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[Console Repair/Mod Center / Laseractive doesn't read Mega LD/CD]

Another Laseractive thread 

I received a junk laseractive last week. The tray opens (with a little help), but it would'nt read anything: any type of discs wasn't spinning.

I swapped the lens with another one (BlueBMW, if you read this, you can add the CLD-900 to the compatible units list) and now regular CDs and LDs play fine.

BUT Mega LDs and MegaCDs don't work. The discs spin, but don't launch. Cartridges work.

So I need help from the tech gurus to narrow down the source of the issue 

- If regular CDs and LDs play fine, should Mega CDs and Mega LDs also work, or could the lens be strong enough to read regulars discs but too weak to read games?

- Or could the Sega pac be faulty? I recapped it a while ago, so I quickly checked my old soldering job and it seems fine at first view, except 2 NP caps that don't look genuine  and that I'm sure weren't soldered by me.

- I read in some thread that it's possible to adjust the lens power, but I wasn't able to find info  in the service manual or in forums. Does anybody know wich pot(s) is concerned?

Thanks in advance  for your help 

[Console Repair/Mod Center / CoreGrafX1 no image / not working]

This morning I RGB modded a CGX. I didn't try it first with an RCA cable.
I used an amp that was working yesterday on another CGX. I changed the C133 & C135 too. I tried with Csync and composite video.

But I don't think it's a video problem because:

-With Wataru/KC, I get a black screen but the music plays. But nothing happens next, normally the demo starts with music after few seconds if you don't touch the pad. Here nothing happens after the title music stops playing. With Raiden I have a white screen and no music starts if I push run.

-I get the same issue with an RCA cable (using composite video). This RCA cable works with an other CGX modded the exact same way.


I get 4,96V out of the voltage regulator: could the missing 0,04V be the source of the problem? Or could it be something else (6280, 6270, Hucard slot...)?

I didn't notice any crack in the PCB or any over-heating IC.

Thanks for your help guys 

[Buy/Sell/Trade / The "plaisir d'offrir, joie de recevoir" raffle.]

Hi there,

as the title says ( I let you google translate  ), I' m so glad to have won Sarumaru's raffle that I want to give back to the community.

So here's a raffle for ten Hucards:

/849455WP20151223163448Pro1.jpg

Not the best but not the baddest,  only action games so no language barrier, and as they're loose,  I hope the guys who enter the raffle are willing to play them.

First name out of the hat wins 5 games, and can choose the titles he wants.
Second wins 3 games, and choose among the rest.
Third gets the two remainings.


I'll pay for shipping, and if 2 or 3 winners are from the same continent, I'll ship to the higher one who'll have to dispatch the games. If winners are from 3 different continents, well, that'll be for me.

Conditions:

- at least 50 posts outside of buy/sell/raffle threads.
- that's all!

Winners will be randomly chosen and announced  at 00:01 the first january 2016.
Good luck!

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


Entrants:


-Spenoza
-EmperorIng
-Grolt (But leave my derrière alone  )
-Kosko99
-Dicer
-BigusSchmuck
-Vimtoman
-PCEngineHell
-Roflmao
-Ergot_Cholera

[NEC Console Resource / Better late than never. Hi from France!]

Hi there,

I suscribed to the forum a (little) while ago, but never presented myself properly. I don't post that 
much, but enjoy reading you guys, some threads are so entertaining, instructive or exciting.

I'm always amazed and exited  by the vitality of the PcE scene, and by the new projects and books popping  out. I mean, it's 2015,  back in the days I would never have thought I could have new books to read or new  games to play or could speak about PcE with anyone in the world, as I was the only one in my town to have  one, and had barely nobody to share the love I had for this console with.


DISCLAIMER: This introduction will be a PITA to read, because of my far from perfect english and because It  will surely be a long-ass post. I'm going to tell my life here. And I got so much to say when it comes to PcE that I don't know what to start  with.

So I'll go chronological.


1989: The " This console looks so cool" era

First time I heard about PcE, 1989, . Back then (I was 12), I used to play Arcade games in smoky bars and  small arcade centers. Shinobi (all-time arcade favorite), Double dragon, Bad dudes vs Dragon Ninja, Ninja  Warriors (Yeah, lot of ninjas  ), Heavy Unit, R-Type,  and all the games of that era...  My friends had NESs and Master Systems, but I  couldn't stand to play on these, graphics and sounds were so ugly, compared to the arcade, and come on,  Shinobi on SMS WTF?? even the gameplay is totally different...

So back then I used to read Amiga/Atari ST magazines, and Amiga was my dream machine.

And one day, one of that magazines spoke about a new console I've never heard about that started to be sold  in french shops: "La Nec", as we were going to call it later. Critics in that mag were dithyrambic: The PcE  conversions exploded the Amiga ones in every aspects. And Gunhed... what was written about Gunhed achieved  to convinced the kid I was: best Shmup ever, hyper fast smooth scrolling, arcade at home... don't throw  more. But there was a major issue: my parents would never let me have a Video game console at home... only Game Boy allowed.  That's why I had to wait till...

1993: The GT era

The GT, my graal, had a huge drop in price in France at the end of 92. I secretly saved up money during 6 months,  and finally one day my precious was mine, bundled with Cyber Core. On my way home I threw the boxes in a bin so that my parents couldn't find it in may room  ...  The only other guy with a PcE at school sold me  a bunch of loose games for a price that would be unbelievable by today's standards: Shinobi (Yeah! ), Jacky  Chan (What a game!), Override, Parodius, and other minor games: I was Happy. And later that year I could  put my hands on Street Fighter 2'... the faces of the other guys when I was playing it at school was  priceless


1995: The " Total NEC way of life" era

That summer, at 18, I left my parent's house for a litte flat in town. I became friend with the seller of 
the Video Game/Manga shop next to my flat and one day, searching for cool stuff in the shop's cave while  the owner was away, we found a boxed PcE DUO along a pile of a dozen loose NESs. I nearly had a heart  attack. We didn't give a fuck to the NESs and let them rot, but we of course took the Duo, assuming the  shop owner had forgotten it was there. We were assuming right. I was so juiced, at that time we were already  playing PS1 and Saturn in the shop so the PcE was alredy a old if not dead system, but a PcE Duo !!! I had only saw it in magazines, that console was a  dream I always believe I could never touch, and then it was there, in our hands, so unexpectingly ! Problem: my friend  wanted to keep it for him. Miracle: there was no PSU in the box. He then accepted to sell me the console  for 50 Francs!! 7.50 € !!! and he let me take Spriggan, Ninja Spirit and 4 other shitty games that were  lying in a cupboard of the shop for ages!! One modified Megadrive PSU later, the console powered on  : Familly events  aside, it was one of the greatest days of my life, and the start of a  three years period I spent playing  Pce, and wasting my studies.

I was not asocial, I had a lot of friends, occasional girlfriends, and as I was the only one with a flat my 
place was the meeting point. So we had countless epic gaming parties on Bomberman94, Final match Tennis,  Dekoboko... fucking good memories. When I was alone of course all my free time was spent playing PcE. No internet back then, to find games we had to call the very few shops in France that still had PcE games, or search for offers in magazines. We PcE owners who didn't live in Paris had to spend lot of time phoning each  others to buy, trade, sell games, sometimes buying or trad blindly! I could put my hands on and play  a lot of  games that way, I think 250-300, but I never had more than 40~ at the same time, sort of bankroll. I was hungry of  everything: Shooties, Vs Fighting, RPGs, Digicos, platfomers, weird things... I discovered so much games I  never heard of. Countless epic moments: the first time I saw the super fast scrolling of Spriggan's first  stage; First time I heard the Music Of Lords Of Thunder; First time I saw the destroyers's apparition in  Nexzr; First time I played GOT... GOT... Instant love... the game I played the most in my entire life, at  least 1 time by day during 3~ years, real addiction.

But sadly, this era had a bad end...


1998 : The " So long, Pc Engine Duo" era, aka the dark ages

I'm a kind guy, so when a new friend showed interest in the PcE, telling me he wanted to play it like 
forever, I brought my console to his flat with my best games (GOT,WOT, Nexzr, Spriggan 1 and 2, Dracula  X...), we spent several evenings playing, everything was fine, until the day he moved on, without warning  me. Didn't know where he left, the other guys I knew he knew told me they didn't know where he was... I was  young, dumb, I didn't go to the police, my console was lost. (Funny that lost is nearly an anagram of  stole)

Since then I continued to play on other systems, but it was not the same. My passion for video games  started to fade away, real life things caught me up, I was done with the PcE, trying to put it out of my  mind. Untill...


2006 : The " Nostalgia " era, aka the casual emulation era

I wasn't that much into techno things back then, so I got my first internet connexion in 2006. I already  had heard about emulation, so one of the first thing I did was to get Magic Engine, and find Isos of my  favs. After a long times of downloads and lots of struggle with ME I finally got the thing to work. And  then... the intro of GOT, the music of Nexzr, instant goose-flesh and burst into tears. I fucking so much  missed that shit.

From then I started to play games I always wanted to play, but something had changed in me, I wasn't PcE  hungry anymore. There was something missing, that I coudn't put my finger on, something obvious though,  that I'd figure out later. (cough*Real Hardware*cough)

So the next years I played occasionaly, maybe 4-5 times a year, and only my favs, in quick runs. That were  during quick rushes of nostalgia, often when I came back home after a drunken night. Untill...

 
2012 : The " That's not nostalgia, that's just Love " era, aka back in the game!

One day that year I saw a Duo in a VG shop. The same I had, the black one. I felt a little something in my  guts, but walked away, there was no way I paid to play old videogames. But time going on, the image of that  Duo stuck in my mind and my remaining PcE games keeping whispering "we want to live again, we want to live  again..." directly in my brain, my fate was sealed . One day I woke up, took my credit card and went back  to the store. That sucker wasn't there anymore, there was a big hole in the ground instead of all the  block. Fucking Tramway construction. So I spent liters of gas to drive to almost every Video Game store  200kms around my area, only to not find anything. So I put my finger into devil's ass hole, aka Ebay, to  buy a duo-R. And since then, the sucker has swallowed all my arm, shoulder included!

But no regrets. The feeling I had when I took the Ave6 in my shaking hands, put the GOT CD in the console,  pushed the run button, the "goose-flesh and burst into tears" thing was back. Since then I bought way to  much games, got infected by the collectard disease, bought consoles, bought my first soldering iron, learn  to mod them, to repair them, reached a soldering skill level I never thought I was capable of, completed  games I couldn't complete back in the days, and finally understood that this love story would never end. I  got the Pc Engine deeply carved in my skin, so be it.



Thanks and sorry to those who managed to read this without a brain indigestion. There's a lot of my life in there, usually I'm not a guy who exposes his feelings that easily, but it had to come out. 


Cheers guys!

[Console Repair/Mod Center / RIP my beloved Supergrafx]

Hi guys,

while I was struggling against the last boss in 1941 my wife had the good idea to go quick between the table and the TV and hauled her feet in the Scart cable, which resulted in my supergrafx falling from 30cm on the floor and now it's dead (the supergrafx).

Symptoms:
- right after the fall, the image was frozen but music continued to play (IIRC, I powered it off right away).
- now when I power on the console all I got is a white screen without sound, same as when the card is not detected or when the slot is empty. I tried with several games, slighltly moving the card in the slot  trying to get the right position, but always the same result: white screen, no sound.

I opened the console to have a quick check and none of the chips is over heating.

Any Idea? (or condolences?)

[Console Repair/Mod Center / PcE GT component identifiying]

Hi tech guys (and others)

I need a little help to identify a smd component in GT/TE (hope WilyKat won't mind I stole his pic, it's the only one I found with the component visible)




I think it's a voltage regulator, but not sure.

Thanks for your help!