Could a PAL signal break an NTSC device?

[widln]

Hi everybody!

I got my hands on a Waka Up Scan Converter for Playstation recently. I know this converter accepts NTSC signal only but I don't have any NTSC system at the moment, only PAL consoles, so I tried to play with it anyway. I hooked it to my PS2 (PAL) and tried Odin Sphere in NTSC@60Hz. The converter did the job on both my SONY CRT and HDTV set, the picture was stable although I was expecting better quality. I had a US copy of Tekken3 laying around so I tried this game too but directly on my PSX (PAL as well) this time. The thing worked but not quite properly; the picture was trembling, not stable. Don't ask why but I left the system play like this for 5-10 minutes, then suddenly the screen gone black as if it lost signal. Now the Waka doesn't seem to work anymore, even with my PS2 and NTSC games. Simply the monitor stays black and doesn't seem to recognize the signal.

Could this have damaged the converter?

[D]

I highly doubt it, or was that one of those bugs Waka needed to fix?
Open it up, maybe you'll quickly recognize the fault for a quick fix.
If not that's a real bummer.

[widln]

I highly doubt it, or was that one of those bugs Waka needed to fix?
Open it up, maybe you'll quickly recognize the fault for a quick fix.
If not that's a real bummer.

Thanks for the reply!
Well, what bug are you talking about?

Here the pictures:



Honestly I can't spot any evident damage, am I wrong?

[widln]

Could be the crystal dead?

[widln]

Nobody knows?

[kel]

Have you checked the power supply? It can easily be substituted with a PSOne or PSTwo power supply.

[widln]

The PSU is working. The Waka powers on but simply it doesn't show anything on screen. Monitor says is out of sync or something similar.

[D]

Well, what bug are you talking about?

During product testing of every product alot of bugs are found. Alot of bugs get fixed, but not all of them.
With some bugs, management just says: fuk it!
This is the reason why hardware and software have so many bugs, not because they were never found, but because they were never fixed.

But back to the subject, the pal signal does not have some kind of super high voltage that breaks stuff.
And regardless of what caused it, try troubleshooting the fault. Use all kinds of equipment to see if anything happens.

[kel]

The PSU is working. The Waka powers on but simply it doesn't show anything on screen. Monitor says is out of sync or something similar.

just because it powers on doesn't mean it is working. You can get all sorts of symptoms from a bad power supply. Have you checked with another power supply to be sure?

[Guspaz]

But back to the subject, the pal signal does not have some kind of super high voltage that breaks stuff.

Careful, because while this is true of PAL itself, it's not true of all PAL devices. The Nintendo multi-out pin that is CSYNC on NTSC consoles is a 12v rail on PAL consoles (PAL SNES and PAL GameCube at least), and using a PAL SNES/GC with an NTSC SCART cable can fry your display.

There are other signal differences on the PAL versions that necessitate a different cable, but the most important one is needing to pull sync from luma or cvid instead of csync.