color encoding does not work correctly.

NTSC and PAL use different frequency for carrying out color information. Many TV's automatically select NTSC color encoding if 60Hz picture is selected and PAL encoding if 50Hz picture is selected. MSX anyway uses always same color encoding it was made to. For short: Japanese MSX computers output NTSC encoding and European computers output PAL encoding.

If you are using TV or video projector there might be a manual setting for selecting color encoding in the menus. Check out the TV/Video projector manual.

When this test fails you usually get gray picture, that has vertical stripes, but I've also seen color picture where red and blue have swapped places. Check out the correct color order from picture below.



Test 2: Horizontal resolution

If you are using LCD TV or monitor the natural resolution of the device is different from what MSX is outputting and this causes blurriness or missing pixels. If you have Horizontal size and position adjustments, try to match MSX resolution to your monitor resolution.



Test 3: Vertical resolution (half timing)

MSX applications usually use half timing. This means that when TV/VCR/DVD devices send 25 pictures/second interlaced, MSX usually sends out 50 pictures/second not interlaced.

Some display devices may not understand this correctly. On some cases the picture seems to jump up and down pretty randomly. This is good picture to note that kind of behavior.

Check also same things as in previous test. Picture should look like this:



Test 4: Screen borders

These arrows point the "normal" screen area that MSX software may use. If your display device can't display all of this area and it's manual does not help, consider changing to other screen. It is good if there is even some extra space visible around this area.

Usually problem is that the area is cut from right.

Test 5: Two boxes, half timing.

In this test we output different even and odd frames. If you use something else but traditional CRT display this is many times detected incorrectly as interlaced picture.

What you should see is two very fast blinking boxes partly on top of each other accurately on same height... Or if your display is slower three stripes: Gray (very fast blinking white), pure white and Gray (very fast blinking white)



Test 6: Two boxes, full timing.

This is same as previous test, but now this is proper interlaced picture. On CRT displays this should look pretty much same as previous picture, but the right box should be "half a line" lower than the left one.

On LCD and other progressive scan devices the picture needs to be deinterlaced, so the result can be considered correct also if it looks like picture on right. Note that this is not how ever correct output for previous test.

 

Test 7: Horizontal resolution (full timing)

If the previous test was success, you may try to adjust your progressive scan monitor even more accurately using this test picture.



Test 8: CRT control power

On CRT devices the power output to cathode may affect also the power used to control the ray. If you see two lines on bottom of the screen instead of one, this is the problem.

Test 9: Scrolling

Many devices contain all kind of picture improving methods that work badly or even worse on MSX usage. This is very good test to spot those problems and test what kind of settings could be best.

What you should see is a smooth scroll with standard font.

Note: The scroll is very well readable. If you move your eyes with it, it should look just like still text. The scroll should not blur, suddenly jump forward, stop every once in a while or anything like that.

Especially progressive scan devices usually fail in this test miserably.

Test 10: Errors in VDP timing

Some displays have sync correction that makes sure the picture keeps shape even if the timing is not perfect. If this circle is absolutely still in your screen, then you have this kind of error correction in your device.


Test 11: Screen adjust modify on fly

Some displays do the sync correction differently and disable MSX VDP functionality by correcting errors that were meant to be. If you still see the same circle (as in previous test) absolutely still, try reducing improvement functionalitys.

(Note on 50Hz display you may see some black lines going from bottom to up, but that is my fault. The important thing here is, that the ball it self moves and looks jelly.)



Test 12: Overscan

Here you can see a picture that uses up and bottom borders as well... All of this picture should not normally fit to screen, but you can see how your display reacts when it gets "too big" MSX picture.



I hope this helps you to test your monitor.

~NYYRIKKI