A lot of NTSC CRTs can't do PAL timing or colour, though. Unlike a lot of PAL TVs which can at least handle NTSC timing (the Sony Trinitron TVs, most notably, were able to handle the colour signal too).
Yes, I know that.
Getting the monochrome image confirmed it to me. Nothing impossible to work around, with some signal converter anyway
I was just incredibly surprised about this. I expected a faulty machine, not just a unknown compatibility problem from the previous owner!
I would have had to pay the total to get a European machine shipped over here, and/or different issues regarding how the shipment would have been handled.
Or maybe the seller was having a jest at the fact PAL systems tend to be sucky due to bad optimisation and a lack of games on some systems...
Oh, this is actually quite the opposite here!
The European market for these machines was huge, and as a direct result of the video game crash, while we did get the machines here in North America, the interest was lacking, and so, it is actually recommended to get a PAL machine (or a NTSC to PAL converted machine) to be able to enjoy about 99% of everything made for these.
The same also applies to Commodore 64s, or pretty much anything that was not big in NTSC countries.
Also the seller just was not a person who knew much about computers or electronics in general, so they assumed it was broken since it did not work on their TV.
The best part about it was, as I said, the price, since I basically paid little expecting something to repair, and it turned out to be a fully working machine in great condition, stored for years, unused, assumed to be faulty, when in reality they simply did not have a compatible TV
