Sega Saturn Jailbars

[FBX]

Here's my Saturn's 320 res mode on the OSSC with LPF turned completely off:



So what this means is we can now conclude that some revisions of the Saturn simply don't have LPF enabled on 352 res mode, yet they do have it enabled for 320 res mode. So it was nothing to do with the FM being weird. The Saturn itself is to blame.

[FBX]

704 res mode with LPF turned off:




By the way, HD Retrovision cables have built-in LPF, so you can use those to eliminate the aliasing.

So the conclusion:

Some revisions of the Saturn only enable LPF on 320 mode, but completely lack LPF for 352 and 704 modes. The next step is to find out if this is a design flaw or some sort of component wearing out in these Saturns. At least we now know it is in fact the Saturns themselves outputting unfiltered RGB in 352 and 704 mode.

-FBX

[FBX]

BTW,

We now have a solution for Framemeister users that don't want to downgrade the firmware:

HD Retrovision component cables for the Genesis now have a Saturn adapter you can buy from their store. These cables have built-in LPF, which completely eliminates the jail bars on Saturns plagued with them! Below is a preview of my Framemeister profile work using the Saturn HDR adapter:



That image through RGB is riddled with jail bars (again due to lack of LPF).

[Fudoh]

HD Retrovision component cables for the Genesis now have a Saturn adapter you can buy from their store.

did they chance their adapter design at some point? Just asking since I bought the adapter nearly a year ago and you make it sound a little bit as if it was a new product.

[FBX]

HD Retrovision component cables for the Genesis now have a Saturn adapter you can buy from their store.

did they chance their adapter design at some point? Just asking since I bought the adapter nearly a year ago and you make it sound a little bit as if it was a new product.

My apologies if the Saturn adapter was that old. I only recently heard about it and was just excited to share in this thread that Framemeister users finally have a solution to the jail bars.

[Fudoh]

of course - great find. I wouldn't even have considered trying one of these for the jailbar issue we've been seeing.

[FBX]

of course - great find. I wouldn't even have considered trying one of these for the jailbar issue we've been seeing.

Yeah I didn't think it would have helped either, but then Nick mentioned their cables have built-in LPF, and I suddenly realized it was the perfect solution to the problem. Then again, we only sort of recently figured out exactly what the problem was thanks to the OSSC. We also now know for a fact that Micomsoft have screwed up their own implementation of LPF over the various firmware updates to the FM. I've heard rumors they know they've been outclassed by the OSSC and are 'moving on' from this type of product. Just rumors anyway.

[lastbronx]

Hello everyone and especially a big hello to FBX and thank you for your Framemeister profiles,

I recently bought a Framemeister in Japan and I have the same jailbars with my white SEGA SATURN model 2 and the Framemeister on latest firmware. As described here reverting back to FW 1.11 removes them, but I don't want that because the profiles of FirebrandX are actually a godsend and improve visual quality on some systems quite a bit. I then went to a local retro game store, where I live, bringing my framemeister and trying to find a Saturn, that doesn't have jailbars. I tested with my Saturn included:

• - 3 white JAP SEGA SATURN model 2
  - 1 grey JAP SEGA SATURN model 1

ALL OF THEM HAD JAILBARS! Some had them worse than others, but the issue was visible on ALL consoles. Can someone please confirm, that there are even ANY Saturns out there that have literally NO Jailbars? Or the Jailbars just more faint on some consoles and ALL of them have it? Or are the people who have NO jailbars using GSCART, which gets rid of them? Can anyone who has no jailbars, connect the SATURN directly to the Framemeister and post a screenshot please? Thank you.
Here are some images I took in the shop:









Also I reached out to Micomsoft about the issue, but they didn't reply my email. So I wrote to Solaris Japan and asked them about the issue. This is what they had to say so far:

Code: Select all

	
Solaris Support (Solaris Japan)

Sep 4, 14:51 JST

Hello,

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation about the problem. We completely understand and agree that it is unacceptable on Micomsoft's side. The jailbars are the screen are a big problem and it is in Micomsoft's best interest to address these concerns. Thank you again for bringing this issue to us and we will definitely forward your message to Micomsoft.

Best regards,
Ranka
Join Solaris Japan on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with special deals, news and more!

So far I havn't heard back from them.

We also now know for a fact that Micomsoft have screwed up their own implementation of LPF over the various firmware updates to the FM.

I agree 100%, since downgrading the firmware resolves the issue it's safe to say that this is 100% a Micomsoft fuckup.

Are there any other known ways to resolve the issue, without tracking down the always sold out Retrovision cable? The irony is I bought the Framemeister mainly for my Saturn and with a HD Retrovision cable I wouldn't even need the framemeister.

My thanks goes to everyone involved in this forum post, especially FBX for bringing clarity in the issue. I'm surprised not more people know about it or are reporting it.

Many thanks.

Cheers!

[FBX]

Are there any other known ways to resolve the issue, without tracking down the always sold out Retrovision cable? The irony is I bought the Framemeister mainly for my Saturn and with a HD Retrovision cable I wouldn't even need the framemeister.

Actually you still would want to use the HD Retrovision cable into your Framemeister. The HD Retrovision cables do not upscale at all, and most displays do a horrible job of upscaling 240p content if they can handle it at all. So you would feed the HD Retrovision cable into the Framemeister and use my HDR profiles.

Beyond that, you'd have to get an OSSC and use the built-in video LPF feature it has. Then you could simply use RGB SCART cables (don't try JP21 on it though as you would need a converter/adapter).

[lastbronx]

Thanks for your answer FBX.
Yeah I know not to mix JP21 and SCART.
Yes the HD Retrovision cables don't upscale, but they still produce a satisfying picture on their own. (Samsung TVs)

Are there really any SEGA SATURNs out there, that truly produce a 100% jailbar free image with the Framemeister and without using GSCART or other switchers?
Are there any other know methods to remove the jailbars, will GSCART for example get rid of them completely?
How likely do you think it is that Micomsoft will fix this issue with a firmware update?


I don't own an OSSC atm. Do I need to load profiles for each console as well?
According to MLIG the OSSC can produce some funky resolutions that might not show an image on some tvs unless you pass through the signal with an HDMI receiver who outputs exact resolutions. What is your experience with the OSSC?

Thank you.

[Fudoh]

How likely do you think it is that Micomsoft will fix this issue with a firmware update?

zero. End of life product and a bug that was introduced years ago. Still a shame though, since - as the earlier FWs show - it's possible to configure the LPF to work in a much better way.

[FBX]

Yes the HD Retrovision cables don't upscale, but they still produce a satisfying picture on their own. (Samsung TVs)

Unless those Samsung TVs do two things:

1.) Nearest neighbor upscaling.

2.) Handle 240p properly.

It won't look anywhere near as sharp and correctly scaled as a Framemeister profile.

[lastbronx]

How likely do you think it is that Micomsoft will fix this issue with a firmware update?

zero. End of life product and a bug that was introduced years ago. Still a shame though, since - as the earlier FWs show - it's possible to configure the LPF to work in a much better way.

That's a shame! Are they working on a predecessor or just giving up on this idea?

Unless those Samsung TVs do two things:

1.) Nearest neighbor upscaling.
2.) Handle 240p properly.
It won't look anywhere near as sharp and correctly scaled as a Framemeister profile.

Yes true!
Are there any other consoles that produce a problem with the Framemeister? Like LPF or other problems?


Does anyone know if there are SATURNs out there without jailbars on the Framemeister? I want to know if it's worth it to keep trying to track one down.

[rama]

lastbronx:
Your specific problem is not with the console, but your Framemeister that apparently has the low pass filter disabled or set to an unfitting level.
This is simply a flag in some register in the scaling chip.
The fix would be to open it up, hook the control bus with a microcontroller and patch this set of bits.

[FBX]

Does anyone know if there are SATURNs out there without jailbars on the Framemeister? I want to know if it's worth it to keep trying to track one down.

People have made the claim they don't have jailbars on their Saturn, but I've yet to see one that didn't have this problem on the higher res modes. Only 320 mode appears to be universally free of this issue. It could be the other people were checking with 320 mode games, or they had a setup that added in LPF they didn't know about. Whatever the case may be, I've yet to find such a mythical Saturn that doesn't have LPF issues in 352 and 704 modes.

[Ashura]

I said this before, but I have 3 Saturns and I tested them on the framemeister on the newest firmware with the same JP21 cable. I used Vampire Hunter as my test since it runs in 352 and the issue shows up pretty egregiously.

-A Black US Model 1 Saturn
-A Japanese Model 2 White Saturn
-Another Japanese Model 2 White Saturn that I'm fairly sure has a bad cap somewhere, since it will only boot certain games/video modes after the system has "warmed up," but otherwise works flawlessly after it's "warmed up."

My first white Saturn demonstrates the jailbar problem, while the US Saturn and the Bad Cap White Saturn IIRC either did not demonstrate this problem, or if it did, the jailbars were very faint to almost be unnoticeable.

I'm currently between living situations, but I actually wanted to see if FBX would recap the bad Saturn at some point. I figure if he's up to that, he could see the difference himself before capping.

(That second Saturn is weird. It will always boot Silhouette Mirage, a 320 game, but will hang if a game tries to use 352 until it's been running a while. After it starts booting things, I've run games for 4+ hours with no issues.)

[FBX]

I'm currently between living situations, but I actually wanted to see if FBX would recap the bad Saturn at some point. I figure if he's up to that, he could see the difference himself before capping.

(That second Saturn is weird. It will always boot Silhouette Mirage, a 320 game, but will hang if a game tries to use 352 until it's been running a while. After it starts booting things, I've run games for 4+ hours with no issues.)

It does sound like you have dried out caps. And I've done a full cap job on a dead Saturn before, so it is something I can do if you ever get to a point where you want to get it restored. It would be interesting to actually see a Saturn with no LPF issues. Come to think of it, I should probably just recap my Saturn and see if that has an effect. It would be funny if all this time it turned out to be just bad caps.

[Ashura]

It does sound like you have dried out caps. And I've done a full cap job on a dead Saturn before, so it is something I can do if you ever get to a point where you want to get it restored. It would be interesting to actually see a Saturn with no LPF issues. Come to think of it, I should probably just recap my Saturn and see if that has an effect. It would be funny if all this time it turned out to be just bad caps.

That's actually my working theory, to be honest. Maybe it's just because of the caps. Or at the very least, it's one thing we can check and mark off our list of reasons. We at least know it's the Saturn at this point.

I need to see about getting the machine out. I was in a bad situation where almost my entire video game collection was stolen (30k+ worth of stuff), and what was left was mostly my systems and a few games which I have since put into storage. So unfortunately everything I have is all there currently while I'm looking for a new place to live.

[FBX]

Oh man that sucks! Thankfully there's always someone at home in my house, so we never get burglars. The last time someone tried to break in and steal something was decades ago, and we were all sitting in the dining room when we heard it. The guy took off like a race horse when we ran out after him, and he was later caught and arrested busting into someone else's house.

[lastbronx]

My condolences to your robbery, who does something like that, wtf? I hope they catch the thief.

About the caps. I'm not an export on the matter, but I don't think it's the caps, because I tested 4 Saturns and FBX tested 3. Isn't it a bit unlikely that 7 SATURNS all have bad caps?
Also if it were bad caps, wouldn't the problem exist on ALL resolutions? And if not, why does downgrading the FW to 1.11 resolve the problem?
I think it's more likely that they forgot to implement the LBF for certain resolutions when they rewrote the newer firmwares.

Are there any other consoles that produces a 352 / 704 mode, which we could test if it shows Scanlines?

Is someone capable of combining FW 1.11 and the latest one of the Framemeister, if we had the source codes? Maybe we can ask Micomsoft to release the source codes? That way we could also implement the loading of more than 20 profiles??!?

I have not heard back from Micomsoft or Solaris Japan yet.

[rama]

The register map of the scaler chip would be most helpful

[Ashura]

Thanks for the condolences guys. It's funny; I found out someone in my family did it to me. I was able to recover about 1/10th of my stuff, but not much. I know where some of it went but not the rest. I've been thinking about posting out to Maryland collectors to see if anyone ended up with any of it. It's crazy because a whole criminal thing came of it. Not to get too off topic, though...

About the caps. I'm not an export on the matter, but I don't think it's the caps, because I tested 4 Saturns and FBX tested 3. Isn't it a bit unlikely that 7 SATURNS all have bad caps? Also if it were bad caps, wouldn't the problem exist on ALL resolutions? And if not, why does downgrading the FW to 1.11 resolve the problem?
I think it's more likely that they forgot to implement the LBF for certain resolutions when they rewrote the newer firmwares.

It could be bad caps. It could be they changed a certain cap in a certain revision. It could be the more likely situation that it's a board revision that does it. Who knows until we try. However, re: FW problems. It works on 1.11 because how the low pass filter on 1.11 and prior operates is different than all the versions post 1.11. The jailbars were always there, it's just that they're smoothed out by the framemeister's LPF, which later got changed somehow. You can see them clearly on the OSSC with the LPF off, for instance.

[FBX]

I have not heard back from Micomsoft or Solaris Japan yet.

You're not going to either. Micomsoft has ended production and support for the framemeister.

[lastbronx]

The register map of the scaler chip would be most helpful

What could you do with that?



I know Micomsoft has ended production, but that means it would be even more important to give us the source code to their firmware, or can someone "hack" the Framemeister and write a better Firmware? Would gladly donate to that cause.

The only thing that surprises me, is that not more people are reporting this problem, not even MLIG mentions this. They just say, the SATURN is the best example for pristine image quality with the Framemeister, lol. Maybe because they use GSCART, which gets rid of the scanlines?

The Scanlines for me are VERY strong, much stronger than the picture shows if plugged directly into the FM. Especially in motion. I did notice, that if I use a passive SCART switcher, the scanlines become slightly less visible. Maybe 5% less, not much. Makes me wonder if I can get rid of them by 'weakening' the SCART signal enough before it reaches the Framemeister. I do use a SCART adapter with sync stripper, is it possible that this causes the scanlines to be more prominent? Shouldn't be the cause to my knowledge, since it removes just the composite part of the signal. What SCART adapter are you guys using?

If some SATURNs, don't produce Scanlines, is it more likely, that those who don't are earlier revision models or later ones?

[bobrocks95]

The register map of the scaler chip would be most helpful

What could you do with that?



I know Micomsoft has ended production, but that means it would be even more important to give us the source code to their firmware, or can someone "hack" the Framemeister and write a better Firmware? Would gladly donate to that cause.

The only thing that surprises me, is that not more people are reporting this problem, not even MLIG mentions this. They just say, the SATURN is the best example for pristine image quality with the Framemeister, lol. Maybe because they use GSCART, which gets rid of the scanlines?

The Scanlines for me are VERY strong, much stronger than the picture shows if plugged directly into the FM. Especially in motion. I did notice, that if I use a passive SCART switcher, the scanlines become slightly less visible. Maybe 5% less, not much. Makes me wonder if I can get rid of them by 'weakening' the SCART signal enough before it reaches the Framemeister. I do use a SCART adapter with sync stripper, is it possible that this causes the scanlines to be more prominent? Shouldn't be the cause to my knowledge, since it removes just the composite part of the signal. What SCART adapter are you guys using?

If some SATURNs, don't produce Scanlines, is it more likely, that those who don't are earlier revision models or later ones?

Micomsoft has no incentive to publish their source code. They would do so at a loss of company value and out of the goodness of their hearts, and well, companies are generally lacking in that.

This hasn't been widely supported since it's only on certain resolutions of Saturn games, a console with a pretty small following compared to most others of its time. That and a number of people have moved on to the OSSC which features properly configurable LPF.

You might be able to find or build a small LPF circuit just for the Saturn? That or buying an OSSC are the angles I'd look into- finding a Saturn without the issue seems hopeless. Knowing how badly the Genesis was designed I'm pretty confident it's an outright design flaw on Sega's part.

[lastbronx]

Micomsoft has no incentive to publish their source code. They would do so at a loss of company value and out of the goodness of their hearts, and well, companies are generally lacking in that.

This hasn't been widely supported since it's only on certain resolutions of Saturn games, a console with a pretty small following compared to most others of its time. That and a number of people have moved on to the OSSC which features properly configurable LPF.

You might be able to find or build a small LPF circuit just for the Saturn? That or buying an OSSC are the angles I'd look into- finding a Saturn without the issue seems hopeless. Knowing how badly the Genesis was designed I'm pretty confident it's an outright design flaw on Sega's part.

How can I add a LPF to the SATURN?

It says here that model1 saturns produce a better image:
http://retrorgb.com/saturncompare.html
Does that mean Model1 are more likely to have a LPF?

The OSSC requires different settings for all different resolution types of the SATURN, tho right? I find this not ideal for a plug and play setup, since I would need to make a list of all games with all resolutions / 320 res, 352 res, 704 res / I own.

[Fudoh]

The OSSC requires different settings for all different resolution types of the SATURN, tho right?

not when you run it in generic 4:3 mode (which is basically the same as the Framemeister does).

In generic mode you get pixel perfect sampling on the vertical, but kinda interpolated sampling (for the lack or a better term) on the horizontal. With the optimized modes you add pixel perfect sampling on the horizontal and ONLY here you need different settings per input timing.

[bobrocks95]

How can I add a LPF to the SATURN?

I was thinking maybe you could build an external circuit with a SCART input and output on it that just adds LPF. If gscartsw can do it, it's possible, but I haven't heard of anyone doing it before.

The OSSC requires different settings for all different resolution types of the SATURN, tho right?

not when you run it in generic 4:3 mode (which is basically the same as the Framemeister does).

In generic mode you get pixel perfect sampling on the vertical, but kinda interpolated sampling (for the lack or a better term) on the horizontal. With the optimized modes you add pixel perfect sampling on the horizontal and ONLY here you need different settings per input timing.

And with the way profiles work, won't your timings for each input resolution be saved? Or are they all grouped together as "240p" and the OSSC doesn't know what horizontal res a game is outputting?

[ElectricStriker]

I've had this problem for a few months now, so I'll go ahead and chime in with my own experience. Here I've captured footage of NiGHTS into Dreams on my Model 2 NTSC Saturn through the Framemesiter using RGB scart: https://youtu.be/K29FjhMxP2w The level I've captured, Twin Seeds, shows VERY noticeable jailbars at certain points. It really sucks because it ruins the beautiful image RGB Scart provides. If I downgrade the firmware on the FM, I no longer have access to the zoom features I need to fill up all the pixels on my tv. This is even a problem on version 1.11 since the left 3 pixels on the screen can't be used for some reason, so that's out of the question as well. I know, I'm not a pixel purist because I play my old games in 16:9, but that's how the picture looks best to me. The only good solution to this problem, the HD Retrovision Cables, are still out of stock. I've been waiting since July to get my hands on them. Hopefully the store will open back up soon.

[Konsolkongen]

NiGHTS into Dreams has a 16:9 mode if you didn't know

Best f'ing game ever made btw.