Quote Originally Posted by PDorr3 View Post
I read that by buying a Commodore 1084 monitor it will fix any and all problems that I might have with color issues and images being cut off on the bottom when using a standard US NTSC Television.
Before we get too far with this... is your CD32 an NTSC model or a PAL model? I hope it's NTSC, because if it's a PAL system, you won't get any colour through S-Video or Composite connections. Your only option would be to do an RGB mod.

If you're using an NTSC CD32 and an NTSC 1084, then you're golden.

I read that using S-Video is the best way to go for NTSC to avoid all problems (or can I use composite just fine?)
It doesn't matter which one you use. Some sources will tell you that S-Video solves the colour issues, but trust me: It won't. If you hook up a PAL CD32 to an NTSC monitor in S-Video, you won't get colour, no matter what you do.

RGB however DOES fix the problems, since it skips the colour encoding process altogether.

However I cannot clearly make out an S-Video port on this monitor (see pictures below).
S-Video didn't really exist back then. Commodore came up with a standard they called "separated video", which transmits Luma and Chroma over two RCA connectors. Luckily, this is electrically compatible with S-Video. You can occasionally find appropriate S-Video-to-Separated-Video cables on eBay, but you can very easily build one yourself if you have a little skill with a soldering iron (it's only 4 wires).

If you look closely at the picture, you'll see there's a push button toggle that's marked "CVBS" and "LCA"... I'm not sure what it stands for, but CVBS is composite video, while LCA is separated video (Luma-Chroma-Audio?). You'll want to run the Chroma signal into the red jack and the Luma signal into the yellow jack.

Also, is there going to be some kind of input for computer speakers so I can get better sound quality?
Outputs you mean? The CD32 has standard RCA audio jacks on the back. Very easy to work with.

Also note these two pictures, one shows it has 50/60Hz and the other just says 60hz, will this be a problem or will it automaticaly detect both 50 and 60hz?
As robotriot mentioned, this probably has to do with the power source.

Quote Originally Posted by blue lander View Post
I went the route of buying a US Amiga CD32 and a mouse to do the same thing you are. I found many PAL games still wouldn't play on my CD32 even after I changed modes unless I hooked it up to an RGB monitor which required opening the unit up and doing some custom rewiring.
I have about 100 CD32 games, and so far I'm only aware of 3 games that will not work on a NTSC CD32:
  • Fears - Gives an out of memory error that I suspect is caused by having used the boot menu to change video modes (maybe it leaks a tiny bit of memory or something?). If you don't change modes, you won't get the memory error, but the game will lock up later on. If you happen to have extra memory hooked up to the system, then it will work fine when you switch into PAL. Very strange.
  • Kang Fu - I actually don't have this one, but icbrkr does and he says he got an out of memory error every time he tried it, so I assume it's the same situation as Fears.
  • F17 Challenge - The funny thing here is that the game actually provides an option to play in PAL or NTSC, but no matter what setup I used, I couldn't get this game to work until I pulled out my PAL CD32. It *might* be another memory issue, but I haven't gotten around to trying it on my SX32-equipped system. It's a crappy game anyways, so no big loss.

Which games were you having trouble running? What kind of display are you hooking it up to? 50Hz capability is pretty much mandatory, as many games will ignore your settings and use a PAL video mode regardless of what mode the system is in.

--Zero