Turbo Everdrive PC Engine / Turbografx 16 Flash Card Nearing Release

[Duo_R]

Are you using one of those micro sd adapters? You could probably dremel the corner off and it should be fine. I will try it on mine when it arrives.

[MottZilla]

No, the Micro SD card itself. What would you use to adapt something to a Micro SD card anyway? It's smaller than your fingernail already. Anyway, it's a minor issue. We are talking about a millimeter space issue.

[NightWolve]

This takes a micro SD card itself; the adapter you're thinking of is a large-sized looking SD card and you plug the micro SD card into that so you can then plug it into your computer (assuming you have a SD port in the front panel). If not, I dunno what other adapter that you were thinking of...

I got my Turbo Everdrive today. Works great. Only problem is the power switch, the safety blade thing that is designed to keep idiots from pulling out the HuCard with the power on, hits my Micro SD card so I have to push on it when I turn the power on. But other than that, everything I tried worked great so far. And I use a RGB Modded DUO-R system. Very happy with the Turbo ED so far.

Ah, excellent! I'm not one that can throw money around and I saw risk here, so I wanted to wait until others bought it to find out if it works as advertised. But eh, I'll have to wait a month or so; I just bought some bowling shoes, paid for my car insurance, car city+state taxes, etc. so bleh, I don't need to throw extra stuff on my CC till I'm clear next month.

[Joe Redifer]

I'm still waiting on mine.  Pre-ordered from Stone Age Gamer and haven't heard word on shipping yet.  I am not sure if he notifies when shipping.  I should have gone with Retrogate.  They shipped my Mega Everdrive and Everdrive 64 pretty fast.

[Duo_R]

Ah I assumed it was a standard SD so that makes sense now

This takes a micro SD card itself; the adapter you're thinking of is a large-sized looking SD card and you plug the micro SD card into that so you can then plug it into your computer (assuming you have a SD port in the front panel). If not, I dunno what other adapter that you were thinking of...

I got my Turbo Everdrive today. Works great. Only problem is the power switch, the safety blade thing that is designed to keep idiots from pulling out the HuCard with the power on, hits my Micro SD card so I have to push on it when I turn the power on. But other than that, everything I tried worked great so far. And I use a RGB Modded DUO-R system. Very happy with the Turbo ED so far.

Ah, excellent! I'm not one that can throw money around and I saw risk here, so I wanted to wait until others bought it to find out if it works as advertised. But eh, I'll have to wait a month or so; I just bought some bowling shoes, paid for my car insurance, car city+state taxes, etc. so bleh, I don't need to throw extra stuff on my CC till I'm clear next month.

[MottZilla]

Just an update on the Turbo ED. I've tried a fair sample of games and so far all have worked fine. Nothing yet that has refused to load. Infact you can load the System Card roms too. So for example you can load System Card 1.0 on your DUO with the Turbo ED to play Altered Beast. You could also load 3.0 rather than remove the Turbo ED from the console.

If someone here with more hardware configurations gets the Turbo ED please test CD System Card loading. I suspect that any Super CD-ROM equipped PC-Engine system will function just like the DUO. And I suspect that the Turbografx 16 or PC-Engine with standard CD-ROM attachment could use the Turbo ED with System Card 1.0 and 2.0 as I do not think they contain any RAM on the cards themselves. I'm fairly certain neither will appreciate having System Card 3.0 loaded on a standard CD-ROM attachment with the Turbo ED as the RAM will not be present.

So anyway, the Turbo ED is excellent. The minor issue with the Micro SD card in the way of the switch a little bit doesn't really matter.

[Frank_fjs]

Shame to hear about the power switch issue, maybe he can alter the design for future releases.

Re the system card ROMS, I doubt that any of them would actually function as intended?

[MottZilla]

The power switch issue again is minor and may be due to my Micro SD card being slightly longer or maybe the card socket was slightly up or maybe the power switch protection blade is just slightly closer in. It's a minor issue that others haven't had. I was the only one to mention it so far.

The System Card ROMs DO work in the DUO. I was able to load up and play Lords of Thunder just fine. I did not try a standard CD-ROM game or Altered Beast yet, but I assume they would work.

[schnuth]

     I received my Turbo Everdrive this weekend and wanted to post my first impressions.  It works great with my Multimods.com region modded S-Video Duo-R, which is a relief as my NEO PCE card refused to work with it.  It also works great with my TurboExpress as well.  I haven't tried every game, but the couple dozen I tested out worked just fine on both Japanese and USA region hardware.  I haven't tried any system cards as I have a Duo and a Arcade card already.
 
     As for the power switch issue MottZilla is having, I haven't had a problem with this at all.  I'm using a Kingston MicroSD card and the power switch guard clears the card just fine.  I haven't had a lot of time to play with it as my 10 month old keeps me very busy these days, but I'll post some more impressions when I have the time.  I will say this is light years better then the Neo PCE card which only held a finite number of games, and sometimes they would write to a bad block and didn't work.  As a owner of the MD, GG, and Super Everdrives, the Turbo Everdrive is just as easy to use and has the same amazing build quality.  I highly recommend it.

[Duo_R]

Got my delivery notice!!!!

[reno5]

Verified and they are sold out. Guess i'll have to check from time to time to get my hands on one.

[Drakon]

mine's still in transit but it's been shipped.

[MottZilla]

Demand right now is probably pretty high. All new EverDrive carts tend to have this issue. You are right, just keep checking. Eventually a new batch will be available. If I remember right the reason he isn't taking more orders right now was he ran out of PCBs and the shipment of new PCBs got delayed. But more will be available sooner rather than later so keep checking. I recommend checking once a day, maybe whenever you check your email.

[CGQuarterly]

I got my shipment notice yesterday, so hopefully it will be here in a couple of weeks.  I have no idea how long airmail from Ukraine takes.

Chris

[MottZilla]

Where is here? For me, it was to the USA and it took under 2 weeks from when I got the shipping notice email to receiving it. 11 days.

[meka]

Hopefully he can make a deluxe version, I don't want one that is bare.

[Bernie]

Im on the fence about getting one of these.  Im going to actually buy any HuCARD that I want to play, but it could be useful with those translated roms.

[esteban]

Im on the fence about getting one of these.  Im going to actually buy any HuCARD that I want to play, but it could be useful with those translated roms. 

In the future I'll buy this Everdrive (it certainly seems like the best card yet), but I have purchased the NeoFlash and the homegrown one (designed by a fellow forum member) because there are a handful of translations and pricey HuCARDs that I want to play on a real console.

For me, it's worth it for a handful of games.

I own tons of games, but I am still infatuated with a few that are "out of reach"...

[turbokon]

Damn, just found out about this and they are already sold out. I have a neo flash but would love this get this.

[Drakon]

Mine arrived yesterday and I love it.  I wouldn't even own a pc engine if it wasn't for this flash cart.  Because of the turbo everdrive I'm now able to test the hucard library on the real hardware and I've started collecting hucards of the games I really like.  The low pass filter audio mod I did sounds amazing with all games which is great to know (lots of bass).

[djcouchycouch]

Got mine yesterday as well. It didn't come with a manual so I've got two questions:
1. Is the PCE/TG16 switch for the console you plug it in or for the region of the game you want to play?
2. What does the little clicky button do?

Tried a few games and the large majority worked. Two games I tried didn't: a version of Street Fighter II CE that just got stuck at a black screen after loading and a game I don't know anything about called Zipang.

[Frank_fjs]

The region switch is to be set to the same region of the console you are using it on. It is not a region select switch for games.

To take a guess, maybe the clicky button is a reset button? I have no idea though as I don't own one yet.

[Drakon]

The clicky thing is indeed a reset.

[turbokon]

Must have this!! Anybody knows where I can still order one?

[djcouchycouch]

The clicky thing is indeed a reset.

Yup! Tried it. Pretty convenient.

Edit: Retried SFIICE. It was just a bad dump. Tried another one and it worked.

[Drakon]

It's surprising how many bad dumps are floating around.  I went through a lot of bad dumps setting up my mega everdrive.

[Joe Redifer]

Why do bad dumps even get posted online if they're bad?

[grahf]

Because a lot of emulators are resilient enough to play anything.

[Joe Redifer]

That just means the emulator isn't accurate.

[Bernie]

Bad dump.....   haha!   Seriously tho, with all the goodsets and no-intro sets of pce roms, there is no reason to end up with a bad dump.

[grahf]

That just means the emulator isn't accurate.

Not exactly. When the first emulators were coming out, the only roms available were from the handful of game copiers that were around back then. None of them produced "pure" dumps - they all had headers, interleaving, etc. The emulators simply supported what was there.

[Drakon]

I grabbed the entire pc engine / turbografx library of roms.  All these roms have been cleaned up any every single one I played works great on my turbo everdrive.

[turbokon]

I grabbed the entire pc engine / turbografx library of roms.  All these roms have been cleaned up any every single one I played works great on my turbo everdrive.

How did you clean thoses roms?

[Joe Redifer]

I find that once through the dishwasher usually does the job.

[turbokon]

I find that once through the dishwasher usually does the job.

Coolbeans, I'll give this a try;)

[Bernie]

Ha!  I love this.

I find that once through the dishwasher usually does the job.

[Drakon]

I grabbed the entire pc engine / turbografx library of roms.  All these roms have been cleaned up any every single one I played works great on my turbo everdrive.

How did you clean thoses roms?

I never said I cleaned them up they came clean.  Clean meaning the turbo everdrive likes it.  I tried some other random roms from the internet at first and some worked but others didn't.

[turbokon]

I thought maybe you have used a hex editor to clean them. I'm sure running it thru a dishwasher works too

[spenoza]

Just get the no-intro set. They are pre-cleaned and ready to go.

[Drakon]

Here's the amazing pcb cover I made:

/turboeverdriveawesomecover.jpg

[Duo_R]

It worked for a Duo system I have that had a bunch of leaky caps. Why not the Roms too!

I find that once through the dishwasher usually does the job.

[Drakon]

Here's a quick cover I just built:

/Drakon/tedcase.jpg
/Drakon/tedcase2.jpg
/Drakon/runsfine_1.jpg

[NightWolve]

Here's the amazing pcb cover I made:

/turboeverdriveawesomecover.jpg

Hm, so after purchasing this, how about getting that liquid electrical tape and pouring over most of the PCB? Good idea or ??

[SeymorOnion]

Last I heard, one of the big wigs at Stone Age Gamer was developing clear Vaccu-Formed Plastic Shells that could snap onto it.

*Edited: Changed "Thermoformed" to "Vacu-Formed", and added an inline linkage to one of his vacu-formed prototype images.

[Drakon]

snap on?  And hold onto what?  There's nothing for it to clip onto.

[SeymorOnion]

I assumed it would snap into the little holes in the PCB.
I'm not sure; I don't own one; I've only seen pictures of it.

Failing that, if someone had a resin kit (or something else along those lines), they could probably make some molds for a shell.
It could have several pegs/pillars that go through the holes in the PCB.
If the pillars were hollowed-out a bit, one could include some screws that could be twisted in from the underside of the PCB, perhaps.

Or, you could skip the screws and use a dab of epoxy on the chips, and possibly on part of the SD Card Slot Shield.
The pegs should still be there, to help resist slippage, at least.

[NightWolve]

So... good idea to coat liquid tape over the PCB ? I'm pretty sure I've never damaged anything electrical via a static charge, but I don't wanna start now either when I get this. Looks like he used good, lifetime tantalum caps, so I don't see any repairs I would ever have to do forcing me to remove the coating years from now. Anyhow, this thing is definitely a pretty final solution! Sounds like everything works and it'd be a perfect companion to my ole TurboExpress!

[SeymorOnion]

So... good idea to coat liquid tape over the PCB ? I'm pretty sure I've never damaged anything electrical via a static charge, but I don't wanna start now either when I get this. Looks like he used good, lifetime tantalum caps, so I don't see any repairs I would ever have to do forcing me to remove the coating years from now. Anyhow, this thing is definitely a pretty final solution! Sounds like everything works and it'd be a perfect companion to my ole TurboExpress!

I'm not sure if it's safe to do that, but if it is, it would be pretty cool, and an almost effortless solution.
Pun intended. 

[thesteve]

http://www.ellsworth.com/dow-corning-1-2577-silicone-conformal-coating-453g-bottle/
this is the standard

[Drakon]

I assumed it would snap into the little holes in the PCB.
I'm not sure; I don't own one; I've only seen pictures of it.

Failing that, if someone had a resin kit (or something else along those lines), they could probably make some molds for a shell.
It could have several pegs/pillars that go through the holes in the PCB.
If the pillars were hollowed-out a bit, one could include some screws that could be twisted in from the underside of the PCB, perhaps.

Or, you could skip the screws and use a dab of epoxy on the chips, and possibly on part of the SD Card Slot Shield.
The pegs should still be there, to help resist slippage, at least.

Oh wow there really are four extremely tiny holes I didn't even notice that.  The bottom ane sides of it are flush against the case.  On mine I used a small amount of hot glue since with epoxy there's no going back.