JVC X'Eye Graphical Weirdness
Hey everyone, thanks to all who replied in my last topic. I am now the proud owner of a Lite-On CD-R drive, and the games are starting to flow in. Sweet.
Anyway, I am currently facing a pretty obscure problem that has me pretty mystified, and I was wondering if the infinite wisdom of the SegaXtreme forums could give me a hand. The whole story goes like this:
About a month ago, I bought a JVC X'EYE (a combined Sega Genesis/SegaCD clone) from ebay after having read about its superior hardware. I fell in love with it pretty quickly, but it's got the weirdest problem. It doesn't show up in all games, but I first noticed it in Sonic CD and S3&K.
It's pretty hard to describe what happens, but I'll give it my best shot. It usually occurs in the backgrounds, most often with horizontal movement, and it always shows up in transparencies. The best examples are the waterfalls in Sonic games. If Sonic is standing still, nothing out of the ordinary happens at all; however the moment he moves one horizontal pixel to the left or right....and the background moves just one pixel as well...the color of the transparency changes. All of the sudden it looks a little more purple than light blue, or perhaps more green. Move him one more pixel and it switches back to normal. This alternating continues with every single horizontal pixel movement, and when Sonic is moving really fast it just gets really blurry. This isn't just limited to transparencies either; about half the backgrounds in both of those Sonic games experience such glitches, only it isn't as noticable because the alternate color is usually very close to the original.
The other big graphical error is best seen in Launch Base act 2 of Sonic 3. For those who don't know, a fair amount of time is spent underwater in that level, and the background normally uses a sort of wave-distortion effect to add realism to everything in the distance (think of how the heat of a fire can distort light, it looks about the same). However, when my X'Eye does this effect, it winds up looking more like an upward scrolling checkerboard, with the colors being the same 2 shades of blue that the water normally uses.
Lastly, almost every thin black line, upon being scrolled horizontally, get's lined with a weird looking rainbow effect.
Weird, eh? I should note that not every game does this. I've been playing a lot of Ristar lately, and it doesn't have any such problems as far as I can tell. For the record, I am NOT using an RF connection, but rather a yellow RCA cable to a 32" TV which makes these errors quite clear.
Now, for a while I was just assuming that these problems were the result of the X'Eye not being made by Sega. Sounded reasonable to me, especially since none of the problems were that major. Perhaps they just messed up the VDP a little bit, that's all. Then today I downloaded the Sega CD game "Vay" and I changed my mind. On my X'Eye, that game looks like shit, to put it bluntly. The character sprites look like they are walking through random spectrums every time they move. The main character's eyes flash between red and black with every step. The "white" text is instead a weird mix of rainbow, and it almost hurts to read it. It's awful.
My conclusion? JVC is a pretty serious company, and they make pretty good electronics for the most part. I can't imagine them designing a system that would be this flawed, especially since it cost something like $700 back in the day. The problem must be with my system.
At this point, I'll take the opportunity to ask, have any X'Eye owners, or even Sega CD owners, experienced a problem to this?
So, where to start looking for a fix? After trying all the video outputs on the console and getting the same result, I knew that wasn't it. The only irregularity I could find came after I investigated the X'Eye manual...
When I bought the X'Eye, the seller included all the necessary hookups to get the system running. This was basically an adaptor, RCA cables, controllers and some games. I put it all together without giving it a second thought, but today I took notice of something for the first time. The adaptor is not the original one. I think it was taken from a Genesis Model 1, as it says "SEGA" on it and it differs from the ones in my Genesis 2 and 32X. More importantly, the correct output levels listed in the specs in the manual and the output of the Genesis 1 adaptor do not correspond very well. The manual says it wants a 9.5V 1.5Amp adaptor, while the Genesis is a 10V 0.85Amp one.
And so I wonder, could the weird graphical effects simply be the result of the system being underpowered? The difference in Amps there is pretty drastic, it looks like the system is only getting about 70% of what it expects. Still, the CD drive always runs just fine. Could it be that my X'Eye is just damaged? Perhaps running underpowered for a while has messed it up? Would buying the proper adaptor from JVC's online store (for freakin $25) fix the problem, or would it be a waste of money? If that's not the problem, then what in god's name is?
Any thoughts, anyone?
Whew, that was a long post...
Hey everyone, thanks to all who replied in my last topic. I am now the proud owner of a Lite-On CD-R drive, and the games are starting to flow in. Sweet.
Anyway, I am currently facing a pretty obscure problem that has me pretty mystified, and I was wondering if the infinite wisdom of the SegaXtreme forums could give me a hand. The whole story goes like this:
About a month ago, I bought a JVC X'EYE (a combined Sega Genesis/SegaCD clone) from ebay after having read about its superior hardware. I fell in love with it pretty quickly, but it's got the weirdest problem. It doesn't show up in all games, but I first noticed it in Sonic CD and S3&K.
It's pretty hard to describe what happens, but I'll give it my best shot. It usually occurs in the backgrounds, most often with horizontal movement, and it always shows up in transparencies. The best examples are the waterfalls in Sonic games. If Sonic is standing still, nothing out of the ordinary happens at all; however the moment he moves one horizontal pixel to the left or right....and the background moves just one pixel as well...the color of the transparency changes. All of the sudden it looks a little more purple than light blue, or perhaps more green. Move him one more pixel and it switches back to normal. This alternating continues with every single horizontal pixel movement, and when Sonic is moving really fast it just gets really blurry. This isn't just limited to transparencies either; about half the backgrounds in both of those Sonic games experience such glitches, only it isn't as noticable because the alternate color is usually very close to the original.
The other big graphical error is best seen in Launch Base act 2 of Sonic 3. For those who don't know, a fair amount of time is spent underwater in that level, and the background normally uses a sort of wave-distortion effect to add realism to everything in the distance (think of how the heat of a fire can distort light, it looks about the same). However, when my X'Eye does this effect, it winds up looking more like an upward scrolling checkerboard, with the colors being the same 2 shades of blue that the water normally uses.
Lastly, almost every thin black line, upon being scrolled horizontally, get's lined with a weird looking rainbow effect.
Weird, eh? I should note that not every game does this. I've been playing a lot of Ristar lately, and it doesn't have any such problems as far as I can tell. For the record, I am NOT using an RF connection, but rather a yellow RCA cable to a 32" TV which makes these errors quite clear.
Now, for a while I was just assuming that these problems were the result of the X'Eye not being made by Sega. Sounded reasonable to me, especially since none of the problems were that major. Perhaps they just messed up the VDP a little bit, that's all. Then today I downloaded the Sega CD game "Vay" and I changed my mind. On my X'Eye, that game looks like shit, to put it bluntly. The character sprites look like they are walking through random spectrums every time they move. The main character's eyes flash between red and black with every step. The "white" text is instead a weird mix of rainbow, and it almost hurts to read it. It's awful.
My conclusion? JVC is a pretty serious company, and they make pretty good electronics for the most part. I can't imagine them designing a system that would be this flawed, especially since it cost something like $700 back in the day. The problem must be with my system.
At this point, I'll take the opportunity to ask, have any X'Eye owners, or even Sega CD owners, experienced a problem to this?
So, where to start looking for a fix? After trying all the video outputs on the console and getting the same result, I knew that wasn't it. The only irregularity I could find came after I investigated the X'Eye manual...
When I bought the X'Eye, the seller included all the necessary hookups to get the system running. This was basically an adaptor, RCA cables, controllers and some games. I put it all together without giving it a second thought, but today I took notice of something for the first time. The adaptor is not the original one. I think it was taken from a Genesis Model 1, as it says "SEGA" on it and it differs from the ones in my Genesis 2 and 32X. More importantly, the correct output levels listed in the specs in the manual and the output of the Genesis 1 adaptor do not correspond very well. The manual says it wants a 9.5V 1.5Amp adaptor, while the Genesis is a 10V 0.85Amp one.
And so I wonder, could the weird graphical effects simply be the result of the system being underpowered? The difference in Amps there is pretty drastic, it looks like the system is only getting about 70% of what it expects. Still, the CD drive always runs just fine. Could it be that my X'Eye is just damaged? Perhaps running underpowered for a while has messed it up? Would buying the proper adaptor from JVC's online store (for freakin $25) fix the problem, or would it be a waste of money? If that's not the problem, then what in god's name is?
Any thoughts, anyone?
Whew, that was a long post...
