CreatiVEmu Forum

I got an obscure CreatiVision from a Venezuelan friend today.

He previously sent me pics and information on it, but now I have the opportunity to send it to a repair guy who will test it extensively (and he'll also repair it, because at this moment it doesn't work).

A few oddities:

- the hardware revision is very old (PCB model 700305/C) even though the console serial number is not very low (107.000).
- the power supply is the same as the European one, except voltage, which is 110V. It's AC/AC (not AC/DC like the Japanese 110V power supply). The plug is the typical U.S. plug
- the sticker on the power supply has been typewritten, it's not "factory printed". Also there's a sticker reading "Aug. 1982"
- the circuits to tune the video signal (trimmers) have been placed on a holed daughterboard
- the printings on almost all the chips have been scratched away

From what my friend told me, the unit worked on his TV set (NTSC) but the picture was in black and white. This lets me suppose that it's PAL. This might be confirmed by the fact that one of the chips on the board looks like a TBA520, which is typical of PAL CreatiVisions.

But in which country is there 110V voltage, and PAL system? Apparently, only in a few states of the Brazilian federation.

My personal opinion: the unit might be a "prototype" given to some distributor in South America, in order to let them test it.

The unit comes with 6 loose games from the "first batch" of CreatiVision games, that's the games released in 1981 (pre-Police Jump).

I will keep you up to date about the new discoveries on this matter.

This is an amazing find!!!

I wonder if the games run 17% faster on this machine (60Hz instead of 50Hz)?

And do the cartridges work across regions? (I assume region locking wasn't around yet in those days?)

There is no region lock at all. All the games work fine on both NTSC and PAL consoles.

I don't think that the games run faster. I suppose the game timing comes from the CPU not the VDP. When I tried playing games on the NTSC CreatiVision they seemed to me like running on the PAL console.

Also, they run without any sound on my TVs. Since I can't hear any sound, I can't understand if the playing speed is correct.

I suppose games without interrupts would rely entirely on CPU speed, while games with interrupt which update the graphics during vertical blanking might depend on video mode and number of interrupts per second.

Yes, and most vetch games are VBI based and faster on NTSC.