Reflex: To NTSC/PAL50/PAL60, or not to NTSC/PAL50/PAL60

Subject: Reflex: To NTSC/PAL50/PAL60, or not to NTSC/PAL50/PAL60
From: "Lee Fastenau" <stella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 00:31:30 -0500
Hello all,

I've been hacking away at Reflex again and have made quite a bit more
progress.  I'm beginning to add PAL support and have some ideas about how to
tackle it.

This post
(http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/200211/msg00095.html) answered
a number of questions I had about PAL50 and PAL60 modes, so anyone preparing
to tackle those modes, it's a quick and easy read. :)

I was going to implement switching between NTSC/PAL50/PAL60 using the clever
method described in this post
(http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/200404/msg00016.html) but I
got to thinking about the inconvenience this might present to PAL users,
since I was planning on defaulting to NTSC.  Even if I decided to check the
switch at power on to select NTSC or PAL, then which PAL mode?  And then one
would have to fiddle with the switch again when popping in a different cart.
That's generally the problem with the non-toggle console switches, including
the difficulty switches: it requires the user to alter the state of their
system from what they might consider the "normal" state.  For many, that
might be Color and both difficulty switches set to A.

So I'm thinking about reading a joystick at power on (not on Reset) to
determine the mode.  Something like:

centered = NTSC
left = PAL50
right = PAL60

This would save me some time, a few bytes of code, and maybe a single wee
bit (literally) of RAM where I'd have to store the last state of the
color/bw switch.  Another alternative could be to check the two toggle
switches at power on:

none = NTSC
Select = PAL50
Reset = PAL60

Actually, that might be a bit less cumbersome than the joystick method...

Any thoughts or suggestions?  What's the best implementation of mode
switching you've seen?

Thanks!

-Lee




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