Only Passthrough with Wii and only 2x with Saturn?

[dergudesiggi]

Thanks for your efforts again, Steo. An opportunity presented itself and I snagged a NTSC-J Saturn for 30 Euros. I hope to get it in the next couple of days. Hope that’ll work better 🙂

[Steo]

Nice! You should be good with that as the TV is supposed to support all those modes. I might end up doing the same thing myself, depending on how much effort getting a second crystal installed in mine would be.

[dergudesiggi]

A second crystal? Not sure what you mean 🙂

[Steo]

I mean the way the PAL crystal is a slightly lower frequency than what they use in the NTSC console, so I’d be installing the NTSC crystal on a switch to get the true NTSC speed out of it instead of 59.3Hz.

[BlueStinger]

No way… We can do that ? Just replace the (is it quartz ?) crystal and the console will run on another frequency ?!! And that’s it ?! It can’t be that simple, is it ?

[Steo]

Well on a Saturn, there’s a certain point (PIN 79 iirc) you need to switch between 5V and GND to switch between PAL and NTSC. I just cut a trace instead of lifting the pin, but even when you switch it, it output’s 240p but it’s just short of 59.94Hz and ends up at 59.3Hz. The idea would be to use the old crystal and a new one, but have them on a switch. That way you can still use PAL, but also get the full 59.94Hz and no sync issues on certain displays for NTSC.

[BlueStinger]

Doesn’t seem like the hardest mod in the world. Good to know.

[LaMangouste]

Hello,
I have a similar Philips TV and the same issue for Wii 480p x2, also working fine with Dreamcast. After trying a lot of parameters I came to the conclusion that the TV does not accept 960p when Horizontal active length (Sampling->Advenced timing-H.active is 720, it works only with 640. But doing that a part of the image is missing…

Personally I gave up, especially because I find the picture better when upscaled by the TV. But with good configuration it should be possible with 4:3 format.

[Steo]

Same issue again with 1440×960 not being as standard as some displays would like, though with 640×480 it’s 1280×960. I’ve said before that you can also try V Active 450,but that way you’re losing a lot of the image vertically instead. You could try just decreasing H. Samplerate when it’s in the standard 480p mode at 2x, then hope that the TV will see it as 1280×960. I’ll check the settings on mine in a moment and edit this post.

Edit: It’s H. samplerate 762 with 480p in sampler on DTV 480p

[dergudesiggi]

Got the NTSC-J Saturn and all is well now. Glorious 5x 🙂

Thanks again, and merry christmas!

[Steo]

So at least the manual was right. 🙂

Merry Christmas!

[Author]

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