PowerPak on PAL NES problem

PowerPak on PAL NES problem
by oRBIT2002 on 2007-06-19 (#25243)

Tried my new PowerPak today on my PAL NES but with wierd results. Check out my mpeg-file I captured here:
http://www.anes.se/powerpak.mpg
Image quality is poor but I'll guess you'll see the wierd stripes that appear. My connector in my NES is new!

The same PowerPak works very good on my Famicom A/V, these bugs aren't there..

Hints what's wrong?

EDIT: Discovered the demo, "quantum_disco_brothers_by_wAMMA.nes" looks terrible aswell, BUT, when the logo comes up after a short while, *pow* the distorsions disappear! Have tried many (PAL) games but they all have distorsions..

EDIT2: Me and my friends old "intro" http://patpend.net/ftp/roms/nes/fade2black.lha works without glitches (no distorsions at all!) Sounds like a powerpak software problem?

by dXtr on 2007-06-19 (#25246)

My friend had a similar graphics glitch in dragon's lair.. havn't tested mine yet.. going to do it when I come home from work

I post how it goes for me later tonight.

by dvdmth on 2007-06-19 (#25248)

Obviously, graphical issues are the most common complaints right now with this product. Bunnyboy warned on his site of "occasional" graphical distortions, but I don't think he realized how serious they can be (seems to vary from console to console).

The fact that the problem is console-dependent tells me that it's more likely hardware than software.

by oRBIT2002 on 2007-06-19 (#25250)

It obviously works fine running my own code (well, simple static/scrolling screens sort of), but with games it doesn't work very good on my PAL console. If it's a hardware problem, shouldn't my own stuff have these troubles aswell?

by dvdmth on 2007-06-19 (#25252)

How extensive was your testing? Did you try each title multiple times or just once? You did mention about graphical problem disappearing in the middle of a test run.

Perhaps someone should write a CHR-RAM test ROM which writes different values to every CHR address ($0000-1FFF) and then checks to see if they read back the same.

by oRBIT2002 on 2007-06-19 (#25253)

I've tried games like SMB1-3, Zelda, Pro Wrestling, RC Pro Am, some of them both PAL and NTSC versions but they all have this distorsion.

EDIT: The Wamma-demo I mentioned above is VERY interesting. some parts has the glitches, some doesn't.. The intropart (vertical scrolling stars) has the glitches until the logo appears, then they disappear.. And appears again at the part where there's lots of sprites on the screen (together with the naked lady), disappears, and appears at the scrolling cokecans, and to disappear when the koopa-guy in the spaceship appears. Explain that.

by dXtr on 2007-06-19 (#25255)

So far the only one with noticeable issues for me has been Dragon's Lair (E).nes

Heh. Even tried some Elite it worked perfect

by dvdmth on 2007-06-19 (#25256)

oRBIT2002 wrote:
I've tried games like SMB1-3, Zelda, Pro Wrestling, RC Pro Am, some of them both PAL and NTSC versions but they all have this distorsion.

This isn't making any sense to me. Are you sure the games you're trying are good dumps and are correctly configured in the ROM header? I don't know why those games would fail without causing everything to fail (particularly NROM games like SMB1).
oRBIT2002 wrote:
EDIT: The Wamma-demo I mentioned above is VERY interesting. some parts has the glitches, some doesn't.. The intropart (vertical scrolling stars) has the glitches until the logo appears, then they disappear.. And appears again at the part where there's lots of sprites on the screen (together with the naked lady), disappears, and appears at the scrolling cokecans, and to disappear when the koopa-guy in the spaceship appears. Explain that. :)

Has this ever been run on real hardware before?

by oRBIT2002 on 2007-06-19 (#25259)

Yep. Good dumps. Dxtr has however tried the same ROMs on his PAL NES and they work and they doesn't on my PAL NES, so I guess there's something wierd with it (it of course works fine with commercial games).

by dXtr on 2007-06-19 (#25267)

so far I've seen this gfx glitch in:

Dragon's Lair (E).nes - when the bat is flying on the first level
Kirby's Adventure (E).nes - when I press start and bring up the pause menu.
Metroid (E) [!].nes

thought none of these has been as bad that smb3 movie.

edit:
McDonaldland (E) [!].nes - was really screwed up in the tiles in the intro. seems to be mostly the sky tiles. !! Just tried this one in Nintendulator, bad header. =/
New Zealand Story (E).nes - Like every second frame is black.

by BMF54123 on 2007-06-19 (#25270)

That is the exact same corruption I get about every other time I power on my AV Famicom. It only shows up in the BIOS when switching directories or loading games, but it affects all games equally. One power-cycle usually gets rid of it, though.

by bunnyboy on 2007-06-19 (#25276)

(cross posted everywhere)

I think I have found the root problem for the sprite glitches.

by mic_ on 2007-06-20 (#25298)

Some more games I've noticed problems with (from GoodNES 3.10 on my PAL NES):

* Cobra Triangle (E)
Corrupted graphics

* Duck Tales (E)
After "Loading game..." has disappeared, the screen just goes black and nothing happens.

* Ninja Gaiden (U) [!]
Corrupted graphics, never gets past the title screen.

* Super Mario Bros 2 (E) [!]
Palette is bad in-game, hangs on the first level.

I didn't have any problems with SMB3 though (but I only played the first two stages). The same problem that occurs in Super C happens in Probotector 2 (the european version of the game) so it's not an NTSC/PAL issue. Could be a bad header though (wrong mirroring?)

by oRBIT2002 on 2007-06-20 (#25299)

I was actually thinking of getting myself another NES, but as Bunnyboy wrote, it might not fix the problem either.
Let's hope it can be fixed with software..