I just bought a SMS on eBay and via composite cables the screen scrambles every few seconds. Sound still comes through perfect though. Every once in a while I can get a game to boot up without it happening, but I can't nail down what's causing it. Here's a video showing the issue. [video=youtube_share;n1_3bjd10BA]http://youtu.be/n1_3bjd10BA[/video] To compare, I tried but I can't get the RF adapter to work, the screen just scrolls up constantly. I'm thinking that's a symptom of how it's being received by my HDTV, though. I've ordered a SCART cable and am going to check if the cable is the culprit. Has anyone seen this before? I'm worried it might be a capacitor failing somewhere, or perhaps the power supply? Also, does anyone here recommend someone who repairs SMS? Thanks!
Hmm, could be an issue with the VDP chip in the SMS. I know when I bought a used SMS last month it started for 5 seconds then the sound/video broke down completely, wouldn't make it out of the bios screen. After replacing the voltage regulator and all the caps (14 of em) its still did it so I looked for cold solders on the VDP chip and resoldered them and turns out one of the vdp pins was cold soldered. You know, it could just be a game connector issue, you could also try taking the game out and cleaning the contacts in the game and the system. dirty contacts could cause that kind of corruption as well.
If it can be timed to an exact interval I'd blame the TV. The SMS is an old console and modern TVs aren't built for compatibility with old and likely unusual video formats. How many people can't find a TV to accept 240p over component these days?
What good will that do? The SMS is already supposed to be putting out a clean sync signal and assuming the SCART cable is wired to use it and not composite video for sync adding one in probably won't do anything.
Or use a Framemeister XRGBmini. that will solve your problem 100% plus it will make your games look better too on a modern TV.
I've been having a similar problem. I've been trying Master System games via my Mega Everdrive, and while the Mega Drive games play just fine, MS games periodically have a visual glitch: nothing as extreme as OP's, but the image wobbles suddenly and violently and the screens goes red for a bit, then back to normal. There's no pattern to it, sometimes it could be 6 times in a minute, then nothing for 3 minutes, then it could have 3 of them in 10 seconds.
