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VMU compatability

mal - May 17, 2003

		mal		May 17, 2003
			Can you use a US VMU on a Euro DC and vice versa?

		DBOY		May 17, 2003
			Not sure but I know you can use a JP VMU on a US DC.

		thewasp31		May 17, 2003
			According to an old Deamcast magazine I have (UK) all Dreamcast pepherials are multi- regional, meaning you can use a us vmu on a uk console etc.

		gameboy900		May 17, 2003
			They're all interchangable. The only peripheral that I seem to remeber having issues was the japanese sega lightgun. But I'm not too sure about that either.

		mal		May 18, 2003
			Thanks for the info.

		ExCyber		May 18, 2003
			ISTR hearing that a couple games (US HotD2 seems to ring a bell) were deliberately made incompatible with the Japanese lightgun.

		ExCyber		May 18, 2003
			If anything, it would be a software incompatibility, but I don't think that's likely to be a huge problem either. AFAIK, light guns/pens don't really have to care about the signal format; the gun/pen contains a photosensor that triggers an interrupt signal to the console, and the interrupt routine grabs the current beam position from the RAMDAC to see where the gun is pointed. In principle this should be mostly independent of refresh rate and certainly independent of color encoding. The compatibility issues with light guns come from displays that don't provide a detectable beam: projectors, projection screens, LCD, plasma, and in fact just about anything other than direct CRT.

		Jaded God		May 19, 2003
			Yes, You can use diff region vmus on different regions... But like ExCyber said... It is the software usually that goes wrong. Take for instance my Shenmue 1 US save when you try to play the UK Shenmue II you need a UK Shenmue 1 Save... Or need to convert it with a hex editor. Hope this helps mal

		Lostuse		May 20, 2003
			the reason the pal light guns give problems on ntsc dcs, is the difference in refresh rate...

gameboy900

May 21, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by Lostuse@May 20, 2003 @ 11:55 PM



 the reason the pal light guns give problems on ntsc dcs, is the difference in refresh rate...

No it's not. Lightguns are neither pal nor ntsc.

		Taelon		May 21, 2003
			He only mentioned the REFRESH RATE... which has little to do with pal/ntsc... if, say, the lightgun (or DC, or software, or whatever) works via a hardware timer that's independent of the refresh rate, and it times how soon after the last vertical blank interrupt the beam triggers the light gun, and the position is gathered that way, you have a problem if the timing is based on a 60Hz refresh rate but the beam actually takes longer to "get there" because the refresh rate is really 50Hz (slower drawing), then the DC/gun/game/whatever ends up thinking the beam position is much further ahead from where it really is. On one hand that means further down the screen, and on the other hand, an almost unpredictable left/right position... EDIT: I dunno, I just have this feeling I just babbled some utter and complete nonsense up there. Don't bother correcting me, just ignore this..