User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jan 31, 2018 4:47 pm

@Shot97 That is an incredible process you have there. I can't imagine...

All my machines - save one - are NTSC. If I put a PAL disk in, it typically just freezes during boot-up or soon after I select something. (I need to try your degrader idea, tho).

I'm tempted to see if I have a spare fat (obese/super obese) Agnus and make the machine "pure" NTSC.

I have to say I was pretty stunned to see Stooges get a bit garbled up on the 2000. I didn't have any issues loading up the game and the animations were fluid. But the top half of the screen's sprites would get chewed up during the intro and flash a bit. First time I've seen a Cinemaware title that had issues on any of my machines. But oh man - those voice clips? The intro b/w graphic taken from the show? The music? Just gorgeous.

Gonna go see what other Agnus chips I might have tonight. Ya nevah know...

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:03 pm

I've thought about doing that myself... I might even have an NTSC ECS Agnus around here... I've also thought about wiring up a switch... It's amazing the heights of non lazy I will go just to be lazy. Good luck!

I just got the best ending for The Three Stooges, not an easy task. 4 possible endings; One bad, one meh, one good, and then there's that one almost nobody knows about because who would try to get that far except me... Really does put you into a Stooges short... I've been inspired to watch a bunch of them while working on my review. Haven't seen them since I was a kid really, all good stuff!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jan 31, 2018 6:15 pm

I've been inspired to watch a bunch of them while working on my review.
I grew up watching the Stooges when I was in elementary/junior high. In Dallas, there was a show on every weekday called "Slam Bang Theater". It was an hour-long show that was filled with Stooges. I swear I've seen every short they ever did countless times.

Part of the reason I became such a big fan of Raimi's Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.

Anyway, I started showing the kids the Stooges last year. They love them! I think they laugh more than I did when I saw them originally. We'll sit and watch and they'll just howl!

So last night I load up 3 Stooges on the Amiga and call them over. When it got to the amazing photo taken from the show, my son asked, "You've got episodes that can run on that now?" I laughed. No.. It's a game. Then it started glitching for some reason and it was late anyway so I had to turn it off. But the music and voices made their eyes light up. Made mine light up, too!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:29 pm

Pulled open the Phoenix tonight. The Agnus inside is the 8372A, of course. But it has no (known) markings for PAL, but that's what it is.
IMG_3590.jpg
Default 1MB Fat Agnus (PAL) in the Phoenix from Australia.

I have two 8372A spares, and I'm willing to bet money they are both NTSC chips that came out of A2000's and replaced with Megas.
IMG_3586b.jpg
Pretty sure these are NTSC...

I'm going to do a swap-a-roo tonight and see what happens! And, I'll put a little "PAL" sticker on the one I remove since they all look the same. That way I can easily go back without any mystery.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jan 31, 2018 11:07 pm

Huh.

My perception of reality is fluctuating. The guy I got my 2 Amiga 2000s is from the US (local to me). He replaced both Agnus chips a million years ago with MegAChips. And at least the one I'm using now reports itself in SysInfo as being PAL, but it plays NTSC games and doesn't like PAL games. Make sense? I know.

So the two spare Fat Agnuses that I have - one would think - should be NTSC chips. He bought those machines here in the US, so it seems a reasonable assumption.

I pulled the Fat Agnus from the Phoenix tonight. Both of my spares reported back as PAL in SysInfo! WTF?! Makes no sense to me at all.

Legitimately baffled.

Since the ECS Fat Agnus can go either way between PAL and Agnus, and the jumper on the MB is set correctly, I wonder if I can use software (of some kind) to tell it to "flip over" in the Agnus chip? Maybe it's time to explore Degrader.

User avatar
Bulletdust

Posted Thu Feb 01, 2018 12:08 am

Are you changing your screen mode in preferences?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:23 am

No - I didn't think that would matter when I replaced the chips. I should probably stop doing hardware stuff at 11 PM at night! :)

Let me go see if that helps...

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:18 am

Hm, you know Bulletdust, changing screen modes seems to be a 2.0+ thing. I remember flipping between those before, but I'm pretty sure I was in OS 3.1 when I did that. I need to investigate how folks actually flipped modes in 1.3-Land, as it isn't where I thought it would be.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:22 am

I mean from everything I've read on the subject of Agnus chips, it's just one of the pins on the chip that gives the assignment. I want to say that NTSC has the pin while PAL does not, but it might be the opposite. This is why hardwiring a switch is so easy. Hook up a simple toggle to that pin and the machine will boot in either mode. You'd have to check to be sure, but say I was wrong and it's actually PAL mode that does not have that pin, then you'd simply remove that pin from the chip to get NTSC... A terrible answer when if you're going to go that far you might as well hook it up to a toggle, but if you're absolutely wanting it to be the opposite mode, there's that.

I truly don't believe there is anything different about the two chips other than that, correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's why the part numbers are exactly the same. Workbench prefrences shouldn't have anything to do with it. Workbench will autoboot into Medium resolution by default, which is 640x200 in NTSC and 640x256 is PAL. At least for his Workbench 1.3 setup anyway. The only resolution option is interlace mode which would up the resolution, but again would be dependent on NTSC or PAL modes on boot up.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:39 am

Yeah - it appears that the Agnus chips I have can be either/or by default. They seem to be set to PAL on boot, and there should be an appropriate jumper on a given motherboard (depending on the Rev #) where you can switch modes. Sort of like how the Phoenix is set up, my 2000 apparently is, too. Somewhere there's a jumper that will enable/disable a given mode. And yes - Shot - from what I've read a lot of people have hooked up switches.

I guess why I'm left scratching my head a bit is that my machines appear to be in NTSC mode based on what I see, but stupid SysInfo reports them as PAL. Maybe it doesn't matter..

But if the Phoenix is in NTSC mode it doesn't seem to respect the software the way one of my 'true' NTSC machines does. So it's weird. As McTrinsic says, the Phoenix is a total diva machine.

Since it has a KS switch, I'll boot up 2.04 later and see what I can see. Thanks, everyone.





Return to “Hardware”