The Official Turbografx 16 Thread!

[Bratwurst]

 

[NE146]

10 minutes ago, Bratwurst said:

 

Sup man.  Wow I'd be all over that.. are they custom/3d printed? Or did you pick it up from somewhere

[Bratwurst]

12 minutes ago, NE146 said:

Sup man.  Wow I'd be all over that.. are they custom/3d printed? Or did you pick it up from somewhere

I made the 3D model and printed it in ABS. I'd be happy to make you one.

[CZroe]

I made the 3D model and printed it in ABS. I'd be happy to make you one.

Wow! Those look really nice. How do you get those details with ABS on parts that small without ridiculous artifacts?! When I use ABS I can't get results like that unless I use vapor smoothening, which would make that weirdly shiny and remove the texture.

[Bratwurst]

I use AtomicFilament ABS but I had a batch of SmartBuy that was unusually nice before that, which I can't find anywhere anymore. Filament that prints in matte/semigloss always looks better than gloss. Orient the model so it prints vertically.

 

You can still tell it's 3D printed. ABS you can't really get away with super fine layers like you can with PLA.

[Steven Pendleton]

Got an email from Terraonion today. SSDS3 now has a permanent price reduction, so if you want one, they are now cheaper (forever) and they have them in stock now.

[+jgkspsx]

It’s funny in the retro gaming world how you expect everything to get more expensive and harder to find. I got my SSDS3 in October, a month after I ordered it, and sat on it for another month because I didn’t have a good way to play it on my big TV. I only got a setup I liked in December and a setup I love a week or two ago. For the $80 I would probably have rather waited ? 

 

That said, it’s a marvelous deal now, and I can’t recommend it enough.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

I wish I went with that instead of just the plain old krikzz hu card everdrive    I've been playing tg16CD games on the playstation mini, but when I tried hooking up the mini to a crt it was just terrible, granted I was just using a cheap HDMI to RCA converter.   I bought that green little RCA adapter from hyperkin a while back (that acts like a turbobooster), but i heard it can damage your system.  I wish I never sold my original turbobooster

[Gentlegamer]

Pre-orders available for SSD3 at Stone Age Gamer at the new price, $234.99

[+Black_Tiger]

The SSS3 also recently got a big firmware upgrade. Among other things, it now reads images at the correct speed, which means slower search times, but it fixes most or all issues wuth audio going out of sync and you can still set it to fast loading when you want it.

[newtmonkey]

If anyone is looking for a wireless controller for their PCE, I've found a decent option and have confirmed it works fine.

 

Goldenshop sells a PCE to PSX adapter for 31.90 USD plus shipping:

http://www.goldenshop.com/ai/products.php?74

 

This gets you halfway there.  If you don't need wireless, you can stop here and take advantage of the fact that you can now just use any old PSX controller (or arcade stick, or even the holiest of holy PSX Saturn pad if you can manage to track one down) instead of spending $$$$$ tracking down expensive PCE controllers (most of which are bad, and this is coming from a mad PCE fan who has tried the best of the best and found them lacking—the Avenue pads (poor dpads) and the SFC-like Hori pad (poor button spacing)).

 

Want wireless?  Next, you can get third-party wireless PS2 controllers easily on Amazon.  There are tons of different sellers, but I am 99% certain they all are just reselling the same stuff from China.  These use 2.4g wireless rather than Bluetooth, so there is little to no lag and no need to pair.

Here's an example:

https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Controller-Gamepad-Shock-Playstation2/dp/B06XCNKQ1T/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=psx+2.4+g&qid=1612600963&sr=8-8

 

Now, these PS2 controllers have HORRIBLE analog sticks... do not use this controller to play PS2 games!  However, they have good buttons and, more importantly, a surprisingly good dpad.  You could probably swap out parts from a genuine PS2 controller if you wanted to improve things even more.

 

One thing I've noticed.  Sometimes the very first time you press a button after turning the system on it won't register.  This sounds like a huge problem, but it's not.  It's not something that just happens while you are playing... if it happens, it will happen immediately when you turn the system on.  Just press all the buttons once, and from then on you will be fine.

 

And there you go, a decent wireless solution for PCE.

Edited February 6, 2021 by newtmonkey

[+jgkspsx]

Presumably this would work with the awesome Logitech PS2 wireless controller? Mine had some alkaline battery leakage but it doesn't look too bad.

 

I wonder if adding the TG-16->PCE adapter to this chain would introduce any issues...

 

Has anybody used an 8bitdo -> SegaSonicFan UniGen->PCE chain? I have a spare m30, and that is just about my favorite controller ever... https://segasonicfan.wixsite.com/retro/uni-gen-to-pce

[Steven Pendleton]

I went to Akiba yesterday and I remembered to check AMP-30 prices. The cheaper one that I found at Surugaya was gone, but the more expensive one that I found at Super Potato was still there. Price was 38300 yen, I think. Or maybe it was 36300 yen. It was one of those and I forgot which one it was. It's in the box and stuff, so I'm assuming it's complete. At that price, it should be.

[turboxray]

I got in the newest revision of the SSD3 the other day. I didn't realize that it didn't come with any AV cables. Rude hahah. I don't have my MD2 anymore, so I couldn't use that cable. So I decided to use it with my SGX, and just have the CD/ADPCM audio mono mix back into the console and uses the SGX's AV output.. you like the real hardware. Nope. The SSD3 doesn't bother to do that. That's really lame. So now I need to wait a few days for a new cable, because otherwise playing CD games without the extra audio is just lame. Another small grip, and this goes to the TeD as well, is that they use PCE's mid resolution mode but don't bother turning on the chroma filter bit in the VCE. Why???? I literally makes the graphics more crisp. At least have it as an option. So anyway, the SSD3 looks like it does the job and everything, but it leans more towards the 'no-frills' side. The CD audio volume mixer is nice, but why would I want to decrease the CD audio volume?! If anything, I want to increase it (because some games have really annoying sounding PSG sound FX). No volume options for ADPCM? No ADPCM filtering options? No save states? And as far as I can tell, no per game options either. There's no game genie or cheat type device either. You know, the old 'tototek' card even had this. No save states. And lastly, no DEV support. As in, there's no USB port for transferring files over to it (TeD has this support). Dave Shadoff is working on some really nice hardware for the PCE, so this might be moot soon (he's also toying with the idea of making a custom system card that interfaces the custom hardware to a PC, and it serves to emulate the CD hardware in realtime).

 

 As for the positives; boot from last game is nice. The in-game trigger is nice as well, but it doesn't always respond (even for the same game). The fact that you can use your own system card for CD games is very nice, but I haven't tried that out yet. And emulated version of the arcade card is also very nice (also haven't tried that out since I don't have CD audio option yet).

 

 

And for some other interesting news; SamIam was working on a s-video mod for the PC-Engine. Not just any old s-video mod, but one that takes the VCEs Y,R-Y, B-Y outputs and uses the original colors. In his trials, he found some really interesting behavior of the VCE. It appears that the resistors for circuit for combining the Y, R-Y, B-Y.. actually create a feedback into the VCE. Basically, if you change the resistor value of one of the lines, it has an affect on the output from the VCE for the other lines. This caused a phase shift (because R-Y is summed with B-Y to make chroma). Here's the weird part.. it's not a complete hue shift, but actually a shift on just one or two axis (looking at a vector scope) - as in your reds are effected but not your greens or yellows, etc. And this might have to do with how the sine waveform is created for the chroma modulation - it's actually just a 3 step square wave with a filter to turn it into a sinewave, and not a true sine wave. And that filter has some relation to the external resistance placed on that line, before they are mixed. The bad news is that this really complicates the svideo mod - as in you'll need some precision pots and a NTSC vector scope to dial in the mod. And the neutral news, not so much good, is that this explains the small differences in a few phases shifts in chroma detected across a bunch of samples tests from PCE consoles. As in, if you're re-capping the system then you might want to replace those resistors in your aging system as well if you're using composite. You won't need pots - just simply replacing the resistors with accurate/tolerance ones of the same type.

 

 

[CZroe]

1 hour ago, turboxray said:

I got in the newest revision of the SSD3 the other day. I didn't realize that it didn't come with any AV cables. Rude hahah. I don't have my MD2 anymore, so I couldn't use that cable. So I decided to use it with my SGX, and just have the CD/ADPCM audio mono mix back into the console and uses the SGX's AV output.. you like the real hardware. Nope. The SSD3 doesn't bother to do that. That's really lame. So now I need to wait a few days for a new cable, because otherwise playing CD games without the extra audio is just lame. Another small grip, and this goes to the TeD as well, is that they use PCE's mid resolution mode but don't bother turning on the chroma filter bit in the VCE. Why???? I literally makes the graphics more crisp. At least have it as an option. So anyway, the SSD3 looks like it does the job and everything, but it leans more towards the 'no-frills' side. The CD audio volume mixer is nice, but why would I want to decrease the CD audio volume?! If anything, I want to increase it (because some games have really annoying sounding PSG sound FX). No volume options for ADPCM? No ADPCM filtering options? No save states? And as far as I can tell, no per game options either. There's no game genie or cheat type device either. You know, the old 'tototek' card even had this. No save states. And lastly, no DEV support. As in, there's no USB port for transferring files over to it (TeD has this support). Dave Shadoff is working on some really nice hardware for the PCE, so this might be moot soon (he's also toying with the idea of making a custom system card that interfaces the custom hardware to a PC, and it serves to emulate the CD hardware in realtime).

 

 As for the positives; boot from last game is nice. The in-game trigger is nice as well, but it doesn't always respond (even for the same game). The fact that you can use your own system card for CD games is very nice, but I haven't tried that out yet. And emulated version of the arcade card is also very nice (also haven't tried that out since I don't have CD audio option yet).

 

 

FYI, the SGX only gets mono CD audio through the ROM² Adapter anyway. In that setup you are expected to get stereo audio from the Interface Unit and video from the SGX directly, leaving the audio plugs from the SGX dangling. With a Super CD-ROM² you just plug the same stereo AV cables into that instead.

 

...and I think you touched on the reason Voultar gave up on YUV from the PCE when he went to S-Video instead.  

[+-^CrossBow^-]

In related TG-16 news I got notice that my HuCards for Remute's new album on a HuCard has been shipping and on its way to me! I've also got Remute's Genesis/MD album cart and his SNES one he released last year I believe. Good stuff.

 

[+Black_Tiger]

2 hours ago, turboxray said:

 

 As for the positives; boot from last game is nice. The in-game trigger is nice as well, but it doesn't always respond (even for the same game). The fact that you can use your own system card for CD games is very nice, but I haven't tried that out yet. And emulated version of the arcade card is also very nice (also haven't tried that out since I don't have CD audio option yet).

You can also choose to save in a traditional memory bank or one dedicated to each game in a new format, which can also be drag and dropped off the sdcard

 

The SSS3 also rips HuCard roms. I backed up my Korean Bonk 3 arcade game using it.

[turboxray]

2 hours ago, CZroe said:

FYI, the SGX only gets mono CD audio through the ROM² Adapter anyway. In that setup you are expected to get stereo audio from the Interface Unit and video from the SGX directly, leaving the audio plugs from the SGX dangling. With a Super CD-ROM² you just plug the same stereo AV cables into that instead.

 

...and I think you touched on the reason Voultar gave up on YUV from the PCE when he went to S-Video instead.  

Ohh I'm aware it's mono. This replaces my SGX+SCD setup. I'm just annoyed that it wasn't there when even though it's not much, UperGrafx still had that built-in as well as a separate audio jack.

 

2 hours ago, Black_Tiger said:

You can also choose to save in a traditional memory bank or one dedicated to each game in a new format, which can also be drag and dropped off the sdcard

 

The SSS3 also rips HuCard roms. I backed up my Korean Bonk 3 arcade game using it.

True. I forgot to mention those. Dumping your own games is a really nice feature.

 

I made a quick image converter in python GUI for PCE. Some of you might be aware, but for those that are not - you can do quick color conversions of images to PCE's 9bit palette by using 'pasterize' in photoshop (and other apps) by settings the levels to 8. Pretty simple stuff. But it's not optimal. So if you ever wanted to see what a snes game is like with PCE colors, as in a prototype if it was a PCE game as a "what if" type of thing, that's a quick thing you can do. But if you have experience with this, you'll probably know how annoying some the snes color ranges are to convert to 9bit. You have to do things like brightness/contracts/level/gamma levels to get something to convert a little better. The pain part is that you have to try the results, reapply all the other steps and then finally posterize it. It's really annoying. So this app lets you adjust those things in real time, and there's also a checkerboard or line dither option with a cut off threshold for the dither. 

Here is the snes original:

And here's my tweaking to PCE colors:

 

 I wrote in python standard lib tkinter because I wanted something that works with windows/mac/linux/unix/etc. Completely portable.

Edited March 3, 2021 by turboxray

[newtmonkey]

9 hours ago, turboxray said:

...The CD audio volume mixer is nice, but why would I want to decrease the CD audio volume?!...

You probably wouldn't want to on the latest HW revision, but earlier revisions of the SSD3 mixed CD audio in too "hot" resulting in clipping/distortion.  The solution was to reduce the CD audio a bit, but that was an imperfect solution as it screwed up the audio balance.  I guess the setting is still in there so they don't have to release separate firmware revisions for old and new models.

[+GoldenWheels]

16 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

In related TG-16 news I got notice that my HuCards for Remute's new album on a HuCard has been shipping and on its way to me! I've also got Remute's Genesis/MD album cart and his SNES one he released last year I believe. Good stuff.

 

Same here....I'm kind of excited to run it into my sound system.

[Steven Pendleton]

So the R-Type Final 2 Special Chronicle Box Set has this keychain in it

 

[turboxray]

I picked up a retrotink rgb2comp converter. I had to buy a scart cable though for the SSDS3 to use it. My CRT takes component, so I wanted that option - not necessarily for PCE but I figured might has well haha. Works pretty good with the SSDS3, but wow the saturation is pretty hot. I had to turn the "color" down to 34 on the TV set (normally set to 60), and even then some games were overblown or too hot for some colors. Part of it could be my TV set (I suspect is it), but I don't have another component cable set to try it on. I do plan on buying a PVM soon though, so I can see how it compares then. 

 

Oh, in regards to the SSDS3 - I need to mod it with a volume adjustment for the chip generated audio. I was playing Sapphire and the chip generated SFX are just too loud (and annoying at that level). In Gate of Thunder the CDDA music just isn't loud enough to enjoy. I could manually boost the CDDA tracks, but that's annoying haha. I asked and apparently the way they designed the SSDS3, they never anticipated this issue? So it doesn't support it. They never added a attenuation controlled device on the incoming chip sound for their mixer. Which is fine, but apparently you can't also boost CDDA and ADPCM over 100% level either (which would also solve the problem). Dshadoff said they previously had clipping issues for their CDDA mixer, so I guess that's why there's no room. So yeah, I find this really odd. The SSDS3 is what.. 3 years old now? I bought their newest hardware revision (released this year). I understand that some people have no issues with this balancing of chip generated stuff against CDDA, but some games really do have glaring issues with this. I mean, over the pass two decades, people have been manually boosting CDDA tracks for CDRs for this very reason. And emulators have mixing options. The response I got was, "well, can you adjust it on the real hardware?". Rather condescending rhetorical question. They've also said they've had no complaints. I find that really hard to believe. A little annoying that I have to mod in a feature, on a $200 product, that should have been there in the beginning. Even more annoying that I was told to go use a Pi+Emulator or buy an Analogue Duo if I wanted that feature haha.

Edited March 9, 2021 by turboxray

[Tanooki]

TO has had perpetual complaints about the SSD3 since it came out.  The design was defective, they got upset when it was called out (repeatedly) got people banned from forums trying to help them who were engineer level helpers who designed repairs, and wouldn't accept the work.  So given the two largest problems with the thing was audio, and also visual distortion issues too, I'm not shocked they'd not help and get condescending about it as well with that kind of comment.  I think they'd rather the whole problem get put under a rug permanently.  Out of 4 products, 2 of them have had problems, that one though being the worst, the other is issues about their overpriced "Pro" of the NeoSD kit.  I'm sure you could find some old forum posts cached in the archive org site, though they're probably not erased given the forums arrogance over at the neo geo forums.  Just find the old threads from when the device game out and the amount of complaints, attempted helps, war room locks and bans against people even trying to help fix the issue.  They coddled the face of the company alex and protected him from taking flack, lashing out at anyone not just gushing praise.

[turboxray]

14 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

TO has had perpetual complaints about the SSD3 since it came out.  The design was defective, they got upset when it was called out (repeatedly) got people banned from forums trying to help them who were engineer level helpers who designed repairs, and wouldn't accept the work.  So given the two largest problems with the thing was audio, and also visual distortion issues too, I'm not shocked they'd not help and get condescending about it as well with that kind of comment.  I think they'd rather the whole problem get put under a rug permanently.  Out of 4 products, 2 of them have had problems, that one though being the worst, the other is issues about their overpriced "Pro" of the NeoSD kit.  I'm sure you could find some old forum posts cached in the archive org site, though they're probably not erased given the forums arrogance over at the neo geo forums.  Just find the old threads from when the device game out and the amount of complaints, attempted helps, war room locks and bans against people even trying to help fix the issue.  They coddled the face of the company alex and protected him from taking flack, lashing out at anyone not just gushing praise.

Yeah, I know some of the history but it looked like everything got resolved (and this was supposedly new hardware revision - fixing whatever). Yeah, I definitely encountered that attitude. And I'm not one to take that kinda crap, so I definitely called them out on it on the discord channel. But yeah, TO is trash but I needed a fast way to do development for PCECD stuffs, and to double as a nice quick play device. 

 

 

 Also another side note to the SSDS3: don't enable "in-game trigger". Apparently it causes random issues with CD games. There's a warning message that it's not compatible with some games, but that's about it (and not what it means by that). It looks like they have a hook into the vblank routine where they spy the controller code for soft+reset. Something along those lines (it's definitely a hook), but was causing CD RAM to get corrupt values. Leaving it disabled cleared up all issues I had with CD games. The issue isn't the approach, but apparently their buggy code that interfaces with said hook. smh. 

 

 Does anyone remember the PCE Tototek card? It had game-genie type cheats that you could turn on/off. Outside a few games, it worked really well. Totally a missed opportunity on the SSDS3 side to implement that - and they could have done it even easier by design.

Edited March 9, 2021 by turboxray

[Tanooki]

Last year krikzz announced he would be refreshing the turbo everdrive.  Seems he's going to go in the direction he did with his sega 16bit kit, so it will allow use of CD ISOs on top of hucards too.  I'll buy that, even if it delays years, I'd wait (I know you can't) than put up with those arrogant fools.

 

I remember that tototek card, vaguely, but never got it.  Maybe it's still something you can find?