Saturn HST-3220

[kripp]

I have a white Japanese Saturn model HST-3220, it has the same region jumper locations as the HiSaturn Navi on the Gamesx.com WiKi

The WiKi states that "The next two sets apply only to the HiSaturn Navi", will it also apply to my HST-3220? Im thinking it should, but I thought I would ask before I put my Saturn under the knife.

Thanks.

[NFG]

It should be the same.  Simply whip out your trusty multimeter and check for sure.  =)

[kripp]

I will take a quick check with the multimeter before I go ahead and cut any traces or remove any resistors.

One other question I had was, do European games require you to boot them in 50Hz mode? Or can I just switch the region and leave them at 60Hz?

Thanks.

[Midori]

No PAL games require that you boot them i 50 Hz however a few of them will give an unplayable picture in 60 Hz mode so either it works perfectly in 60 Hz or it doesn't at all and you'll have to stick with 50 Hz if you want to play the game, if I were you I would just ignore those european games that only work in 50 unless you want to install a Hz switch. The problem with those games that doesn't work is that they are PAL optimized, and I think the resolution is too high for ntsc... don't hit me if I'm wrong though as I only think it was because of this and I can't find the source of that information again.

[FM-77]

PAL has slightly higher resolution than NTSC. But only the upper and lower parts of the screen.


This is PROBABLY why all the games games originally developed for NTSC has black borders on a PAL system. The TV resolution is too high. Modding your machine to run in 60Hz simply "stretches" out your picture so it will take advantage of the PAL system's higher resolution.*

* This is just a guess. I don't know if this is true.

[Midori]

The difference in resolution in PAL an NTSC is the number of lines they can display(or is it "do display"?) There is no difference as far as I know in the resolution on the horisontal side, just the vertikal. The PAL has more lines, but in most games were developed for the NTSC system they were also programed for the NTSC resolution, when these games were konverted to PAL the developers rarely(at least back then) cared to alter the resolution so that all the extra lines that PAL had would be used which led to that those extra lines became black borders.

Another thing is that the TV updates 50 times per second in PAL while it is 60 in NTSC, I think(ok I am never sure about anything, I admit it) that PAL updates slower because it has to draw more lines(among many other reasons probably) But when you switch to 60 Hz in a non-PAL optimized game the frame rate will go upp and because the monitor draws fever lines in 60 Hz the borders disapear aswell. However in a PAL optimized game which DO use the extra resolution switching to 60 Hz will make the game try to draw the extra resolution but it won't be able to do it on time which will make the picture "roll" and therefore give an unplayable picture.