Legacy Cables
Older cable standards still in limited use (VGA, DVI, composite, etc.).
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Atari Jaguar A/V Cable (Composite)
The Jaguar shipped with an RF lead, which flattered nothing, and its edge-connector A/V port has been the answer ever since. This is the composite version — the common replacement, and the least the port can do. That connector also carries S-Video and full RGB, and on a machine whose whole pitch was raw pixel-pushing…
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Composite AV Cable (RCA, 3-Plug)
Yellow is video, white is left, red is right — the connection everybody recognises. Composite is a compromise by design: it squeezes brightness and colour onto a single wire and the receiver has to separate them again, which is where dot crawl and the shimmering colour fringes on sharp edges come from. It works everywhere…
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DE-9 Joystick Extension Cable (Atari / Sega 9-Pin)
The DE-9 joystick port is one of computing’s great accidents of standardisation: Atari defined it in 1977 and the Commodore 64, the Amiga, the Master System and the Mega Drive all adopted the same nine pins. An extension lets you sit somewhere other than directly in front of the console, which retro hardware with its…
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DVI-D Dual Link Cable
The DVI-D Dual Link Cable carries digital video at up to 7.92Gbps for 2560×1600@60Hz. The dual-link variant uses all available pins for maximum resolution. Found on older monitors and GPUs — no audio support, video only. Being replaced by DisplayPort and HDMI. Mark as legacy.
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Nintendo AV Multi Out Composite AV Cable
One of Nintendo’s better decisions: the same A/V Multi Out port on the SNES, the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, so a single cable serves all three and a spare from one console works on the others. This is the composite version, the grey lead that came in the box. It works, and it is…
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Nintendo AV Multi Out RGB SCART Cable
RGB keeps red, green and blue on separate wires all the way to the display, which is as good as analogue video gets. A SNES or a GameCube outputs it natively from the Multi Out port, and over a properly built SCART cable the difference against composite is not subtle — colours are cleaner, edges…
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Nintendo AV Multi Out S-Video Cable
The cheapest genuine picture upgrade a SNES or Nintendo 64 owner can make. Composite carries brightness and colour on one wire and the television has to guess them apart, which produces the shimmering rainbow fringes on sharp edges known as dot crawl. S-Video sends them separately, and the artefacts simply disappear — text becomes readable,…
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Nintendo Game Boy Advance Link Cable
Before wireless, this was multiplayer. The AGB-005 links two Game Boy Advance or GBA SP systems directly, and daisy-chains to four with additional cables for games that support it — and because many GBA titles offer single-cartridge play, one copy of the game can often serve everyone on the link. Compatibility is by connector generation,…
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Nintendo Game Boy Advance to GameCube Link Cable
One of the more interesting ideas Nintendo never quite followed through on: plug a Game Boy Advance into a GameCube controller port and the handheld becomes a second screen only its owner can see. Four Swords Adventures used it for dungeons, Pac-Man Vs. gave the ghosts a map the runner could not see, Final Fantasy…
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Nintendo GameCube Component Video Cable (Digital AV Out)
The GameCube has a secret. Alongside the ordinary A/V Multi Out, the original DOL-001 carries a Digital AV Out that taps the video signal before it reaches the analogue converter, and Nintendo’s DOL-013 component cable reads that digital feed and produces its own clean 480p YPbPr. It was a mail-order item that few people bought,…
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RF Coaxial Antenna Cable (75 Ohm)
The coaxial lead into the back of a television is the oldest connection still standard on new sets. It carries a modulated RF signal at 75 ohms, and it is how every pre-1990 games console reached a TV: the console feeds an RF modulator or switch box, and this cable carries channel 3, 4 or…
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Sega Dreamcast A/V Cable (Composite)
The composite lead Sega put in the box, and the one that does the Dreamcast the least justice. This console was unusual for 1998: it outputs RGB, and it outputs a genuine 480p progressive signal over VGA, which no other console of its generation managed. Running it on composite throws all of that away. The…
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Sega Dreamcast RGB SCART Cable
Most Dreamcast owners who care about picture quality end up with two cables, and this is the second one. A VGA box handles the large majority of the library at a clean 480p, but a stubborn minority of games — a number of 2D fighters, some PAL releases — will not run in progressive mode…
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Sega Genesis Model 2 / 32X A/V Cable (Composite)
Sega changed the A/V connector between Model 1 and Model 2 hardware, and the two are not interchangeable — a Model 2, a 32X or a Nomad needs the 9-pin mini-DIN, while a Model 1 needs the 8-pin DIN. Get that right first, because the plugs look similar in a listing photo. This is the…
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Sega Genesis Model 2 / 32X Component Video Cable
SCART barely exists outside Europe, which left North American Mega Drive owners with composite and a shrug. HD Retrovision solved it by putting an RGB-to-component transcoder inside the cable’s plug shell: the console still outputs native RGB, the transcoder converts it on the spot, and what reaches the television is component YPbPr that almost any…
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Sega Genesis Model 2 / 32X RGB SCART Cable
The Mega Drive was built for RGB, and over a decent SCART cable it looks superb — the sharp, saturated picture the Model 2’s composite output has been hiding since 1993. No modification is needed; the RGB lines are already on the 9-pin port. Two things separate a good cable from a bad one here.…
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Sega Master System / Genesis Model 1 A/V Cable (Composite)
The 8-pin DIN is Sega’s earlier A/V connector, shared by the Master System and the Model 1 Mega Drive, and it is not compatible with the 9-pin mini-DIN that replaced it on the Model 2 — check the console before ordering, because the two get confused constantly in secondhand listings. This is the composite lead,…
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Sega Master System / Genesis Model 1 RGB SCART Cable
Both of these consoles have been outputting RGB since the day they were built, and almost nobody used it. Over a properly made SCART cable a Master System looks startlingly clean — flat, saturated colour with none of composite’s shimmer — and the Model 1 Mega Drive is generally reckoned to have the better audio…
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VGA Cable (D-Sub 15)
The VGA Cable (D-Sub 15) carries analog video up to 2048×1536 — with increasing quality loss at higher resolutions. The D-Sub 15 connector has been around since 1987. Still used on projectors and legacy enterprise monitors. Video only, no audio. For anything modern, use HDMI or DisplayPort instead.
