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The Official Turbografx 16 Thread!


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2 hours ago, CZroe said:

Another error: they claim it has a "Original-style Turbografx-16controller port" ( DIN-8 ) when, in fact, it has a PC Engine/Duo-style controller port ( 8-pin mini-DIN ).

Are you sure about that? A lot of people are pissed off because they think they went for a TG-16 controller port.

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Are you sure about that? A lot of people are pissed off because they think they went for a TG-16 controller port.

If their diagram on their site is to be believed:

4bc41b2cc07ea091b4aa136a6a90bec5.jpg

 

That is clearly an 8-pin mini-DIN arrangement. DIN-8 is larger and has 7 of the pins in a 270° C-shaped arrangement or a 262° U-shaped arrangement. DIN-8 also has left and right symmetry when bisected vertically, unlike the 8-pin mini-DIN that is keyed with an offset pin in the middle row.

 

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I'm wanting to be on board with this.  To get the core grafx mini it's going to set me back probably $130-150 easy due to ebay sponging or import costs.  This would be ideal, but at the same time I don't really use my TV much for games, mostly my computer and my handhelds so the CG2 I have rots mostly.

 

I dislike the analogue pocket due to all the added expenses to get the feature set, but I also really hate they seemingly don't care to make it available enough for people to actually buy one, so it's like what's the point in a $30 adapter if it has nothing to lock it into?!  I'd love to have that TG pocket.  The way I see it, a dumpster fire mess of an old PCE GT for 2-300 easily, then notably more to get a good LCD installed into it too.  Or you eat $230 on the pocket and TG adapter, and that pocket does all things Nintendo gameboy branded too.  Kind of seems stupid to even care about the GT other than you can get one, easily, whenever.

 

I put myself on mail notice on the system, better than nothing since the handheld is damn near vaporware.

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I'm wanting to be on board with this.  To get the core grafx mini it's going to set me back probably $130-150 easy due to ebay sponging or import costs.  This would be ideal, but at the same time I don't really use my TV much for games, mostly my computer and my handhelds so the CG2 I have rots mostly.

 

I dislike the analogue pocket due to all the added expenses to get the feature set, but I also really hate they seemingly don't care to make it available enough for people to actually buy one, so it's like what's the point in a $30 adapter if it has nothing to lock it into?!  I'd love to have that TG pocket.  The way I see it, a dumpster fire mess of an old PCE GT for 2-300 easily, then notably more to get a good LCD installed into it too.  Or you eat $230 on the pocket and TG adapter, and that pocket does all things Nintendo gameboy branded too.  Kind of seems stupid to even care about the GT other than you can get one, easily, whenever.

 

I put myself on mail notice on the system, better than nothing since the handheld is damn near vaporware.

Every other console of theirs was available to order at launch even without a preorder. Then again, they started putting that "Limited Quantities" thing on the last few (Nt Mini Noir, Pocket, Duo). I guess there's still some hope for getting a Pocket at least.

 

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I'm not interested in this at all since it's HDMI only. I play all my retro consoles on a CRT. And it will most likely cost much more than a refurbished region free modded Duo.
It will almost certainly work with the Analogue DAC, which should be jailbar-free and as close to flawless as analog video gets.
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Just now, CZroe said:
11 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:
I'm not interested in this at all since it's HDMI only. I play all my retro consoles on a CRT. And it will most likely cost much more than a refurbished region free modded Duo.

It will almost certainly work with the Analogue DAC, which should be jailbar-free and as close to flawless as analog video gets.

I didn't know that existed... 

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1 minute ago, CZroe said:

It's expensive and hard to get but it does exist. atariage_icon_smile.gif

 

Whole point was to keep the base consoles under $200 while still offering what the old Nt and Nt Mini offered.

 

On second thought I'll just stick to getting a Duo (a real one) then...

Edited by DragonGrafx-16
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I just love this system.  I bought 1 when I was in college back in the day.  Everyone else had the genesis and super nintendo.

 

So many great games.  My favorites were Bonk, Alien Crush and my all time favorite was the Jacky Chan game.

 

What's amazing is how many awesome games for this system never left Japan.  

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Them not mentioning the BIOS isn't completely unexpected, as most PC Engine variants require you to provide the BIOS separately for CD games anyway. Even the PC Engine DUO variants and the Super CD-ROM2 need the extra Blast Processing from the Arcade Card DUO for Arcade Card games. It would be nice if it has its own built-in Arcade Card, but it's not that big of a deal if it doesn't and the System Cards, with the sole exception of the Arcade Card Pro, are cheap anyway. I got a CIB Super System Card for like 2000~3000 yen.

 

Anyway, yeah, I don't really care about the Duo that much (I'm still interested in getting one, though) compared to SuperGrafx support on the Pocket. As I mentioned over in the other thread, I literally bought the Pocket because I was hoping it would have PC Engine support, whether through Analogue or one of the people who will be developing cores for it. Can't wait to get that adaptor! I have to go buy 1941 Counter Attack for sure now!

 

I think this thread might be getting a bunch more traffic in the near future...

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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8 hours ago, CZroe said:

Something is wrong with their stated measurements. They say it's only 168mm at the widest dimension. Well, a CD is 120mm wide so the slot is necessarily a bit larger than that. A HuCard is ~50mm wide according to Google, which puts us beyond the 168mm width... yet they show the slots with a comfortable gap and button between them with room on the sides for a power button and more space.

lol check out the Mega Sg's size

 

1399037992_.thumb.png.aa1979fb539e12b339ff5c5621d4515b.png

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Them not mentioning the BIOS isn't completely unexpected, as most PC Engine variants require you to provide the BIOS separately for CD games anyway. Even the PC Engine DUO variants and the Super CD-ROM2 need the extra Blast Processing from the Arcade Card DUO for Arcade Card games. It would be nice if it has its own built-in Arcade Card, but it's not that big of a deal if it doesn't and the System Cards, with the sole exception of the Arcade Card Pro, are cheap anyway. I got a CIB Super System Card for like 2000~3000 yen.
 
Anyway, yeah, I don't really care about the Duo that much (I'm still interested in getting one, though) compared to SuperGrafx support on the Pocket. As I mentioned over in the other thread, I literally bought the Pocket because I was hoping it would have PC Engine support, whether through Analogue or one of the people who will be developing cores for it. Can't wait to get that adaptor! I have to go buy 1941 Counter Attack for sure now!
 
I think this thread might be getting a bunch more traffic in the near future...


I don't know... every IFU, Super CD-ROM², and Duo ever sold was sold with some kind of System Card BIOS included (internal or external). It would be very weird if Analogue required you to provide your own and left the console unable to play CD titles without it. If they want to claim that it can play CD games without stipulating that you have to bring your own BIOS (BYOB) then they either have to have some kind of legally licensed or reverse-engineered BIOS. Perhaps they are unsure about the progress of licensing or reverse-engineering so they don't want to announce whether or not it's BYOB yet.

Anyway, the Super System Card, Super CD-ROM² System, Duo, Duo-R, Duo-RX, and Arcade Card Pro all have the exact same BIOS: System Card 3.0.

The Arcade Card Duo doesn't even have a BIOS since it relies on the BIOS built-in to a Super CD-ROM² System, Duo-R, or Duo-RX. It's literally just RAM on a card... which is all you are left with if you removed the BIOS from a Super System Card. The difference then is that the Arcade Card has a lot MORE RAM. ;) Much like the Super SD System³ there is no doubt in my mind that the Analogue Duo will have that extra RAM without needing an Arcade Card of any kind, but it still boils down to the BIOS: will it be BYOB or not? Even if it's BYOB, it could use that extra RAM to enable Arcade CD-ROM² titles with a regular Super System Card 3.0. :)

Super SD System³ and UperGrafx UGX-01/UGX-02 were all BYOB, but they were made to run the customer-provided BIOS ROM file from SD card. Historically, Analogue does not want to officially run downloaded ROM files without a jailbreak. Running the BIOS ROM file from SD card is literally no different from running any other downloaded HuCard/TurboChip game ROM, so we can assume that Analogue is not going that route. That means they will either require a physical system card or they will have a licensed/reverse-engineered one built-in. Who knows... they might even license it from Polymega or whoever is handling it for Polymega. Do any NEC emulators run Super CD-ROM² and/or Arcade CD-ROM² games without a System Card 3.0 ROM file? If so, they have one Analogue could possibly license too. ;)

Yeah, getting 1941 Counter Attack now might be a smart move even if you weren't already interested in the game. I'm thinkin' that the price of SGX games is about to spike to new heights as the pool of SGX-capable hardware grows and the few original copies that are out there for these game titles get spread even more thin!
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lol check out the Mega Sg's size
 
1399037992_.thumb.png.aa1979fb539e12b339ff5c5621d4515b.png
OK, that explains it: Copy/paste error. :)

Guess they wanted to keep their product pages consistent. Still, the errors make this announcement seem rushed. Makes me wonder if there is some kind of pressure or what the pressure is.
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Magic Engine tried the whole -  simulated bios for the CD games. It worked OK, but did have some issues. FYI - late gen PCE games just include updated bios routines in ram. I mean, they don't take up much (like 8k-ish). Some even replace the CD READ routines with faster ones. The original units might be 150 k/sec single speed drives, but the original CDREAD routine in the bios card is about 90k a second. The new 'soft update' versions are at least 122k a second (huVideo needs this rate). I've ripped the new routines, but I haven't clocked their speed to see if they can go higher than that.

 

Little off topic: It's weird, because the CD base controller (MCU) that takes the scsi commands, even controls the ADPCM chip and supports stream data from the disc directly into ADPCM ram... but there's no auto 'DMA' streaming to main CD ram even though it's all on the CD unit side. And a lot of PCE games make the original 90k speed even worse though, because instead of reading in a single 64k or 256k block.. they'll seek and read in multiple sectors at a time in different places on the disc. Think about that for a second - seek time is expensive on a cd drive. A CD 2.0 game should be able to read in all 64k of CD ram and 64k of vram in less than 2 seconds at a 90k/sec rate. Yet plenty of old CD 2.0 games take like 5+ seconds to load. Even Rondo does this. If you ever wonder why Gates of Thunder loads so fast? Part of it is because it just reads in a single block of 192k from the disc. A handful a CD games interleave data tracks and CD audio tracks next to each other to keep the seek times down, but a good 99% of them didn't.

Edited by turboxray
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1 hour ago, CZroe said:

I don't know... every IFU, Super CD-ROM², and Duo ever sold was sold with some kind of System Card BIOS included (internal or external). It would be very weird if Analogue required you to provide your own and left the console unable to play CD titles without it. If they want to claim that it can play CD games without stipulating that you have to bring your own BIOS (BYOB) then they either have to have some kind of legally licensed or reverse-engineered BIOS. Perhaps they are unsure about the progress of licensing or reverse-engineering so they don't want to announce whether or not it's BYOB yet.

Anyway, the Super System Card, Super CD-ROM² System, Duo, Duo-R, Duo-RX, and Arcade Card Pro all have the exact same BIOS: System Card 3.0.

The Arcade Card Duo doesn't even have a BIOS since it relies on the BIOS built-in to a Super CD-ROM² System, Duo-R, or Duo-RX. It's literally just RAM on a card... which is all you are left with if you removed the BIOS from a Super System Card. The difference then is that the Arcade Card has a lot MORE RAM. ;) Much like the Super SD System³ there is no doubt in my mind that the Analogue Duo will have that extra RAM without needing an Arcade Card of any kind, but it still boils down to the BIOS: will it be BYOB or not? Even if it's BYOB, it could use that extra RAM to enable Arcade CD-ROM² titles with a regular Super System Card 3.0. :)

Super SD System³ and UperGrafx UGX-01/UGX-02 were all BYOB, but they were made to run the customer-provided BIOS ROM file from SD card. Historically, Analogue does not want to officially run downloaded ROM files without a jailbreak. Running the BIOS ROM file from SD card is literally no different from running any other downloaded HuCard/TurboChip game ROM, so we can assume that Analogue is not going that route. That means they will either require a physical system card or they will have a licensed/reverse-engineered one built-in. Who knows... they might even license it from Polymega or whoever is handling it for Polymega. Do any NEC emulators run Super CD-ROM² and/or Arcade CD-ROM² games without a System Card 3.0 ROM file? If so, they have one Analogue could possibly license too. ;)

Yeah, getting 1941 Counter Attack now might be a smart move even if you weren't already interested in the game. I'm thinkin' that the price of SGX games is about to spike to new heights as the pool of SGX-capable hardware grows and the few original copies that are out there for these game titles get spread even more thin!

It would be really nice if they had their own BIOS for this thing, but at the same time, it's really much more cost-effective to have the user supply the System/Arcade Card and be done with it. It is true that every CD thing for the original PC Engine had some kind of included BIOS, though, so yeah, we'll see. Not much we can do but wait, especially since the thread that kevtris made turned into a massive complaining festival thing, and I myself am guilty of contributing to it. I don't blame him for avoiding that place.

1 hour ago, CZroe said:

OK, that explains it: Copy/paste error. :)

Guess they wanted to keep their product pages consistent. Still, the errors make this announcement seem rushed. Makes me wonder if there is some kind of pressure or what the pressure is.

Hey, I wouldn't complain if they somehow made it the same size as the Mega Sg. As you know, the SuperGrafx is damn huge, especially with a CD add-on (and in your case especially since you have the RAU-30) and it will be nice to have a smaller PC Engine solution that isn't the MiSTer, which I still have not been able to get working anyway and gave up on it. Screw that thing. At least my real SuperGrafx actually works properly.

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2 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

it will be nice to have a smaller PC Engine solution that isn't the MiSTer, which I still have not been able to get working anyway and gave up on it. Screw that thing. At least my real SuperGrafx actually works properly.

Really? I was under the assumption you were enjoying the MiSTer. It's really easy to set up with the auto scripts these days (although some frown on it, but who cares). Heck I did it the other day after wiping out my SD card.. it is literally hands off and waiting. 

 

 

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Hey guys, does anyone have any idea where I could get a replacement power supply for the turbografx 16 CD unit. Mine came without one so no way to power the doc. If anyone could point me in the right direction to a website that sells newly manufactured generic ones or if someone has one they'd be willing to sell please let me know. Thank you!

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5 minutes ago, NE146 said:

Really? I was under the assumption you were enjoying the MiSTer. It's really easy to set up with the auto scripts these days (although some frown on it, but who cares). Heck I did it the other day after wiping out my SD card.. it is literally hands off and waiting. 

 

 

Nope. The only inputs that mine accepts are the keyboard in the MiSTer's menu. Can't configure controllers at all, and once I start a game, even the keyboard stops working. Starting several updates ago, I have been losing functionality and now it's unusable, whether I use the scripts or not. The only things that it can do that I don't have real hardware for that I care about are X68000 and Vectrex, though, so it's not too disappointing.

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2 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Nope. The only inputs that mine accepts are the keyboard in the MiSTer's menu. Can't configure controllers at all, and once I start a game, even the keyboard stops working. Starting several updates ago, I have been losing functionality and now it's unusable, whether I use the scripts or not. The only things that it can do that I don't have real hardware for that I care about are X68000 and Vectrex, though, so it's not too disappointing.

Weird man.. I'm not sure what your setup is or if you're using a SNAC, bluetooth, usb, etc., but perhaps it's that particular component?

 

I'm not much of a purist so I just use a cheap USB hub and it works well enough with the TG16 Mini pad (even the turbo buttons work), or a xbox 360 "Ken" 6 button pad. 

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35 minutes ago, INTVCruise said:

Hey guys, does anyone have any idea where I could get a replacement power supply for the turbografx 16 CD unit. Mine came without one so no way to power the doc. If anyone could point me in the right direction to a website that sells newly manufactured generic ones or if someone has one they'd be willing to sell please let me know. Thank you!

Got a Genesis/Sega CD MK-1602 power adapter around?

...

https://console5.com/store/dc-power-adaptor-set-convert-a-standard-power-supply-to-6-different-plugs.html

 

You'd use the 5.5x2.5mm tip. Actually, you can use that set with any standard-sized ~10v adapter that has enough juice (~1.5 amps and up) but most are going to be the opposite polarity. In that case (center-positive) you'd just flip the adapter tip around and you're still good to go.

 

I've got a 1.7 amp (1,700mA) Truetone 1Spot adapter right next to me that I found at Goodwill the other day for $2. It is made for musical equipment so it's high-quality and low-noise with the less-common center-negative polarity. That's perfect for early NEC hardware except the tip only fits the PCE, CG, & CG2 without adapters like the kit from Console5 (linked above).

Edited by CZroe
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4 minutes ago, CZroe said:

Hello Czroe, I just checked and I do indeed have one that still power up and works fine. So the set you linked above will allow me to use the Genesis MK-1602 adapter on the CD unit and run power to the dock to play the cd games? Just wanted to be sure since the official power supply for the CD unit looks like it needs 11Volts and 1.53 amps? Thank you for your help! 

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22 minutes ago, INTVCruise said:

Hello Czroe, I just checked and I do indeed have one that still power up and works fine. So the set you linked above will allow me to use the Genesis MK-1602 adapter on the CD unit and run power to the dock to play the cd games? Just wanted to be sure since the official power supply for the CD unit looks like it needs 11Volts and 1.53 amps? Thank you for your help! 

The original is a bit over-spec'd and I've found MK-1602 to work fine for all three of my CD docks but you shouldn't have any trouble finding something else that works if the MK-1602 isn't enough. I actually edited my post above quite a bit if you'd like to revisit it. ;)

 

Anyway, though it worked fine for all three of my docks, I have found Japanese CD-ROM² + Interface Units where they only worked well with I gave them 12V from another improvised PSU... some 3A 12v Hyundai power adapter from Goodwill that was 5.5x2.5 but needed the polarity reversed. I assumed it was failing capacitors causing this since my other units worked fine with the MK-1602.

 

The internal voltage regulator is spec'd for a range of voltages and should be fine with 7-12v. The regulator's heat sink might get a bit hotter with 12v PSU but it should tolerate it. If your MK-1602 can't cut it then you can go to any thrift store and find a 12v PSU that's over an amp with the same 5.5x2.1mm time size. They are extremely common with routers, cable modems, external hard drives, etc though most will be center-positive (unlike the MK-1602). Again, that doesn't matter as long as you remember to reverse the modular adapter tip by plugging it in backwards.

 

I've got several improvised PSUs for TG-CD docks and PCE IFU docks around and never spent more than a few dollars but I figured you might prefer to spend a couple bucks more on that set since you weren't looking to build one. If you change your mind about that and don't mind splicing and/or soldering:

https://console5.com/store/6-dc-plug-cord-for-atari-5200-intv-ii-tg16-cd-dock-twin-famicom-dc-24-awg-right-angle.html

https://console5.com/store/dc-pigtail-plug-cord-for-atari-5200-intv-ii-tg16-cd-dock-twin-famicom-dc.html

https://console5.com/store/turbografx-16-cdrom-dock-power-connector.html

 

Not that the $6 set is too expensive or anything. ;)

Edited by CZroe
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