SCPH-101 BIOS v4.4/v4.5 Can't Switch To PAL Video Mode

[alex-free]

Booting any PAL game on a SCPH-101 with BIOS v4.4 results in a black screen when using composite (game/audio still playing). Applies to BIOS v4.5 automatically since that is the exact same BIOS with just a different version string.

This is different from what happens on all other consoles. SCPH-1000-SCPH-9XXX will output PAL, but it will be in black and white if using composite AV. SCPH-10000-SCPH-39004 stay in their native video mode always and ignore any request to change the video resolution (from within PS1 mode), using any output.

We already knew about the PS2s, but no one has ever mentioned this. It occurs if you let Tonyhax switch to PAL, or if you just let the game boot without switching video mode at all and the game itself switches over to PAL. Sound and everything works, but black screen over composite.

I assume the PAL to NTSC switch on the PAL PSones works though due to that being the original model you have developed Tonyhax on, so this seems like a limitation on SCPH-101 only but probably also the Japanese SCPH-100 PSone applies for my fork.

[socram8888]

Yeah I can guarantee it works perfectly on PAL consoles. I am unsure what kind of color signal the console will be generating at that point.

It could be that SCPH-101 when set to 50Hz produce a video signal with PAL timing but NTSC color encoding, which is probably not well supported; and that SCPH-102 produce PAL 60Hz which is pretty much supported on the other hand by virtually all TVs.