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[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Xanadu II Translation Development Blog]

To anyone waiting for the Xanadu translations: Thank you for your patience. After a long and much needed down-time, elmer and I have been making regular and meaningful progress on the dub for weeks now. The project has never been dead, and will never be dead. These things just take time. We hope you'll all be excited to play the translations when they're finished.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / REPAIR GUIDE - Super CD-ROM²: Total Capacitor Replacement Chart]

Stupid question time.

How do you get off those circular black doohickies that hold the CD drive to the main board?

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Snipping old caps]

I recently recapped a Super Famicom and encountered a few surface-mount electrolytics. Twisting them - not tilting them side to side or pulling them or any motion other than as if turning a screw - seemed to me to put the least stress on the board. They came off with tremendous ease and the board seemed to be able to hand the torque with no trouble. YMMV with Duos or whatever else.

If you're feeling like being a big-spender to get good capacitors, try to identify which caps are doing power decoupling and replace them with Panasonic OS-CONs. They look a bit like electrolytics, but they're solid-polymer based. They have lower ESR/better frequency response than tantalums, come in fairly high capacitance values, and have the side benefit of not using blood minerals (no offense to anyone who uses tantalums; they're in most modern electronics anyway). In positions other than decoupling, their super-low ESR can actually screw things up a bit, so do watch out for that.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Do any PCE systems use >5V anywhere?]

Protection diodes before the 7805.

That's why 7.5V won't work. The SFC/SNES has one, and I bet PCE hardware does, too. These cause a 0.7-0.8V drop, which means a 7.5V supply can't give a 7805 the 7V it needs.

8V power supplies don't really exist except as custom parts, so 9V it is.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / AC Adapter plug-size/polarity list]

I was researching this and thought it could use its own thread. I'll fill in the gaps later as best I can. Feel free to contribute info if you've got it!

White PC Engine, Core Grafx I & II, Shuttle
MODEL: PAD-105/PAD-106
Output voltage: 9V
Rated current：650mA
Polatrity: Center negative
Plug size：Outer radius 5.5mm, Inner radius 2.1mm
Smoothing capacitor: ??

Supergrafx
MODEL: PAD-113
Output voltage: 9V
Rated current：800mA
Polatrity: Center negative
Plug size：Outer radius 6.3mm, Inner radius 3.1mm
Smoothing capacitor: ?? (package is sealed; maybe a clamp can open it?)

Super CD-ROM2
MODEL: PAD-125
Output voltage: 12V
Rated current：1000mA
Polatrity: Center positive
Plug size：Outer radius 6.3mm, Inner radius 3.1mm
Smoothing capacitor: 16V 10000uf, 2cm diameter, 3.5cm height

Duo-R/RX
MODEL: PAD-129\PAD-130
Output voltage: 9V
Rated current：1000mA
Polatrity: Center positive
Plug size：Outer radius 5.5mm, Inner radius 2.1mm
Smoothing capacitor: 16V 4700uf, 1.5cm diameter, 3cm height

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Do any PCE systems use >5V anywhere?]

If the whole CD unit and everything else in all PCE incarnations is running on 5V from a 7805's output (or two 7805s), then lowering the voltage on said 7805's input should result in less current drawn by the total system.

7805 is not very efficient. A lot of energy is wasted in the form of heat.

Heat generated = (input voltage – 5) x output current

If we have a system with input 15 volts and output current required is .5 amperes, we have:
(15 – 5) x 0.5 = 10×0.5 =5W;

5W energy is being wasted as heat, hence an appropriate heatsink is required to disperse this heat. On the other hand, energy actually being used is:

(5 x 0.5Amp) = 2.5W.

So twice the energy that is actually utilized is wasted. On the other hand, if 9V is given as input at the same amount of load:

(9-5) x 0.5 = 2W

2W energy will be wasted as heat.

So, if supplying 10V shows the system drawing 1000mA at peak usage, then supplying 7.5V should conveniently show a draw of 750mA. The system beyond the 7805 should only be using 500mA in either case.

I'm very much inclined to think that nothing is using the AC adapter's output directly because it can have a huge ripple on it - easily 1Vp-p in some cases. The best way to go is to simply check the circuitry of various console PCBs, though.

If everything really is just using 5V, then the really ballsy and probably redundant thing to do would be to remove the 7805 and feed the system a very stable 5V. You'd have to use a good quality power supply and maybe add some extra decoupling capacitors, but you'd be using half the energy of an AC adapter and you would not waste anything while the system is off.

The power savings are so small that it's not really worth going that far. If 7.5V works, though, you might as well get it over 9V.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Do any PCE systems use >5V anywhere?]

AC adapters are often poorly made, including official ones, and generally waste a lot of energy. Many older adapters are begging to have pricey new high-value smoothing capacitors put in them, too, because their original ones are at death's door.

I've been thinking of getting a single high-quality switch-mode power supply to use with all of my consoles. I know that 9V is safe to go with for virtually all systems, and it's what the popular Retro DC Powered supply uses. However, it seems to me that 7.5V is a smarter solution for any console that runs entirely on 5V from a 7805 regulator. You throw away less energy at the regulator and generate less heat, on top of 7.5V supplies themselves being cheaper at high amp ratings. 7805s only need 7V at their inputs to work.

The question is, is there anything out there (PCE or otherwise) that actually needs more than that? Or is everything everywhere running on 5V from a 7805?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Are Sapphire's Graphics overrated?]

You need to understand the difference between technical achievement and artistic acumen. Sapphire does things Gate of Thunder never could but Gate of Thunder is more cohesive. In GoT, all the graphics look like they were drawn in the same time period by the same people and it plays way better. Many PCE shooters are better than Sapphire overall, as a game, but Sapphire goes to extremes in more lavish ways, mainly in the number of animation frames it stores in the AC. The time traveling theme works as much for it as against it artistically. Gameplay wise is pretty B- in my humble opinion.

Well said. I agree completely.

[PC-FX Discussion / Re: Market research paper about NEC losing Japanese PC market]

A good concept to be familiar with when thinking about what happened with Japan and PCs is the Galapagos effect.

The Galapagos islands, as I'm sure you all know, are where Darwin realized many of the important basics of evolution. Among other things, he drew insight from birds with beaks adapted to eat animals particular to the islands. The Galapagos effect, at its most basic, just means that a unique environment will produce unique species. As a metaphor for socio-cultural phenomenon, however, it has something of a negative connotation. The implication is that the unique species probably won't ever do well outside of its environment, as well as that it has an isolating effect by preventing other species from getting in. When the outsiders do eventually force themselves in, it's also the unique species that typically loses out since it simply doesn't have the numbers to put up a fight.

You can imagine why this gets applied to Japan a lot. In fact, I think "Galapagos effect" is originally a Japanese-coined expression. Japan is geographically, culturally, historically, and linguistically a very unique environment, and it's watched a lot of unique species come and go over the years. One of the most relevant and concerning cases of this is with computers, and our friend the PC-98 is right in the middle of it. If anyone is interested, I'll try to tell that story now.

Japan has long been known as a high-tech country. Japanese people started making great cameras not long after rebuilding from WWII, followed by great cars and consumer electronics. In the hey-day of the 1980s, people around the world assumed that Japan would be a leader in computers, too, but as the 1990s came and everyone and their grandma bought a PC, that surprisingly didn't happen.

Actually, the thing that Japanese people find more frustrating is the success of the iPod and the iPhone in the 2000s. As the birthplace of the Walkman, Japan had all the tech-pedigree it needed to make the dominant portable MP3 player. Smartphones are an even bigger deal, because before the iPhone came around, Japanese cell phones were by far the best in the world. They were so feature-loaded that it was literally embarrassing for foreigners to show their phones to a Japanese person - believe me, I would know. Japanese phones and music players alike should have ruled the world, but they didn't. So what happened?

The old favorite scapegoats of Westerners are a supposed lack of ingenuity and an insular, rigid corporate culture inherent to Japan. I won't pretend these factors don't exist, but I do think a lot of people overlook the Galapagos effect when thinking about why Japan is where it is today.

To understand the situation with computers, let's go back to the very early 1980s.

This is when the first big wave of consumers buying PCs happened in the West. Systems like the Apple II and the Commodore 64 sold by the millions. When you think about what you can do with these simple 8-bit machines, your options are pretty limited: you can learn how to program, you can play games, and you can mess with rudimentary paint and music programs that don't often result in getting much useful work done. Probably most important of all, though, is that you can do word-processing. If you're coming from a typewriter, the backspace key alone makes these PCs well worth the investment, and they weren't even that expensive: for less than $1000 in 2018 money, you could buy a Commodore VIC-20 and a dot-matrix printer, use a TV as a monitor, and start cranking out documents.

If you remember anything at all from this post, remember the fact that this sort of cheap, easy word-processing for the everyman was not available in Japan in those days, and that the reason is the Japanese language. For effective word-processing in Japanese, you need a font with thousands of high-resolution characters that take up huge amounts of memory, you need a high resolution graphics chip and monitor, and you need a sophisticated input system for the user. The word processors that did exist in the 1980s were both expensive and so painfully slow that nobody in their right mind would want to use them unless they absolutely had to. To most of the people who bought them, cheap computers like the MSX were basically gaming consoles that happened to have keyboards attached, and little more.

While things did slowly get better, it wasn't until the mid-90s that the relatively fast input system that everyone uses today came more fully into being. Meanwhile, you can imagine how effectively not having the extremely useful feature of writing their language impacted the Japanese public's thinking about PCs.

On top of this is what's in that research paper about the PC-98. Japan's dominant PC until 1995 was highly expensive, and it ran on an operating system that kept foreign software out and Japanese software in. Is it any wonder that computer culture in Japan at the time was stagnant? About the only thing PCs were really good for outside of an office, again, was playing games.

In the West, it seems like the general public was very quick to embrace the idea that PCs should be our central hub for everything, even long before it was technologically feasible. In Japan, this didn't happen...and there is your iPod and iPhone problem.

You would be amazed at how many Japanese devices from the early 2000s don't even connect to PCs. There are digital camaras that save to SD cards designed to be inserted directly into printers, with no PC compatibility for any component at any stage. I bought a fancy phone in 2005 that had a decent built-in camera and MP3 playback capability, and when I asked the lady at the store for a USB cable to connect it to my PC, she blinked at me and told me there was no such thing. She was right, too; when I looked into it, the only way to get photos out was to email them, and it turned out that the phone was designed to record MP3 from an analogue input.

The iPod embracing the PC for the hub we all wanted it to be was key to its success. And as for the iPhone, I think the key there is that it was designed to be another hub. Japanese cell phones were neat, but they were ultimately a bunch of features loosely strapped together, any one of which could come and go. For those to evolve into smartphones would have many taken years, and their designers would have had to stumble into it almost by accident. Even now, it looks to me like people in Japan adopt PCs with reluctance and not with enthusiasm. They don't even teach kids how to type in most schools.

I've been writing this for too long, so I'm just going to end it. Anyway, take another moment to reflect on the enormous impact that Japan's unique language has had on its modern history. One does have to wonder how all of that will evolve going into the future, as well.

[PC-FX Discussion / Re: Showing off the PCFX to Playstation or Saturn owners?]

There has to be a story behind Rururi Ra Rura. It was announced in 1995, IIRC, and wasn't released until 1998. They just couldn't have been working on it all that time. It's unbelievably unpolished.

When elmer and I did the Zeroigar translation, I searched PCE mags for info about it, and I found out that even though it was released in August 1997, it looked like it was mostly done a good year beforehand. It makes me wonder if NEC or their third parties tried to stagger the PC-FX's few releases.

[PC-FX Discussion / Market research paper about NEC losing Japanese PC market]

Something to peruse if you're curious about what was probably receiving most of NEC's attention in the last years of the PCE and at the dawn of the PC-FX:

wayback://cob.sjsu.edu/WEST_J/Papers/WestDedrick2000.pdf

tl;dr - With the PC-98, NEC had a stranglehold on the Japanese PC market through most of the 80s and early 90s. Its proprietary architecture, which existed in part to facilitate word-processing in Japanese, needed a custom OS, and that in turn caused the software library to be mostly exclusive. Then, in 1991, a Japanese version of MS-DOS came out that handled all word processing in software, effectively allowing ordinary consumers to buy international-standard IBM clones for the first time. Later, and more importantly, Windows 3.1 in 1993 was compatible with both IBM clones and PC-98 systems, thereby erasing all of NEC's exclusivity. Fujitsu started building clone systems in 1995 and selling them at extremely low prices, and NEC basically missed out on an enormous computer-buying boom in the late 90s and lost a ton of market share.

It's a story I mostly knew already, but it was interesting to see all of the details. I hadn't appreciated just how much of a watershed Windows 3.1 was in Japan, and how great the implications were for NEC. They must have been extremely frustrated not to have been able to stop Windows 3.1 from coming out for their platform.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

I'm doing it again (sorry) but how are things coming along with the dub?

Sooner or later, it will be finished.

A lot of things happened both at home and at work, and I've had to do some re-prioritizing in my life. I think elmer has a lot going on that he didn't at this time last year, too. Anyway, we're still in touch with all of the actors, and really, it's just a few large parts that need doing.

Thanks for checking in. It's always nice to see people interested in the project.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: WTB - Super Power League FX]

It's pretty fun, I played a fair bit of it. There was one on eBay when I was looking but it was too much for what it is (something like $40-50) so I just burned it off.

Is there an image of this out there that works in real hardware? The only one I'd ever found will run in an emulator but fail to be recognized as a PC-FX disc on the real McCoy.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Everdrive Fail]

Is the region switch on the Everdrive set properly?

I don't know where you would have read that it supports CD ISOs, but it's definitely never been advertised that way. It's literally impossible to build something that plays CD games through the Hucard port.

Hope you get it working, anyway.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Acd Madou Monogatari I - one question]

Though certainly still a late release, LoX2 came out June 30th 1995.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Super SD System 3]

Mint, but would be proper mint if AV was binned and the lot went into the card slot. As is, it makes the Whengine look horrendous.

If what Sam says is true, it's providing the only method to record proper 60fps video. That would be worth buying for alone. And by not messing with the cart slot, it hopefully won't add buzzing and static sounds like the Everdrives do.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I meant that restoring this pulse wouldn't cause an incompatibility like you mention. I don't think it would fix it.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Super SD System 3]

Does this mean that capturing video at 60fps might not result in flicker effects cutting in and out?

I can say with confidence that that definitely wouldn't happen. There is no way that anything is depending on this pulse being missing. It's purely a matter of all period-TVs being able to ignore the flaw.

In fact, recombining H and V sync might increase compatibility with capture devices. Are there any devices out there that can record Mega Drive video but not PCE? Mega Drive doesn't have this quirk.

Damn, when did Sam get as technical as elmer fudd or Bonknuts/TurboXray ??

Ha ha. Getting the PCE to display on that Ikegami monitor was something of an obsession for a while. I even tried doing minor mods on the deflection circuitry to fix the issue.

It turns out that there is one particular model of Extron box that can fix it, at least for this particular monitor. It's the 160xi. For some reason, other boxes do things slightly differently and don't help.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Super SD System 3]

Would this potentially ruin flicker effects programmed around the timing of the original signal?

Happily, it would have zero effect on that. Internally, all the timing for horizontal and vertical interrupts is completely regular. It's only when H and V sync get combined into C sync at the output stage that things get funky.

This is what the PCE's internal sync signals look like when recorded by a logic analyzer. You've got separate H and V sync, then the combined C sync at the bottom that gets mixed with composite video pretty much as-is. Bearing in mind that it's falling edges that the TV counts, compare the number of falling edges in the H sync line to the C sync line. C sync is missing one pulse at the end of the long V sync period.



TVs built to accept broadcast signals sent out over the airwaves have a robust error-correction circuit for sync called AFC, or automatic frequency control. It's primarily to prevent interference from triggering a horizontal refresh at the wrong time, but some older game consoles (and VCRs, too) rely on AFC to fix quirks in the sync signal timing.

Without it, you get this. I took this picture myself of a PCE running on an Ikegami studio master monitor built after 2000:



But again, this is just because of the weird way that the system combines the H and V sync pulses. To the software and even the part of the video processor that draws the picture itself, it's completely invisible.

If you really want to get crazy, the NES and SNES usually draw one horizontal line in 1364 ticks of the 21MHz master clock, but there is one line near the top of the screen that alternates between 1364 ticks and 1360 ticks in length every other frame. Apparently it was made this way to reduce dot-crawl, but it can cause a tiny amount of jitter in the top few displayed lines on very sensitive displays that aren't built with strong AFC.

The crazy thing is, it's not just an early pulse; the processing time for that horizontal line itself is 4 ticks short, too. There's no way to turn it off, but a guy over on the shmups.com forums has come up with a very interesting fix that works in both systems: with an FPGA, he basically cuts off the master clock signal and halts the entire system for 4 ticks every time that short line gets drawn. The system can't even tell the difference.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Super SD System 3]

I don't know if it will be useful to a whole lot of people besides me, but one cool thing about this product is that it creates an all-new C-sync signal out of the internal H and V digital sync signals.

The PCE's composite video signal and even its own internal digital C-sync have a flaw where one H-sync pulse at the top of every frame gets removed, and this can cause trouble on displays or converters that are expecting a perfect sync signal. The internal digital H and V sync signals, however, don't have this flaw, so it should be possible to create a perfect signal from them.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Component Video & RGB OSSC VS FRAMEMEISTER Comparison]

One time, my dad was doing a deep clean of his house and very briefly set a PC monitor on his front porch. Someone hacked the VGA cable off of it, which was built in at the monitor-end. A good VGA cable has shielding and all that jazz, so it must be at least a little valuable...but on the other hand, I can't imagine someone investing the time to make something out of the cable as part of a business model.

With power cords, there is probably ten or twenty cents worth of copper in the lines.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Component Video & RGB OSSC VS FRAMEMEISTER Comparison]

I think there are three big reasons why CRTs are relatively unpopular in Japan:

1. The size is actually a pretty big deal when your apartment is tiny.

2. People feel extra-high pressure to have the latest gadgets, in part to support domestic gadget-making industries.

3. Throwing away a CRT costs around $50, but there were some widely-advertised campaigns a while ago that gave people limited-time discounts on that, which they jumped on.

Sony also had a Japan-exclusive line of TVs called Profeel Pro that were basically PVMs aimed at consumers. Broadcast monitors coming down in price wasn't as big of a deal with those available.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

Dubs are indeed quite an undertaking. When I was translating only the printed dialogue in the text boxes, it was just me and a bunch of plain text files. Later, when I was play-testing and editing via emulator, it was still a very contained thing that I could stop and start very easily, all by myself.

With a dub, there is both a lot more communication to do and a lot more to process along the way. I won't even get into all of the particulars. Anyway, things are moving forward. Thanks for checking in on us. 

I really, really wish I had met elmer about seven years ago. God, I had time then...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Component Video & RGB OSSC VS FRAMEMEISTER Comparison]

You're right, I don't go on facebook.

Getting a broadcast monitor that hasn't been used to death really is the big gamble. At this point, having to swap the caps just goes with the territory.

For some reason, Japan's prices are nowhere near as high as North America's, and I've managed to pick up four twenty-inch broadcast monitors. Two needed no work, and two basically needed a full recapping. One of the latter is still kind of goony, but the other went from having a hilariously wobbly screen to being the best display I've ever had.

Now, people are starting to get stupid.   They're assuming ANY crt is $$$$$$$$.

Someone locally was selling a fuckin RCA TV for 300$.    A *tiny* tabletop, antennae only twisty knob RCA TV.

Occasional stupidity aside, surely the supply of consumer CRTs in the US still outstrips the demand? I just popped onto my small hometown's craigslist, and there were five posted in the free section in the last week alone.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Component Video & RGB OSSC VS FRAMEMEISTER Comparison]

Put me in a situation where all I have is a 14" BVM and offer to trade me one of the better consumer SDTVs over 25" for it, and I'll accept. If all I have is a 9" BVM, I'll probably try to talk you out of the deal for your sake. But there is no consumer TV you could offer me that I would trade a 20" broadcast monitor for.

20" broadcast monitors are the best CRTs for 240p. The picture quality is objectively better than everything else and next to nobody is going to find anything lacking about the size. (For the few who do, the larger PVMs are going to be hard to beat.) Consumer SD CRTs almost uniformly have bad corner convergence and warping somewhere in the geometry. They also tend to suffer patchiness or shifting on full-white screens because of overly simple high-voltage regulation, too.

Consumer SDTVs are perfectly usable and can look very nice if they have at least S-Video inputs. Component is really no worse than RGB, too, although some of the mods people have been doing to add RGB inputs are very cool as well. I can't imagine people turning up their noses at these things and outright refusing to use them. However, can you blame anyone for wanting to keep a broadcast monitor instead when they have the choice?

Like so many things, there is some bandwagon-bullshit to step around, but if you have a chance to get a 20" broadcast monitor in good shape at a reasonable price and you have the space for it, for god's sake TAKE IT.

As for the whole LCD thing, it's simple: I am willing to accept one, and only one, frame of added lag in the whole pipeline. No screen tearing or frame stutter, and I want sophisticated CRT filters in 4K resolution, too. I'll take the Pepsi Challenge with three frames of added lag any old day of the week.

As for HD CRTs, I used to champion mine, but in the end I had to admit that the way it line-doubles 240p is pretty awful. It's literally this versus this.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / REPAIR GUIDE - Super CD-ROM²: Total Capacitor Replacement Chart]

Image is down due to Photobucket being terrible.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Xanadu II Translation Development Blog]

Time to play devil's advocate.

Some of the coloring principles you see in the original maps that are on the chopping block now are applied elsewhere in the game and might be worth saving.

For example, the pink/purple shading you see on the dark lines. It turns out that if you look around, you can find many examples throughout the game of purple being used to shade brown.

You'll probably have to save and enlarge these images to see it.



On the ship, in the very first screen where the player takes control.



The wood on the floors in the first village.



Here, it's very subtle. You'll have to look at the shadow on the rocks on the right.



Another similar case, on the left.



Here, it's not so subtle. Zoom in, and you'll see purple all over the place.



The original map again, just for reference.

Purple isn't the only shading color that's ever used with brown, don't get me wrong, but it's in there a lot.

In the case of the maps, changing this purple to grey, along with changing the blue vegetation to green and upping the contrast a little, probably isn't going to cause a disruption in the visual style. It could be that it would fool everyone. If it helps things look not-stupid on an LCD, then cool, we can go for it.

However, I think we really need a CRT test to say for sure.

The updated map again, for comparison:

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

I guess it needs to be pointed out again what Sam said about Krikzz's videos that were posted in this thread: they were put on youtube months ago or longer. They aren't in reaction to that recent article, so of course he wasn't being deceptive in how he framed his shots.

It looks to me that the dates on those videos are from this week?

Anyway, Rene posted a video where he took oscilloscope readings of the voltage levels before and after a resistor on one data bus line on a Mega Everdrive. The readings were taken simultaneously during a single logic high. The result seems to indicate that the diode clamps are activating, so the effect is real. Rene's revised estimate is 6mA per pin per logic high.

What he has not done yet is take actual measurements of total current going through the bus. These would be the figures at the heart of whether Everdrives really are dangerous to old hardware. We'll see some results sooner or later from someone, I suppose.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

I see no evidence that he has done anything wrong.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

You really think he's trying to deceive us? At a time when his products have come under scrutiny and are likely to be tested by others, and his credibility destroyed if his lie were found out? When he could apologize now for any problem and likely be forgiven by most?

I think you've jumped to a conclusion about Krikzz despite there being no evidence that his products cause damage.

Even crappy multimeters these days are 99% accurate, and that's more than enough to see whether we're drawing 300mA or 500mA. I'm still curious whether any of the extra 25-30mA is being drawn through the bus, but we've heard a good reason why it wouldn't happen, we've seen that the temperature of the Everdrive is not rising during operation, and we've been given a completely believable (if not yet proven) explanation by Krikzz about why the difference in current is there.

I don't smell bullshit. I think that Rene neglected to do proper testing before making such a big claim. If he wasn't going to test, or at least point to similar cases, he should have framed the diode-clamp-effect as a possibility and not as a fact.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

It looks like all of this started when Rene was measuring the power consumption of Genesis carts and found that while real games were drawing 10-20mA, his Mega Everdrive was drawing more like 130mA.

https://db-electronics.ca/wiki/wikis/consoles/sega-genesis/#Game_Cart_Current_Consumption

Without investigating the specific parts on his Mega Everdrive, checking any other Everdrives or contacting Krikzz, he seemingly assumed that this was a typical amount for all Everdrives and wrote his article.

It just so happens that before even learning that Rene was using a Mega Everdrive, Krikzz posted those youtube links on his forum showing the much smaller 25-30mA increase and commented "As for mega ed v1: testing of this cart will not give clear results, because it use SDRAM and FPGA which has pretty high power consumption."

Later, he wrote in Rene's comment section:

So, what exactly your measurements shows, except like normal power consumption of cartridge components?
MAX-3000 at 50Mhz
Cyclone II at 133Mhz
MT48 SDRAM with forced overabundant refresh cycles.
Look at datasheet and you will see that it is pretty much normal power consumption for such hardware configuration

So the 130mA current is normal for this particular cart, and it's being drawn from the power rail, not through the bus.

Another person on the article page gave a good (possible) explanation for why the diode clamps probably aren't drawing any significant current - the same kind of clamping is done during bus conflicts, and so parts that use the bus are built not to bleed current this way.

I'm still going to wait until someone at least takes a multimeter measurement, but if what that guy says is true, the Neo Geo mutlicarts are likely OK. I actually wonder if those cheap Chinese chips even have diode clamps in them, to be honest.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

A couple more posts from Krikzz:

Flashing an SMS game. Flashing itself causes about a 10mA increase in consumption.

Hucard vs Everdrive 1.0 playing Dungeon Explorer. Everdrive again needs an extra 25-30mA.

EDIT:  btw, 25-30mA doesn't seem like a lot, but if it's all coming from just the flash, CPU and RAM it might be. Knowing what a normal consumption of just the bus would help. He's measuring consumption of the entire system, of which heat dispation from CPU/RAM is but a tiny portion. For all I know consumption by sensitive componants has tripled. Has this been discussed to death anywhere yet?

While it remains to be tested, this extra current is probably just being drawn from the 5V power rail. It really wouldn't be surprising for those flash chips and SD card interfaces to need more power to operate than the mask-ROM in real carts. Not to mention, they're behind a linear 3.3V regulator, which should be dissipating some of that current as heat.

I can't find the link at the moment, but Rene himself did a measurement of Virtua Racing on the Genesis and found it pulling around 100mA more than normal carts, so some extra draw from the power rail is probably within tolerances. It could easily be that the Arcade Card Pro draws more than an Everdrive 1.0.

Those ubiquitous yellow multicarts for MVS for example, there seems to be more anecdotal evidence claiming they kill boards. 

For me this is the main take-away from this thread. Avoid those cheaply made multicarts and pirate carts, I suppose?

Yeah, I don't intend to use my 120-in-1 again until tests are done, at least.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Multiple minutes of a real cart (different from last time) and an Everdrive playing the same game. Difference is still right around 25-30mA.

When Krikzz says "this difference mostly due the normal power consumption of own cartridge components" I'm inclined to believe him.


Also, from Rene's article's comments:

1) cartridge bus activity is not really related or proportional to what is happening on screen. CPU is what is driving the address lines and reading data from Flashcart and it still runs the same if this is a static or animated screen, i.e read new instructions/data from ROM area every 4 cycles at most. Actually, the least complex instruction loop (NOP) is what would stress the cartridge bus the most, not the opposite.

2) current consumption is more directly impacted by the number of pins set high on average than number of cartridge access. To test maximal current consumption you would have a test ROM that continuously read FFFFh from address 3FFFFFh (which is max ROM address) but that wouldn't be a realistic test case either since that's definitively not what normal games are doing.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Of course, I would like to see more consoles tested, using more original carts, and with better equipment - good multimeters at least, oscilloscopes if possible.

However, Rene's article was all about how the diode clamps in the Everdrive flash are almost constantly activating and drawing huge, devastating volumes of extra current through vulnerable parts like the CPU. Now, it looks like the effect may not be happening at all, and if it is, it's likely far less severe than Rene estimated. He could have, and should have, tested this theory before publishing. It also would have been good form to get a statement from Krikzz beforehand.

A fellow posted this on his forum:

Just as a test I threw my mega everdrive on my opened test bed and was looking for voltage spiking and temperature issues. Guess what? NOTHING. It's been on for about 3 days now. I have a temperature monitor on it just to see what happens and the temperature variance I'm seeing is +/- .5 degrees C. Completely within the limits. I'm also not seeing any abnormal spikes.

Krikzz also said this about the resistors:

2. Moreover, I highly suspect the addition of R1 comes from a misinterpretation of Altera app note AN258 

R1 comes not from misinterpretation of Altera app note AN258, first of all i used it because directly connected flash works fine for reading, but writing almost always ends with errors.

Optimistically, we could say that it looks like it's never been about protection and always been about accuracy.

It may yet turn out that there is major current being drawn during bus access and that Krikzz is not being forthcoming. A 25mA increase, however, is pretty underwhelming given what Rene was saying. Give me a few more results like that, and I'll continue to use all my old Everdrives without fear.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Yes, I'm curious about that, too.

Would you agree that a game running normally on the Everdrive without a significant increase in current consumption would indicate that there is no trouble?

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Yes. Twice. I don't get what your getting at.

If there isn't too much current being drawn, where is the problem? Where is damage being caused?

Again, nobody really cares about the flash chip in the Everdrive. Those are replaceable and obviously don't have a terribly high failure rate under the current usage.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Wouldn't any signals sent from the flash to the console be at 3.3V, and therefore not cause any overvoltage/overcurrent problems?

The whole theory of Rene's big article is that clamping diodes in Everdrive flash cause shorts when hit with 5V from the console, and that these shorts drain shitloads of current even with resistors in the way. This effect may be true to an extent, but the actual amounts don't seem to be anywhere near the estimates.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Yeah, but I don't think people are anywhere near as concerned about their Everdrives being damaged by overvoltage as they are about their consoles being damaged by current flowing in large quantities where it shouldn't be.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

But Rene is the one proposing a theory while Krikzz actually measured something.

I mean, we're not going to know until someone checks with an oscilloscope on an IO pin, but there clearly isn't a constant 200mA of extra current being sucked through the data bus. There might be more than 25mA going through there if the components on an Everdrive pull less current off the power rail than a real cart...but I could just as easily believe that the reverse is true, and that that's where the 25mA is coming from.

The next thing I'd be curious to see is how much is consumed during flashing, and how that compares to the ratings on the flash's datasheet.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

Krikzz just posted this.

db-electronics predicted huge current leaks and flash overheat. According to his prediction, carts without voltage translators should draw 12.5mA current for each IO. OK, so, 16bit databus should draw then 200mA. I made small measurement for old EDMD-v3. I checked full console+cart power consumption, difference was around 25mA total, and this difference mostly due the normal power consumption of own cartridge components.

So, my question is: Where is huge current leaks predicted by db-electronics in his sensational article, or where is large amount of heat? Seriously, i can even make video with thermal camera if somebody still believe in overheating. Just touch chips by fingers and you will feel that all everdrive chips is cold and all console chips just a little warm, same as with original carts.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

EDIT: I think I get it.

[General Gaming / Re: The Dangers of using 3.3V Flash Carts in Retro Consoles]

As an owner of seven flashcarts and a Neo multicart, I've been eagerly reading about this for the past hour.

Interestingly, the 68000 CPU's actual output voltage for these signals might be more like 4.25 volts (although whether that is consistent across all manufacturers, I can't say), and that would drastically bring down the amount of excess current flow caused by 3.3v flash chips and no proper translators. Someone would really need to check with an oscilloscope to confirm.
Waybackup: 68000_16-Bit_Microprocessor_Apr83.pdf
(page 81)

The Z80 may be much lower - 2.4 volts.
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/SGS/SGS8400.pdf
Waybackup: SGS8400.pdf
(last page)

Of course, that's just two parts, and it's just the minimum rating while the max is unspecified. As for the PCE's CPU, who knows?

Krikzz wrote this: wayback://krikzz.com/forum/?id=6614

Heh, theory is good, but what we have on the practice?

1. Lot of carts were sold for this years, but NO ONE were returned due the flash chip damage. If carts comes back for repair, they usually damaged physically or has some manufacturing defects. Some early carts, like edmd v2 or super-ed v1, may lost bootloaders, but this is was only software problem.

As for possibility of console damage, here also not been detected any problems. I have MD2 and Famicom-av from first days, they intensively used for development and just to play some games. I use them more than 7 years in heavy mode and nothing happens. Also we have few consoles for production testing, they used almost every day and for 7 years only one famicom died, and it happens due the power cord accidentally shorted on console pcb. The only problem with those test consoles is cartridge connectors, they stop working every 5-10 months after such using in extremely heavy conditions, but after replacement they continue working.

2. Moreover, I highly suspect the addition of R1 comes from a misinterpretation of Altera app note AN258  R1 comes not from misinterpretation of Altera app note AN258, first of all i used it because directly connected flash works fine for reading, but writing almost always ends with errors.

3. As for ground planes. I trying to route all signals on front side, and release back side as much as possible for ground plane. If you will look on back side you will see that almost all filed by ground plane. The only exception is earliest carts. I think that such technique is better than lot of wires on both sides and small ground pieces everywhere (:
Some examples(MEGA-X5, ED64, Turbo-ED v2):


However, i agree that all carts should use voltage shift buffers for all IO, it will reduce power consumption, EMI noise, increase stability and overall product quality. Recently i decide to use 4-layer PCB and voltage translation for all IO in all future products (full voltage translation already long used). Some products already has 4 layer PCB (GBA, upcoming GB-X, GG/SMS-X).
Boards with four layer design:

Doesn't really address the issue of stress on the console side, though.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

One of the pending roles is the Grandfather who narrates the intro. Although we have one back-up for him who sounds quite good, we're continuing the search for a genuine old-guy actor. Our back-up understands and is sympathetic to the situation.

The other one, for the Chapter 3 Sister, is just a case of an actress who hasn't responded to our emails offering her the part. We'll give her about another week.

The "private" listings are all filled.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

Luck and word of mouth, mostly. I think that that website helped a lot.

There are a lot of people who get paid for voice work who aren't members of SAG. It's quite a different world from TV and movies.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

Well, we did it. That was my first-ever live session. Was it a little nerve-racking at first? Sure, but it was also pretty damned fun. The actor I was working with was incredible, and I found myself grinning like an idiot as he did take after high-quality take of each line. Back when we revived this translation project in...October 2015?...I never imagined that it would lead to me having the privilege of giving direction to professional-level actors.

Although "giving direction" is a grandiloquent way of putting it. I mostly laid back, let him do his thing, and said things like "One more time, a little more slowly."

Anyway, I can't wait to do that again. This dub has been a lot of work - you may not know it, but the past two months have been by far the busiest of the project - but it's also been a pleasure all its own. I think I'm going to be sad when it's over.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

I feel like I'm John Candy trying to eat the Old 96'er.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

I don't care too much about quality in the audition phase if you have access to better equipment later on, but it's 100x preferred that you just send us wav files of your stuff at every phase. The address is on the site. Thanks!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

Oh god, I'm embarrassed to even think about the fact that I tried Daimos right now.

Suffice to say, we have much better options this time than to use my voice. Thanks for the "pretty alright" though. 

I don't even know what elmer sounds like, and I don't think he's interested in being in the final product...unless he's been secretly submitting auditions under a pseudonym!? 

[Buy/Sell/Trade / FS: XRGB Mini/Framemeister - Opened, boxless, but unused]

EDIT: Sold.

-----------------------------


I came to the realization that with six CRTs in my house, I just don't need this and probably never will.

After buying it new, I took it out and tried a grand total of two times, with each session lasting less than 20 minutes. Since then, it's just been in a plastic bin on a shelf. Right now, I'm at work, but I can get pictures later.

I stupidly threw the box away when moving all my gaming stuff from one room to another. Everything else, however, is there.

Shipping would be from Japan, although if you act quickly, I'm going back to America next week and could send it from there. I could maybe check the local used game shop and pick up something extra to toss in the box if you have a request, but I'm afraid I don't have the time to do extended hunting.

If I could get $300, that would be cool.

Thanks! 

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Legend of Xanadu Dub Project - Auditions Wanted]

Good call on registering and making our intentions clear in the comments. 

As for the potential for a negative response from Falcom, while I'd just as soon not have them know about the project until it's done, two interviews with the company president always make me feel better.

The first is this.

JS: English speaking fans are so passionate they've made unofficial translations of Ys - what does Falcom think of this?

TK: We're really honored that people are interested in the Ys world so much. However, at the same time we always felt guilty for not being able to bring an official product to their hands. We're very pleased that after a long time we were finally able to bring over an official English version for this audience.

The second is this.

You might be the only hardcore gamer who started with a fan website and then became president of the company you were championing! Can you tell us how that came to be, how you met Falcom founder Masayuki Kato, and how you managed to take over his position?

TK: I had a school assignment to create an introductory website for something, which became the fansite for "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch" (Known as "White Witch" in Japan - EG). There was an offline gathering and I was able to meet many passionate Falcom fans. Within the group, there were some people who worked in the game industry and by talking to them, after graduation, I thought about applying at Falcom. However, I was an economics student, so I applied for a position in the finance department. Once I entered the company, because I had some experience with the internet, I was placed in a position that dealt with the web. In order to create things like game introductions and manuals, I started test playing the games. This lead me to be closer to the development team and I was able to offer my input. Afterwards, I actually was able to take a position within the development team and after some time doing project and product management I found myself as the president - the position I occupy today. Apparently, the founder of Falcom, Mr. Kato, took a look at my fansite after I joined the company and wanted to teach me many things about the company philosophy and game development.

So the president of the company got his start as "one of us" and he didn't condemn fan translations when he had the clearest possible opening to do so.

I'm trying to find it right now and can't, but one of Square's lawyers said some really nasty things about fan translators, including the people who did Seiken Denestsu 3.

We are probably OK.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Street Fighter II Dash double case?]

Read more about the launch of SFII' PCE here:

https://archives.tg-16.com/Gekkan_PC_Engine_1993_07.htm

(By the way, if you can help me decipher all the text in those ads, I would greatly appreciate it. This is an old page that I really need to fix/revise.)

Did you get your hands on Chun Li yet!?

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- Special mini-manga starring Chun Li!
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- Comes with a Street Fighter II' mini [folding] fan!

Offer expires August 31st (postmarked)

See the coupon with the game for details! Call us with questions at the Street Fighter II' office: [numbers].

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