Synthcart colors 'n' such

[Christmas Sausage]

Howdy,

 

I'm having some trouble with my synthcart's colors. All of my other games work great. Full color and everything. But for some reason my Synthcart now only displays in sort of vertical green and red lines. I -would- blame it on the A/V mod I just put in, but it works fine with every other game I have. The color adjustment in the metal case doesn't do anything either, as it's always displaying the same two colors. Both the system and the cart are NTSC, and it worked in RF before I modded my system. Any ideas?

[Army Of 2600]

Strange. I use the Synthcart quite a bit, and have never had trouble with the colors, using it on both console and flat screen televisions. Interesting...

[Albert]

That is very strange, I'm not sure what would cause that. I'd be glad to swap out your Synthcart with another to see if the problem goes away, but I suspect that a replacement cart may do the same. Do you have another system you can test the Synthcart with, or perhaps another television you can plug the 2600 into to see if the behavior is consistent?

 

..Al

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Could it be compatible with certain consoles? For example Stay Frosty 2 didn't work well with 6 switchers, but work well with 4 switchers.

[Christmas Sausage]

That is very strange, I'm not sure what would cause that. I'd be glad to swap out your Synthcart with another to see if the problem goes away, but I suspect that a replacement cart may do the same. Do you have another system you can test the Synthcart with, or perhaps another television you can plug the 2600 into to see if the behavior is consistent?

 

..Al

 

 

I appreciate it, but I agree, it'll probably do the same thing... It worked on the TV in the picture before via RF. It started when I was doing my A/V mod, which I used a different TV for. It's a TV I bought in Europe, but it's got settings to switch to different regions. When using RF on that TV I couldn't get any color period. I was thinking it was just the TV... When I did the A/V mod it still didn't work in color, but the TV pictured I got at least those red and green colors. But it seems like a glitchy black and white more so than real color. I have a buddy that runs a retro game shop here in town, I'll try it on another system and let you know.

 

Thanks!

[Christmas Sausage]

Could it be compatible with certain consoles? For example Stay Frosty 2 didn't work well with 6 switchers, but work well with 4 switchers.

Possibly, mine's a Six Switch. I'm gonna see if I can try it on some other systems this weekend.

[Albert]

Could it be compatible with certain consoles? For example Stay Frosty 2 didn't work well with 6 switchers, but work well with 4 switchers.

The Stay Frosty 2 issue was related to a revision of the Melody board, which the Synthcart is not using. It shouldn't have anything to do with that in this case, especially as the cart was working in the system before the A/V mod. I have a ton of A/V modified 2600 systems, and I use those to test games before I label the carts and ship them out.

 

Just out of curiosity's sake, which A/V mod are you using?

 

..Al

[Christmas Sausage]

It's not a -huge- problem really since I mostly did it for the audio out, and when i'm playing actual games it's still in color.

[Christmas Sausage]

The Stay Frosty 2 issue was related to a revision of the Melody board, which the Synthcart is not using. It shouldn't have anything to do with that in this case, especially as the cart was working in the system before the A/V mod. I have a ton of A/V modified 2600 systems, and I use those to test games before I label the carts and ship them out.

 

Just out of curiosity's sake, which A/V mod are you using?

 

..Al

 

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/301636404008?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[Christmas Sausage]

 

 

I appreciate it, but I agree, it'll probably do the same thing... It worked on the TV in the picture before via RF. It started when I was doing my A/V mod, which I used a different TV for. It's a TV I bought in Europe, but it's got settings to switch to different regions. When using RF on that TV I couldn't get any color period. I was thinking it was just the TV... When I did the A/V mod it still didn't work in color, but the TV pictured I got at least those red and green colors. But it seems like a glitchy black and white more so than real color. I have a buddy that runs a retro game shop here in town, I'll try it on another system and let you know.

 

Thanks!

 

 

I'd also like to note that the TV in the picture is from Europe as well with compatibility with other regions if that helps. I also used to run a SNES that was NTSC on it with A/V without any issues.

[SeaGtGruff]

I don't see how it could be either the cart or the Atari itself. If you count the bars there appear to be about 70 of them visible-- 35 green and 35 red. The Synthcart cycles the background color and uses 2 pfpixels of PF0 to mask the left and right edges of the screen (to cover up the HMOVE bars on the left), so that leaves 36 "empty" pfpixels for the background.

 

When I run the Synthcart ROM in Stella using PAL60 mode, the background cycles between brown, purple, and red. So I'm guessing the alternating green-and-red stripes in the photo might be from the brown background color, since brown is red plus green. Then again, the stripes in the bottom half of the photo are phase-shifted a bit from the stripes in the top half, so they don't necessarily correlate to the brown background color.

 

Anyway, it seems like it must be something to do with the mod, something to do with the TV (an obscure setting, perhaps?), or a combination of the two. It's like the background color is somehow being separated into red and green components, but phase-shifted depending on the actual color that's supposed to be displayed. It's almost like a weird sort of artifacting.

[Albert]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/301636404008?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

That same individual has installed nearly all the mods I have in my Atari 2600 and 7800 systems, and they've all worked great. I have at least 20 systems with his mods. However, I am using them with CRT displays and not flat panels. I've had poor luck with flat panel displays -- some work okay, and others work very poorly with the often poor NTSC signal generated by 2600 games.

 

..Al

[Christmas Sausage]

That same individual has installed nearly all the mods I have in my Atari 2600 and 7800 systems, and they've all worked great. I have at least 20 systems with his mods. However, I am using them with CRT displays and not flat panels. I've had poor luck with flat panel displays -- some work okay, and others work very poorly with the often poor NTSC signal generated by 2600 games.

 

..Al

 

I know what you mean. My C64 doesn't want to behave on certain LCD TVs in either RF or Composite. I'm going to my buddy's shop today to try some stuff.

[Christmas Sausage]

So it turns out my TV doesn't like to play nice.

 

I tried it on a Jr. system on a CRT and it was fine, so I tried it again on my Six Switch on the same TV and it worked great.

 

I'm not too upset about it since I probably won't use a TV with this thing anyways, and my games still play in color. I mostly just wanted to make sure it wasn't my Atari or the A/V mod I put in.

 

I don't have a flat screen that's NTSC exclusively to test this on. So my guess is the Synthcart doesn't like TVs that are multi region?

[Army Of 2600]

Haters gonna hate.

[Mef]

it worked in RF before I modded my system. Any ideas?

 

It's triggering a specific pattern of Composite artifacting, related to NTSC encoding (color clock). Or at least that's what your TV is seeing.

Notice how these are not just some random colors, but green and magenta - something like Composite color artifacts on some early computers.