A temporary solution for 3D games on the Master System without the 3D glasses adaptor

Monday, 29th July 2019

I bought my Sega Master System-compatible 3D glasses almost exactly ten years ago for use in my LCD Shutter Glasses Adaptor project.

More recently I've acquired a CRT television and an actual Sega Master System so I could in theory make use of the glasses as I had originally intended - with Sega Master System games.

Composite video adaptor for the LCD shutter glasses adaptor being tested with Zaxxon 3-D


I've been keeping an eye on eBay for the 3D Glasses Adaptor for the Master System. This is a device that plugs into the console's card slot and allows it to drive the glasses with the software controlling which LCD shutter is open and which is closed by writing to the card. Unfortunately, these cards are not too easy to find in the UK and when they do appear they usually came bundled with a broken pair of glasses (it seems very unusual for both arms to still be attached to the glasses, and I've seen a fair few pairs that are cracked down the middle too). I already own some compatible 3D glasses so didn't want to waste money on buying a broken set of original Master System ones!

I did eventually find someone selling a loose adaptor for a reasonable price so bought it and a few games. Zaxxon 3-D was the first to arrive and I was eager to test it out. Without the card adaptor I needed to find an alternative solution, so my thoughts turned to the LCD Shutter Glasses Adaptor I'd built a few years ago.

This is designed to sit between a PC and a VGA CRT monitor and drives the shutter glasses, alternating which LCD shutter is open and which is closed every vertical sync. It can also blank out alternate scanlines, simulating an interlaced signal from a progressive one by blanking odd scanlines on one frame and even scanlines on the next, but this is not useful in our case. The Master System is already alternating complete left and right eye views on its own, so we just need to catch its equivalent of a vsync pulse and feed that into the VGA port on the back of the shutter glasses adaptor.

Composite video adaptor for the LCD shutter glasses adaptor


Above is the device I built, attached to the existing 3D glasses adaptor. It has a single composite input which should be connected to the composite output from the console, either via a splitter (if the console is connected to the TV using composite video) or via some sort of SCART breakout box (I'm using the composite video output from my SCART switch box). It also has a power socket which is used to power the circuit inside which is also passed through to the LCD shutter glasses adaptor. The box has a DE-15 connector and 5.5x2.1mm barrel plug on the other side for connections:

The barrel plug and DE-15 VGA connectors on the output side of the CVBS adaptor


I'd cut the barrel plug off a faulty power supply years ago, I'm glad I kept it as it made the project a much neater solution than it might have other been!

The circuit inside is very simple indeed. As the original adaptor has its own 5V regulator inside and is designed to be powered from a 9V power supply I had to maintain the same convention for this device, so I use a 7805 regulator to convert the incoming voltage to 5V. This powers a textbook example of an LM1881 sync separator circuit - I'm using the reference circuit from the chip's datasheet, connecting the composite video input to the chip's composite video input via a 0.1µF capacitor (without termination as it's assumed the signal is being terminated by the TV) and I use the LM1881's composite sync output and vertical sync output for the VGA connector's horizontal and vertical sync connections respectively.

The insides of the CVBS adaptor


The circuit can be seen above, stuffed in the bottom of the box - along with copious amounts of hot glue to keep the barrel plug in place! How well does it work? Well, the below animation shows two views of the circuit in action, viewed through first one shutter and then the other of the 3D glasses:

Animated demonstration of the shutter glasses in action, showing alternate views through the shutters in turn


This isn't a perfect solution - the Master System expects to be able to explicitly specify which shutter is open whereas in our case we're simply be alternating every frame. This could mean that the eyes are swapped, however there is an eye swap switch on the shutter glasses adaptor to compensate. If the view looks wrong then the switch can be used to correct it, and once that's done as long as the software alternates the views every frame then it should be fine.

I'm certainly happy for now, as it lets me play my 3D games whilst waiting for the console's intended 3D glasses adaptor to arrive in the post.

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