Questions about PAL/NTSC compatibility in Amiga games

[Damion]

There definitely were both PAL and NTSC versions of most games. PAL games will run too quickly (messed up timing) if run on an NTSC machine, unless it's first switched to PAL mode. (I've found there are some games and demos that will simply refuse to run in NTSC mode.) In addition, there can definitely be sound and graphics issues running PAL software in NTSC mode (at least, I've never tried the reverse but I imagine the same problems can arise).

[Damion]

Exactly, part of the screen will be cut off.

As an aside, I remember buying a 1 meg Agnus for my A500 back in the day, so I could convert the trapdoor RAM to "chipram" and run PAL software... only to discover that my mobo was a Rev 6 and already had it, DOH! :crazy:

[Damion]

Hey arkpandora,

arkpandora wrote:
You'll lose me easily again.  Why would you have needed extra Chip RAM in order to run PAL software ?

Basically, the 512k Agnus' were region specific, PAL or NTSC only. Those with Rev 5 boards would upgrade to an NTSC 1 MB Agnus, configure (small mobo modifications) the trapdoor card as CHIPMEM, then switching to PAL would be possible.

As I had a Rev 6 board, the 1 MB Agnus was already present. However, it still wouldn't switch into PAL mode until the board modification was done (which would allocate the 512k fast (slow) mem as chipmem).

Damion