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x-station / xstation-issues

Issues and support for the xstation optical drive emulator
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Bouncing video on very old CRTs? #334

Closed lf94 closed 5 months ago

lf94 commented 8 months ago

So my video output is essentially perfect with my new install on a 5501! The only thing that's absolutely odd is a bouncing. For what it's worth, this is a very old Zenith CRT TV (one of those ones in a wooden container, weighs a massive ton). I'm thinking, is it possible the XStation isn't generating an as-perfect signal as the original one in the Playstation?

Thank you very much!

ramapcsx2 commented 8 months ago

Wow, that is obscure, but old Zenith TV have had a Sony original hackfix back in the day. If you had a Playstation and this problem, Sony would install a weird sync modifying circuit in your console. These can still be found occasionally in the wild, but I have no idea what exactly they do.

It's a problem with the console directly though, not particularly related to the xStation :p

lf94 commented 8 months ago

Haha, nice to know! I guess my PS1 will be for my more modern tiny CRT I've got ;)

It would be dope if we could reverse engineer that circuit or the issue too, but I understand you're probably doing all this as a side hustle and wouldn't want to mess around :) I'm not sure how I would even measure things. I have a logic analyzer but it's a very cheap one with low sample rate.

lf94 commented 8 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/oyzl7q/playstation_1_and_zenith_tv_bouncing_image/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050321053120/http://psx.ign.com/mail/2000-07-12.html https://imgur.com/a/5zqq94G Zenith mod in a Sega Genesis! https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/oyzoiu/zenith_tv_and_psx_bouncing_image_issue/ Potential fix for newer Zeniths

It's incredible I can't find a single picture of this mysterious Sony sync-fix daughter board!

lf94 commented 8 months ago

Aha! Extremely nice pictures: https://imgur.com/gallery/bX1YLSE

lf94 commented 8 months ago

If anyone tells me the parts off mouser to get and sends me a PCB, I will 100% try this out. It all looks completely sourceable.

ramapcsx2 commented 8 months ago

That's the thing, yep! Somehow particularly an old Zenith can't deal with the otherwise pretty tame PSX syncs. I wonder whether other old consoles work on it? :p

You could try to reverse engineer what this circuit does.

lf94 commented 8 months ago

I guess surprisingly all my consoles, from NES to N64, and then HDMI<->Composite have all worked :) Even PS2.

Yeah I may reverse it. It seems that one flip-flop chip does all the lifting on there, which is easy to source from mouser...

lf94 commented 5 months ago

How come you re-opened? May we close this?

ramapcsx2 commented 5 months ago

No idea, sure :p