Messages

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Working Replacement CD Laser Assembly by Hitachi?]

I'm not even sure if a Sanyo model of this CD lens even exist. I got that info from the GamedoctorHK's ebay auction, and the picture he gave me looked exactly like the Hitachi model. I asked him for the part number, but said he couldn't tell. Maybe the seller really is selling me a Hitachi, but then again if this is a lens by Sanyo I want to make sure. I'll let you guys know how it goes once I recieve it in the mail.

Thank you! I was about to volunteer buying one form the HK guy to find out what model it is

After all those years of looking for a working replacement, this is indeed a great discovery!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Working Replacement CD Laser Assembly by Hitachi?]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, we know that the Duo's audio problem is not caused by the cd-rom mount but by certain electronic components on the main board (and the problem does not occur with Duo-Rs and RXs.)

However, the laser diode of the Duo/R/RX becomes weak sooner or later (rather sooner, now that the drives are all 15+ years old). I already had one Duo-R whose laser died; had I had a replacement CD pickup back then I could have saved the console, as it was in perfect order otherwise.

So, the question remains, will the Hitachi CD-Rom mounts work?

Do you have any idea exactly what type the Sanyo CD pickups that guy from HongKong is offering are? Are they better suited?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Working Replacement CD Laser Assembly by Hitachi?]

There's a store in the US selling these for $18.95.  Cost with shipping was $25.25 for me.

http://www.electronix.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=HOP-M3&x=0&y=0

So a HOP-M3 CD pickup by Hitachi does work in a Duo/R/RX ? Has anyone tested this?

If this is true then our prayers have been answered.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Brand new CD Lenes for Pc-Engine DUO,DUO-R and DUO-RX]

Edit: never mind, I started a new topic with my question in the right section.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / OMG! Have a look at this Japanese auction]

Yeah, that other auction was WAY better, it contained 3 DUO-Rs (2 boxed), one boxed RX, two boxed and two unboxed DUOs , 1 boxed and 4 unboxed Core Grafx one LT and a GT, plus copies of Sapphire and Sylphia, Birdie Chance, Magical Chase, Dracula X, Fausette Amour and 475 other games!!! And it sold for a measely 3,518.46 USD, that's just 2,904.99 EUR.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / OMG! Have a look at this Japanese auction]

http://page9.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k26624290

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Side Arms Special and Dragon's Curse WOW!!!!]

Ok, I thought RGB and component were the same. My bad (we don't have component video here in Europe). In Europe TVs feature Scart connectors (20 pins), which when fully wired can transmit RGB. (RGB is supported by our TV-sets). S-video transmits all colors via a single pin (same bandwidth as composite, btw). Since my TV-set features both S-video and RGB I was able to directly compare it and yes, RGB is sharper an more brilliant. To make a long story short: You are right, D-Lite, S-Video isn't bad (composite is). However if you can use RGB (or component, respectively) that's the way to go.

On an interesting side note, they have Scart connectors in Japan as well, but for some stupid reason they are wired differently!!! I bought a Sega Saturn Scart-lead in Tokyo a few years ago and was unpleasantly suprised when I got back home and got no picture.

 
_____________________________________
quote from http://www.micoelectric.com/faq/
"What's the difference between Composite, Component, S-Video, and RGB?
These are the formats for video transfer from your DVD player (or DVD home theatre system) to the display (ie. Your TV).

Composite is the lowest possible video quality interconnection. It allows all the components of the signal to be 'squashed' down a single wire in a combined (Composite) format.

S-Video breaks down the signal into a number of components with signals for Chrominance and Luminance. This video output format offers better video quality compared to Composite format.

RGB, as its name suggests, breaks the signal down to its Red, Green and Blue component parts. If both of your display and DVD player support RGB, then this should be the best connection option. Compared to Composite and S-Video, RGB video output format delivers the best video quality.

Component is a video output format found on most American DVD players. While Europe's RGB format breaks the video signal down to its Red, Green and Blue component parts, Component format breaks the signal down to its three basic units: Y, Cb and Cr. It offers similar video quality level comparing to Europe's RGB format."

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Side Arms Special and Dragon's Curse WOW!!!!]

...Or instead of the even more superior RGB, which is component video and therefore offers the best quality there is.

Sure, S-Video is not bad, but it's nowhere near as good as RGB. (S-video uses two signal paths, Luminance (Y) and Chrominance (C), whereas with RGB you have three seperate signals (Y = Luminance, Pb = Chrominance 1, Pr = Chrominance 2). And that equals arcade quality sharpness / saturation.

So if you want he real McCoy, you need an RGB mod, not S-Video. I have an RGB-modded PCE and it looks SWEET. I'm still looking for a cheap RGB-modded DUO-R, though.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Need help with an RGB-modded PCE DUO-R]

Thank you for clearing that up. Just now the CD drive has started acting up. The laser must be really weak; when it arrived this morning I tried out CD-Rs and it couldn't read them (they work fine in my other Duo and Duo-R). At first it did at least play original (non back-up) games. Now it takes a long time to load and the music doesn't play anymore.

I guess I'll simply return it to the guy who sold it to me- after all there are no replacement CD-Rom mounts/lasers available anywhere in the world :-(

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Need help with an RGB-modded PCE DUO-R]

Please help me!

I just purchased a Duo-R which has an RGB-modification. It has a scart lead directly attached. The picture is sharp, but unfortunately very dark, which means the signal is too weak. I opened the Scart connector and had a look inside. There are 3 transistors and a resistor, so this *should* be an RGB signal booster.

There is a black cable which touches the metal frame (it's not soldered to it), could that be the cause?

Please have a look at the fotos I took.
(klick thumbnails for larger images)

/rgb15wv.th.jpg
/rgb25ii.th.jpg
/rgb38gp.th.jpg

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Another Sapphire auction on Ebay. $628 buy it now? Ouch!]

Seems to be real (at least as far as I can tell by looking at those small pictures). The colors are right (vest is purple and face is flesh-colored, the top of the katakana is light yellow) the tearstrip is at the bottom (the fake's tearstrip is in the middle of the katakana-"sapphire"). At least it's none of the fakes the people here bought. So either it is genuine or someone has made a new and improved batch of fakes. To be 100% sure, one would need a closeup foto to compare the printing quality.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Vails IV is impossible]

Been sitting on my shlelf since forever. Your post made me try it for the first time. One question, how do you save your game??

edit: Never mind, it auto saves when you lose all lives and get to the continue screen.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Where to buy replacement lasers?]

http://www.geocities.com/turbogaming/

That's the one you mean, right? Well, shipping a Duo from Europe to the US and back by registered mail would cost at least 80$. Add 60$ for the repair and you might as well buy a working one on ebay. Wonder where he gets (new) spare parts?

I've searched all over the net and I couldn't find any information at all concerning replacement lasers for PCE. I am not an engineer, but shouldn't it be possible to exchange the laser diode itself once it dies?

Who's got any detailed info on the Duo/Duo-R/Duo-RX's CD-Rom unit? All I could find is that it's a "Single-speed CD-ROM drive, managed by a NEC microcontroller and using the SCSI-I interface"

Hopefully someone will come up with a solution, for WE ALL will need one eventually.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Where to buy replacement lasers?]

Luckily both my Duo and my Duo-R are still working fine. However, since they are now 14 years old, the lasers are bound to wear out eventually. In case they do, I'd like to know where to get replacement lasers / CD-Rom mounts.

Could a better (stronger) type of laser be used instead of the weak original one (for instance one that can read CDRWs)? How difficult would it be to to exchange? Anyone here got some tech knowledge?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / PCE Roms + Emu for sale on eBay]

You shouldn't be so fast to condemn the seller. Perhaps those are reprints. We should ask Optimus Prime about it. ;-)

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / I Purchased Sapphire!]

Wow, I can't believe anyone still has the slightest doubt about those counterfeit copies. Even that letter from Hudson pretty much proves it: It says: "Please understand that our PC Engine department has shut down a long time ago". That was in 2001. So much for the reprint theory, which was already disproven by the poor printing quality anyway.
[Did you even read my first post? For instance the part about the manual/inserts which were obviously made using an original copy as source since the counterfeiters had no access to the original source material.]
So the people at Hudson couldn't tell if it was was real or not? They simply had nothing left to compare the fake to.

Those who claim the counterfeits might not be counterfeits after all obviously belong to the "I want to believe" (X-Files trademark) faction who completely defy reason. Who am I to argue with you? Instead, I have an offer for you: Would you like to buy a valuably "development copy" of "Space Fantasy Zone" from me? They come on CD-R, but who knows, they might be the real thing. How about I send a CD-R to the original comapny who made Space Fantasy Zone first and ask them if this could possibly be an original prototype, would you then buy it from me?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Sapphire for less than $30? Sealed?]

Sorry for double-posting:


Hi folks, I'm new here. I just discovered this forum and since I'm a long time fan of NEC's litte wondermachine, I chose to register. After looking around a bit I found this topic.

I'm very sorry I didn't come here earlier so I could have warned you: The copies of Sapphire which that guy sold on ebay are indeed counterfeits.

They were made around mid 2001; not '99 or 2000 as this scammer writes on his page. I was in Tokyo at that time and I am pretty sure there were NO fake Sapphires then.

The people who made them (most likely in Asia) did not have access to Hudson's original printing templates, so they had to use an original copy as "master" which they scanned. Since the original was printed using the offset printing method, the colored parts consist of tiny little dots, while black lines are very sharp. When reprinting it from the scans, this could not be duplicated, of course. That's why the counterfeits are slightly blurred / out of focus. When you look closer, you'll also notice that the colors don't quite match: All parts that are yellow in the original are almost orange in the copy (for instance the katakana writing), the purple vest of the girl on the cover is blue in the counterfeit.

Another thing the fraudsters didn't manage to replicate exactly is the factory seal's tear strip: The original was approximately 0.5cm from the bottom while theirs is higher up in the middle of the katakana letters. Maybe their equipment couldn't do it or maybe they had no original sealed copy for reference. Another thing they simply _could_not_ copy is the serial number on the inner ring of the original CD, which is identical for all original copies.

Those counterfeits were produced for one purpose only: To scam unsuspecting collectors out of a lot of money. Of course this only worked for a short time (until it became known that counterfeits were out there).

I had a good laugh when reading that German scammer's website http://sapphire.anime4ever.de/
"Alternative copies" - what a funny euphemism. Basically all he writes there is complete bullsh*t. Why would a game copany issue a second print run to keep prices down on the secondary market?? Hudson never did such a thing, and not a single shop in Tokyo claims they did. This is, plain and simple, a lie.

Too bad so many of you fell for this. I contacted ebay about the counterfeits several times, they chose not react (just as usual). The guy who sold the counterfeits on ebay (ebay name asian_dvd_classics) knew full well he was selling bootlegs - that's why his auctions were set to "private"; that way the people who bought the fakes couldn't even be warned. You may think that $60 for a nicely made replica isn't a bad price... I'm sure it wasn't for asian_dvd_classics who paid considerably less when he purchased a box full somewhere in Asia and made some $10000 selling them during the past 3 months. I for one think that even $5 is too much for a bootleg. I also think that he is a criminal who should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent. Anyone here know his real name?

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / I Purchased Sapphire!]

Hi folks, I'm new here. I just discovered this forum and since I'm a long time fan of NEC's litte wondermachine, I chose to register. After looking around a bit I found this topic.

I'm very sorry I didn't come here earlier so I could have warned you: The copies of Sapphire which that guy sold on ebay are indeed counterfeits.

They were made around mid 2001; not '99 or 2000 as this scammer writes on his page. I was in Tokyo at that time and I am pretty sure there were NO fake Sapphires then.

The people who made them (most likely in Asia) did not have access to Hudson's original printing templates, so they had to use an original copy as "master" which they scanned. Since the original was printed using the offset printing method, the colored parts consist of tiny little dots, while black lines are very sharp. When reprinting it from the scans, this could not be duplicated, of course. That's why the counterfeits are slightly blurred / out of focus. When you look closer, you'll also notice that the colors don't quite match: All parts that are yellow in the original are almost orange in the copy (for instance the katakana writing), the purple vest of the girl on the cover is blue in the counterfeit.

Another thing the fraudsters didn't manage to replicate exactly is the factory seal's tear strip: The original was approximately 0.5cm from the bottom while theirs is higher up in the middle of the katakana letters. Maybe their equipment couldn't do it or maybe they had no original sealed copy for reference. Another thing they simply _could_not_ copy is the serial number on the inner ring of the original CD, which is identical for all original copies.

Those counterfeits were produced for one purpose only: To scam unsuspecting collectors out of a lot of money. Of course this only worked for a short time (until it became known that counterfeits were out there).

I had a good laugh when reading that German scammer's website http://sapphire.anime4ever.de/
"Alternative copies" - what a funny euphemism. Basically all he writes there is complete bullsh*t. Why would a game copany issue a second print run to keep prices down on the secondary market?? Hudson never did such a thing, and not a single shop in Tokyo claims they did. This is, plain and simple, a lie.

Too bad so many of you fell for this. I contacted ebay about the counterfeits several times, they chose not react (just as usual). The guy who sold the counterfeits on ebay (ebay name asian_dvd_classics) knew full well he was selling bootlegs - that's why his auctions were set to "private"; that way the people who bought the fakes couldn't even be warned. You may think that $60 for a nicely made replica isn't a bad price... I'm sure it wasn't for asian_dvd_classics who paid considerably less when he purchased a box full somewhere in Asia and made some $10000 selling them during the past 3 months. I for one think that even $5 is too much for a bootleg. I also think that he is a criminal who should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent. Anyone here know his real name?