SCART woes

I've just moved most of my consoles to my current address and hooked them all up using a SCART splitter/joiner as my TV only has one SCART socket and I don't want to use RF.

Currently I have a DC and a Saturn hooked up to it. This is where it gets weird.

When I turn Mr. Saturn on, the DC fan starts blowing, the VMU boots and the LED on my third party memory card lights up. This turns out to be a major pain in the ass because it also interferes with the picture. If I unplug the DC from the multi-SCART box then the picture is fine.

If that's not weird enough it also does it with no power lead in the DC! Why the hell did Sega design the DC A) to receive power through the AV out port, B) to have it route to the fans, the peripherals but nothing else, and C) to have it bypass the power switch entirely so you can't switch the damn thing off if the power is flowing?

If this has erased any of my saves I'm going to be pissed off :mad:

Now, SCART is a two-way standard so you can use the same port as an input and an output. My SCART multiplexer was probably designed to operate the other way (i.e. one output to many inputs rather than the other way around). In any case, the answer should be a case of removing a couple of pins on the DC connector so only the output pins are connected. Or maybe it's more complicated and tricky than that.

Any SCART experts here?

I live in the USA and back in NY I have a SCART setup.

It happens if you have a automatic scart splitter - I forget why it does that.

You need a manual scart splitter. Buy the Madcatz one. I got one for $10 shipped to the USA and it works great. No image degeneration or lost quality, and ALL inputs are pure RGB.

It is built pretty sturdy too.

What you have happening here is that somehow the DC gets powered through AV connector, through Saturn... the scart switchbox you have or something is not having diodes on RGB enable and normal/widescreen selection pins, so current from one machine ends up in another... and its potentially dangerous !!!

It is up to the external devices not to pass signal to wrong places... game consoles have no diodes preventing "backward flow" on their AV outs. I think you can fry a MD that way, it only has 5V output, and it goes directly to RGB enable and screen select pins I think.......

Thanks guys. So to sum it all up I need a new SCART switchbox. >_<

Any recommendations?

I reccoemnd the Madcatz one. I have it and it works great... ALL inputs are RGB and no quality loss. It's manual, and it's pretty cheap.

Any decent switchable SCART block will do. I wouldn't go with third-party peripheral manufacturers; try a good AV/electronics online store, like Maplin.

When I had my old TV, I had a switchable SCART block to hook up my 360, PS2, MD, DVD player etc., and it could have more than one switch on at once. This actually enabled me to connect my stereo to my PS2, and then have the rest of the devices share the connection as long as the PS2 was on at the same time.