MY Custom PCE GT

HercTNT · 12/09/2011, 12:03 AM

I have wanted a PCE GT/Turbo express since the day they came out. Two years ago I gave a TG16 to my best friend to introduce him to the Turbo for the first time. Until then he had never heard of one. This year he bought me a PC-engine GT with the help of my wife as an early christmas present. I sent it out to Steve for repair and a new screen and got it back today. First I want to thank the hard work and dedication of this community to even make such mods and repairs possible. I have been to alot of forums and this one has one of the closest communities I have ever seen. Also, huge thanks to Steve for taking on the project and putting up with me for the last month. He did a fantastic job and I highly encourage anyone wanting similar work done, look him up. Please forgive the picture, my lack of photoshopping skills does not do the picture justice at all. Turns out, my batteries suck as well. After reading another thread in this forum on just such a matter, i'm gonna purchase some eneloop rechargables to fix the problem. I dont have the funds yet. When I do get the batteries I will put up a picture of it running.

Forgive the blatant butt snorkling, but i'm a huge turbo fan and this site and its forum goers has made my dreams possible. Thank you all again, and Huge thanks to Steve!!!

roflmao · 12/09/2011, 12:10 AM

This community rocks. Thanks for sharing your story, HercTNT.

...Now I want to mod my Express with a new screen.

bartre · 12/09/2011, 12:19 AM

I now want to GET an express/GT.
looks sick, how's the screen?

Tatsujin · 12/09/2011, 01:13 AM

Nice one. and how does it look in action?

thesteve · 12/09/2011, 02:03 AM

his looks slightly better than mine (better color faster sync)

HercTNT · 12/09/2011, 06:14 AM

The screen in my opinion is fantastic. Compared to the original its completely night and day difference. There is no lag what-so-ever. There is no ghosting. The colors are sharp and the text in games has gone from impossible to read for some, to crystal clear. The Picture does not do it justice. Steve cut the plastic extremely well and when the GT's in your hand it looks natural. The sound is loud and clean. I guess thats what a good recap will do for you. I was just as impressed with the sound as i was with the screen. I tested Coryoon, Air Zonk, Twinbee, and columns (using my PCE PRO flash cart from tototek). And now for the most impressive reviewer of all..........my wife!! Yes folks, she has never seen a Pc-engine GT in her life. When I turned it on and started playing Air Zonk, she removed it from my hands for the next half an hour!! And that about says it all

henrycsc · 12/09/2011, 08:32 AM

Wow! very impressive. Steve, I didn't know you were already doing these mods. Very nice.

csgx1 · 12/09/2011, 12:34 PM

Very nice. That's awesome xmas gift. You have a pretty cool wife. Unfortunately, my wife doesn't even know(or care to know) what the PC engine is.

Nazi NecroPhile · 12/09/2011, 01:01 PM

Dang good friend and a great wife. Looks nice and clean - any chance of some up close pics of it in action?

thesteve · 12/09/2011, 02:31 PM

im not officially doing the mods, and havent quite nailed down the final encoder design, and i havent stocked any screens.
but that doesnt mean i cant do a few prototypes.

spenoza · 12/09/2011, 02:50 PM

Has anyone explored putting a 320x240 screen in the GT/Express?

thesteve · 12/09/2011, 08:22 PM

heh the screen i used claims 640 480

spenoza · 12/09/2011, 11:38 PM

Wouldn't that cause some odd artifacting on most Turbo games, assuming the screen resizes content instead of just displaying it with a black border. I hate LCD resizing. CRTs are much better about making it look good.

thesteve · 12/09/2011, 11:42 PM

actually a 480i display will display 240p without scaling as they are the same format

thesteve · 12/09/2011, 11:44 PM

note you should get about 5.5 hours on the average NiMh batterys

HercTNT · 12/09/2011, 11:45 PM

I cant do a pic of it in action until i get batteries. I had cheap family dollar batteries and my wife used them up when she "borrowed" the GT from me

Their were no artifacts or issues of any kind on the games I was able to play. In my opinion they looked fantastic. Text was easy to read as well making many more games playable. A huge bonus I would think. Yea my wife is cool. Shes a blue eyed blonde that kicks ass in some games (sorry i know i'm bragging). She used to play Unreal tournament 2004 online against me and my friends. When they found out a girl was kicking their ass they quite playing

BlueBMW · 12/09/2011, 11:57 PM

Pics or it didn't happen!!

Just kidding

HercTNT · 12/10/2011, 12:04 AM

I dont have any pics of her kicking our ass, that was just to embarassing

spenoza · 12/10/2011, 12:22 AM

I'm assuming if the screen is 640x480 that is it inherently capable of 480p, and to do 480i or 240p requires doubling.

thesteve · 12/10/2011, 12:24 AM

its composite, so inherently 480i

spenoza · 12/10/2011, 12:34 AM

Oh, right, a system as old as the GT would us an analog signal and not a digital one... Still, if the resolution of the screen is 640x480, it is doing pixel doubling. The actual display resolution of 240p/480i is 320x240.

thesteve · 12/10/2011, 12:39 AM

i agree, and suspect its a true 240 display.
it was advertised as 640X480, but thats the format spec for comp video

HercTNT · 12/10/2011, 12:43 AM

Whatever it is it works great. Now we just need to figure out how to hook a minidisc player through the cartridge port to play cd games and we will be all set. Oh yea, and invent an arc reactor to power it all. Anyone friends with ironman?

spenoza · 12/10/2011, 01:32 AM

In that case, it is the perfect screen. So, how does it deal with the many 256x256 res games? Just black bars on the side?

thesteve · 12/10/2011, 01:37 AM

it will deal with them like any other composite screen, however the game tells it to

spenoza · 12/10/2011, 02:23 AM

Thing is, I don't know how an analog LCD will typically respond to a resolution change. A long time ago the default was to simply display a smaller screen area, retaining a pixel to pixel aspect ratio and simply blacking out the parts of the screen that aren't in use. But these days controllers in the LCD often scale the input to the display size. With something like a GT I think I'd actually prefer the former for the extra clarity. That's why I'm curious what the screen does in this case.

thesteve · 12/10/2011, 02:29 AM

the system does not display different resolutions.
the PCE/TG chipset scales everything to fit the composite standard screen format, so the screen never sees different resolutions.

esteban · 12/10/2011, 02:54 AM

I can't wait to see some pics of the new screen. Of course, before and after shots would make for a very nice comparison. ;) I know, I know—I'll stop.

Congrats on the GT! I am envious.

HercTNT · 12/10/2011, 12:41 PM

we live in the middle of podunk usa. Next week when i get paid i will pick up some energizers so i can take some pics for you guys. Sorry i could not do it sooner. Yea i feel pretty lucky. My only hobbies are retrogaming and building gaming pc's, kinda nerdy i know. My wife does not care, so i'm glad to have my GT.

spenoza · 12/10/2011, 01:02 PM

Sounds like you desperately need some good rechargeables. That way you never have to run out for batteries.

blueraven · 12/10/2011, 05:36 PM

Awesome Job on that GT!

I recommend a power adapter. The rechargeables don't cut it sometimes.

HercTNT · 12/11/2011, 03:59 PM

OK, a friend of mine was nice enough to stop by with batteries, here is a pick from bomberman 94. once again, i know its crappy i wanted to give you an idea of screen size and clarity. Trust me the pic does not do it justice

HercTNT · 12/11/2011, 04:07 PM

another pic, this one taken by my wife, apparently i dont know how to use a camera

the screen is not blurry, its my camera

HercTNT · 12/11/2011, 04:14 PM

This ones for blue, i hope you know shes hates having her picture taken. she gave the following message:

Obey the wife, then the PCE!

thesteve · 12/11/2011, 04:43 PM

wow, that is a crappy camera.
all the pics look grainy

HercTNT · 12/11/2011, 05:03 PM

sorry man, its a kodak. Damn thing sucks at macros, constantly goes out of focus, and has terrible low light function. Considering it was not a cheap camera you can imagine my thrill. its about 4 years old though so hey, what can you do.

esteban · 12/11/2011, 06:42 PM

Quote from: HercTNT on 12/11/2011, 05:03 PMsorry man, its a kodak. Damn thing sucks at macros, constantly goes out of focus, and has terrible low light function. Considering it was not a cheap camera you can imagine my thrill. its about 4 years old though so hey, what can you do.

My friend, the images you posted are .gif, which is incredibly limited for photos.

We can help you produce better images to post here, if you have the time and patience

That said, I think that the photos you posted are quite interesting.

HercTNT · 12/11/2011, 06:46 PM

According to the forums i have a 120kb limit to the size of picture i can post. I have been intentionally chopping them down and saving them as gifs to get within that limit. I have zero knowledge on photo cropping and resizing. I was just winging it. please show me a better way. it would help alot.

incrediblehark · 12/11/2011, 06:54 PM

you might have to use an external photo uploading site like photobucket, imageshack, etc and then post the img tag in the forum post.

This looks really awesome and I would love to have this mod done asap! I just don;t know if I should have my turboexpress modded or get a cheaper gt system for the new screen mod.

thesteve · 12/11/2011, 08:47 PM

ive been uploading here as jpg.
the compression looks better for photo's

BlueBMW · 12/11/2011, 10:55 PM

I guess it happened

Pics dont lie

spenoza · 12/12/2011, 02:40 AM

I like PNGs for photos. But then, I like PNGs for everything.

BlackandBlue · 12/12/2011, 01:21 PM

That screen looks bright as hell in the pic with your wife holding it. Very impressive when compared to the standard screen.

Flare65 · 12/12/2011, 03:58 PM

Ok, I wanna know how to do this to my Turbo express!

thesteve · 12/12/2011, 05:08 PM

there are 2 requirements.
(1) you will need a video encoder installed in the TE.
(2) you will need a composite display, that can be run on 5V and fit in the system

HercTNT · 12/12/2011, 05:08 PM

Well Flare, you contact thesteve, let him know you want yours done up, and he will take care of the rest

It takes a special encoder board to work, so its not likely something you can do on your own. definately well worth it as far as i'm concerned.

I can see, before i managed to post this, he beat me to it. Anyhow thats the guy you wanna ask.

T2KFreeker · 12/12/2011, 11:27 PM

This looks awesome! I want one!

BlueBMW · 12/12/2011, 11:28 PM

<-- blame me for being lazy on building up encoder boards... steve's making them manually right now. Someday we'll have some nice fancy ones though.

T2KFreeker · 12/12/2011, 11:43 PM

Quote from: BlueBMW on 12/12/2011, 11:28 PM<-- blame me for being lazy on building up encoder boards... steve's making them manually right now. Someday we'll have some nice fancy ones though.

If they will help me get a screen like that into a Turbo Express, I am happy. The future looks bright!

io · 01/20/2012, 01:20 PM

Quote from: thesteve on 12/12/2011, 05:08 PMthere are 2 requirements.
(1) you will need a video encoder installed in the TE.
(2) you will need a composite display, that can be run on 5V and fit in the system

Hi,

I'd like to modify my GT too. Did you post somewhere the way you did this ?
What is this encoder made of ? I may be able to do it myself without any problem.

Thanks.