Turbo Express/Pc engine question

[Necrocheese]

I was wondering if anyone knew a mod site that sold either turbo express systems that had region mods, or even just pc engine gt's.  I live in America, so its hard to ever even see a pc engine gt on ebay, and all the mod sites I've found only sell modified Nec consoles, never the handheld. 

I'm new, both to this forum and the NEC fandom in general.  I've always liked Sega consoles, but recently I've discovered what I missed out on with roms, so now I'm a turbo fan as well.  As such forgive me for any ignorance regarding Turbo consoles please.

[rolins]

I haven't come across a website that would even consider modding a TE. If you can't find a GT on ebay then post WTB on this forum or another. You'll definitely find better deals in forums if you're patient.

But are you sure you want to start off with a TE/GT? Since your new to the NEC consoles I would recommend trying one of the consoles first. They're easier to get and not as prone to failure as TE/GT. Plus you can enjoy the games for hours on end w/o worrying about changing batteries.

[CrackTiger]

You were probably just unlucky and hit a dry spell on eBay for PCE GT's. I always see them for sale while srearching for other PC Engine stuff.

Here's one being sold out of the U.S.-

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEC-PC-Engine-GT-HE-System-Handheld-console_W0QQitemZ280078531038QQihZ018QQcategoryZ62054QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You're better off just buying a GT and not bothering with a Turbo Express until you become a serious PC Engine/Turbo fan/collector who doesn't mind 'wasting' money.

The only game you'd really be missing out on is Order Of the Griffon, for which you could pick up a cheap TG-16 to play it on. Generally, most PCE games are cheaper or still as dirt cheap as U.S. Turbo HuCards and any games that are really playable on a 'GT don't involve any real text reading anyway.

[Necrocheese]

But are you sure you want to start off with a TE/GT?

I won't start off with a gt, I want to get a turbo duo with a region switch first from here - http://www.multimods.com./ as a friend recommended them.  Plus card converters, from what I've seen, are bloody expensive.  I'm just collecting knowledge so that when I am ready to get one I have a vague idea of where to start. 

I'd love to just get a pc engine since they're cheap, but then I'll have to buy the cd unit and then the super card if I want to play the "super cds".  The reason I even brought up the modded express is because I've seen them on estarland.com, but they rarely have them in stock. 

And black tiger, thanks, though I did see that on ebay just a day ago.  Reason I'm apprehensive about it is the "no returns/refunds".  If there are some dead pixels on that thing there's no way I can do anything about it.

[CrackTiger]

But are you sure you want to start off with a TE/GT?

I won't start off with a gt, I want to get a turbo duo with a region switch first from here - http://www.multimods.com./ as a friend recommended them.  Plus card converters, from what I've seen, are bloody expensive.  I'm just collecting knowledge so that when I am ready to get one I have a vague idea of where to start. 

I'd love to just get a pc engine since they're cheap, but then I'll have to buy the cd unit and then the super card if I want to play the "super cds".  The reason I even brought up the modded express is because I've seen them on estarland.com, but they rarely have them in stock. 

And black tiger, thanks, though I did see that on ebay just a day ago.  Reason I'm apprehensive about it is the "no returns/refunds".  If there are some dead pixels on that thing there's no way I can do anything about it.

The multimods guy hasn't been doing mods for sometime now and it'll probably be a while longer before he does anymore if he does offer his services again.

You should just buy a PC Engine Duo R/RX system, whether you ever get a mod done or not.

Turbo Duos go for double or more than the identical PC Engine Duo. But both are prone to developing problems.

A PC Engine Duo R or RX will play everything but U.S. HuCard games. But you can buy a cheap TurboGrafx-16 to play them for a fraction of the price of a convertor or paying someone to mod a Duo.

You can buy a reliable PCE Duo R/RX + TG-16 + even a friggin SuperGrafx (and probably squeeze in an Arcade Card) for the price of a single Turbo Duo, let alone the added cost of a convertor/modding service.

[Necrocheese]

Are the problems that can occur with a pce duo severe enough to warrant paying the higher price for a duo r?

[VestCunt]

Are the problems that can occur with a pce duo severe enough to warrant paying the higher price for a duo r?

IMO, no.

A Japanese Duo (non-R/RX) is the cheapest way to play all of the CD games.  Add a used US Turbografx unit to that and you can play everything except the 5 Supergrafx cards.  The reason people like the Duo R/RX is they moved the heat sinks that cause one type of sound problem in some US and PCE Duo's (I'm going off what I've heard, I'm not a techie).  I think the R and RX look kind of stupid and people have started bleaching the plastic on the units because it yellows over time.  If I were you I'd pick up the basic dark-grey PCE Duo and keep it well ventilated--don't play it on the carpet next to your radiator.  The only problem I've ever had with my US Duo was caused by playing a CDr.

However, no matter what you buy the most important thing is to find a seller you trust.  There are a lot old Duo's that aren't running so good and sellers often omit slight defects or cause damage by skimping on shipping/packaging.  Find an active forums member with an extra deck or check out Dream-Stars on ebay.  Don't buy a Duo from one of those bums with 96% feedback.
Good luck.
If anything does go wrong, this guy has acquired a decent reputation for fixing Duo units:  www.oldschoolgamer.ca
Dean AKA D-Lite at Multimods is awesome, hopefully he'll turn up again someday.

[CrackTiger]

Are the problems that can occur with a pce duo severe enough to warrant paying the higher price for a duo r?

There isn't realy any difference in price. Just as there are slow spells on ebay with PCE GT listings, sometimes the overpriced sellers outweigh the more reasonable ones. I often see grey Duos go for more than R/RX's.

You should be able to buy any loose PCE Duo system for around $130. You just might not get a matching pad with it.

[VestCunt]

I got to thinking and made a list of roughly how expensive a set-up costs someone who wants to play all of the hucards and CDs, including the Arcade Card games.
I ranked them in order of cheapest (at the top) to most expensive based on the prices I've seen recently.  I reckon someone might be able to buy everything under #1 for a total of $200 while #7 would cost over $450 (at the very least).  I refer to region modifications and cheap TG16 decks because converters alone cost over $75.  The price of the Duo-RX really depends on if it has the original controller, which is very highly sought after.  I'd be curious to know if you guys think this list should be in a different order.
 
1)  PCE Duo + Arcade Card Duo + TurboGrafx-16 or region mod for US cards.

2)  PCE Duo-R + ACD Duo + TG16 or Region Mod

3)  PC Engine + CD-Rom + Arcade Card Pro + TG16 or region mod.

4)  TG16 + CD-Rom + ACD Pro + Region Mod for Jap cards

5)  PCE Duo-RX + ACD Duo + TG16 or Region Mod

6)  Supergrafx + CD-Rom + RAU-30 + ACD Pro + TG16 or Region Mod
OR
Supergrafx + SCD-Rom + ACD Duo + TG16 or Region mod

7)  US Turbo Duo + ACD Duo + Region Mod

[PCEngineHell]

Number 3  ( PC Engine + briefcase CD-Rom or Super Cd-rom 2 system + Arcade Card Pro + TG16 or region mod)
                      and
Number 6  (Supergrafx + briefcase CD-Rom + RAU-30 + ACD Pro + TG16 or Region Mod OR
Supergrafx + SCD-Rom 2 system+ ACD Duo + TG16 or Region mod)  are typically the most expensive combinations actually.

Dean AKA D-Lite at Multimods is awesome, hopefully he'll turn up again someday.

LOL,your joking right????

Dean,while he does good work Im sure,is most likely not coming around here because he pretty much sucked this area dry of money from you guys. He came around and posted as long as it was making him money. Its that simple. Money dried up,he left. He can still be found on Neo-Geo.com. My son says he post often still,esp when it has to do with money.

Keranu had pointed out to me one time Dean had posted this sad story of all these horrible woes affecting his ability to ship peoples stuff off,and finish up jobs he was doing. I read it and laughed my ass off. He was blaming his sick father in law,his bug infested house,and his lame net connections,and lack of money for everything including his misery.

He said his house was a mess and he couldn't keep anything in it because of the bug bombs and garbage. I don't know how much of all this was even remotely true,but I do know this,another friend of mine who collects comics and games showed me Deans ebay id link to stuff he was buying up a couple of days prior. He was spending mad mad money on really crappy Vailiant comic books,I mean $50-80 dollar auctions half the time,and daily and weekly,not just once or twice a month. With money problems,and bug infested house problems,and terrible net connections I fail to see how he could do all this....

Want proof of the buying crappy comics habit???
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=dragsy
It seems its still in full force....

As for his honesty,thats another issue also besides the above mettioned.

Last year I had a ebay member (orius1 I think it was,coulda been someone else) purchase a Time Killers arcade pcb from me. Prior to him buying this from me he had made payment to Dean for a Supergun. Dean had swore up and down to this guy that his normal Supergun would run it great. This was after the fact I had already informed Dean here on one of these threads that his normal Sg kits wouldn't because the game needs -5 volts like most other older american arcade pcbs and fifth button support and a good solid Sony CX based encoder,not a so so AD based Neobitz one.

 Its not a big deal if the guy was not planning to buy this game,but he was,and other american pcbs too,and had told Dean of this plan. So,Dean had to upsize the order to his larger unit or some crap. After this Dean tried to stick the guy with a crappy Neobitz encoder,which obviously does not handle american pcbs video signal at all.... The guy told me what Dean was sticking in his Sg and asked me what he should tell Dean to change after I informed him that the AD based encoders have a hard time with most all american arcade jamma pcbs and soem other problems.

He informed Dean he was talking to me and had made a purchase from me for a Time Killers board and I guess this pissed Dean off because hes replies I was shown were kinda snappy and rude.  Also to add to this stupid drama of this guys woes was that Dean was knowingly using a Happ power supply type that had obvious problems with Neobitz encoders and Atomaswave pcbs. It was causing horrible video problems. Dean denied it to this guy and was still going to ship the system to this guy anyway until I showed the guy this thread: http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143249&highlight=Roberts+neobitz
 and that Dean knew of the problems and all prior to this SG purchase.

Dean did not take into account this person would see a Neo-Geo thread he had posted just days before about how he was having these big problems with the power supplies. LOL Dean didn't think any of his Sg customers would ever had dealings with me for that matter so it ended up causing him a world of grief.

Another problem with this Sg kit he was selling this guy included the placement of a 20mm cpu cooling fan in a case with no airflow venting anywhere expecting it to suck the heat off the arcade size Happ psu and out of the case. All he had for air flow was the tiny hole space cut for the fan itself. A fan can't move air if it cant pull it from no where..... Not only that but a 20mm fan isn't ideal for moving hot air out of a large space anyway. 20mm fans are typically only good for actually blowing air directly onto small heatsinks mounted onto things like Voodoo 4-5 gpu,Pentium 90 and 486DX cpus.

This is about as useless a feature as Segasonicfans Sega Saturn mod where he overclocks the 68000,which has ZERO effect on anything gameplay wise in that system.

You add crap like this to the fact Dean was promising working on a Duo audio fix,then buying up audio troubled Duos for 20-30 bucks after telling people they were un-fixable,stripping them of good cd lasers for himself,and reselling the Duos as non cd playing systems for $50.  Necrocheese if you really just have to have s-video or RGB,and if your gonna trow some serious money down,do it by buying a Duo-r or Rx of someone like Toshi or get a cheap deck from Hit-Japan,and have OSG do the mods you desire.

I am sure OSG is more then willing to do it for you for a reasonable fee. I do mod work often,but I only tend to do mods I approve of,and I have never really approved highly of s-video or RGB mods on Turbo Duo/Pc-Engine Duo systems. I never felt the quality gain was as worthwhile on this system,and still do not to this day. I simply do not support that mod at all. In other words,if its a Genesis or NeoGeo AES with crappy composite,or a top loading Nes with only RF, I will mod it for someone more often then not. If the system has great composite like the Nec systems,I won't because I tend to believe in leaving good working somewhat rare vintage hardware alone.

In the end how you spend your money is up to you,but honestly I think you would be extremely happy with a nice Duo-r playing it in composite anyway either way it goes. You should try it in composite first,then if you feel you must have a better signal,then have it modded.

[GUTS]

I have no problems with D-Lite, but FUCKING A who collects Valiant comics?!  Those were the most god fucking awful, shittiest comics to ever be published.

[PCEngineHell]

I have no problems with D-Lite, but FUCKING A who collects Valiant comics?!  Those were the most god fucking awful, shittiest comics to ever be published.

Seems Dean does. And I agree completely,they suck ass utterly and completely. I have nuthin but contempt for Valiant comics. Not even foil embossed hardcover cross overs with Image Comics and Dark Horse comics could save them.

[PCEngineHell]

Hell check out this winner of a comic Dean purchased:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130067029303

Guess he really really had to have that Jim Shooter signed exclusive. Now you have a hint at what he spends all those lovely profits from mod and Sg work on. Sad,extremely sad all in all.

[nat]

Want proof of the buying crappy comics habit???
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=dragsy

It seems its still in full force....

Hmm, I thought, how do you define a "crappy comic"? So I casually followed the above link...

....and nearly fell out of my fucking chair laughing when I clicked on his most recent purchase:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270082765123

I was not prepared for the golden nugget that lay waiting for me on that page. Still laughing. My god.

[VestCunt]

Looks like I struck a nerve. 
So, Michael, how do you really feel.

Hey, let's rename TurboFest "Dean's Days" this year.  We can build a throne for D-lite out of all our old systems.

-------

I'm sorry you had bad experiences with him but mentioning a guy's name does not warrant a 10 paragraph tirade.

D-lite helped everyone by posting the TE sound fix.  His mod prices are debatable (I thought they were fair).  His prices for decks and games were some of the best around and I got a great deal on Rainbow Isles and number of other games through him.  He got in touch with me when my Duo broke and answered some questions.  He obviously didn't suck the money dry around here because tons of people still ask about him and ask where they can get the services he provided.  I'm sure he has some business sense and makes money buying and selling gear.  I don't have problem with that because he knows his shit and does professional work.  I believe he had enough problems come up in his life that he had to cut back on a lot of his dork habits.  How much time do you spend looking up other peoples' ebay history?

[PCEngineHell]

I don't think he had to cut back,as I said,my son says he post often on the Neo forums,and this crappy comic buying has elevated him into a new level of ummm...well you'd call it dorkness,but I have alot of other terms,all much harsher.
My reply is to you wanting him to come back like he died or sumthin, I mean jesus,come on....

And yea,he did suck the sales up dry. Since last summer there has not been a huge slew of new members to sell mods to around here. Yet over at the Neo forums he still post Neo and Pc-Engine stuff for sale all the time. I checked that myself,and he still offers to do the mods. He constantly will have new customers over there because its a larger community and he has a cult there.

 Around here he hasn't so much as posted to say "Hi, I'm alive my drones" to his fans here. Face it,he ditched you. Hes staying where the money is and where he can delete post and alter/ban accounts. Find someone new,like OSG or something and move on,or go over to the Neo-Geo forums if you want dean back so badly. Dean is the past around here.

He obviously didn't suck the money dry around here because tons of people still ask about him and ask where they can get the services he provided.

Yea right,thats complete bs. One or two guys a month wondering around here doesnt = "tons"

As for his ebay buying habits,that was pointed out to me by someone who collects comics,and had noticed these sucky comics going for crazy amounts. He gave me the link to some,I saw the name of the winner and knew it was Dean because of the Dragsy id. I had thought Dean has stopped buying or selling on ebay until the comic buying habit was pointed out. When you deal with arcade hardware often you tend to know of other dealers and buyers ebay id names and who they are. I also know of kurtz,and KPJs,and a few others because I have outbid them on hardware at one time or another. KPJ is the most current vile piece of crap reseller on ebay these days with his consolized units.

[CrackTiger]

...........In the end how you spend your money is up to you,but honestly I think you would be extremely happy with a nice Duo-r playing it in composite anyway either way it goes. You should try it in composite first,then if you feel you must have a better signal,then have it modded.

He was looking for a region mod or a way to play all the games, not a video mod.

[esteban]

His prices for decks and games were some of the best around and I got a great deal on Rainbow Isles and number of other games through him.

Goddammit, you were the bastard who got Rainbow Isles? You beat me to it! Goddam! Sell it to me, now, goddammit.

Goddam.

[grahf]

Ive region modded 3 TurboExpresses. No switch to select region mind you, just jumpered all the pins to turn them into GTs. If anyone on the forums here needs it done let me know.

[PCEngineHell]

I bet OSG would prob do the region switch too. I guess I assumed this guy would want a video mod too with the region mod because Dean does it in a package. Either way its time people stopped putting all their eggs in one basket,as in relying on Dean to do everything,when he does not even come around here anymore.

[CrackTiger]

I bet OSG would prob do the region switch too. I guess I assumed this guy would want a video mod too with the region mod because Dean does it in a package. Either way its time people stopped putting all their eggs in one basket,as in relying on Dean to do everything,when he does not even come around here anymore.

When talking to the OSG guy in the past, he was pretty much only interested in doing the mods listed on his site. Which means only composite out and no region mod for Turbografx-16.

[PCEngineHell]

I bet OSG would prob do the region switch too. I guess I assumed this guy would want a video mod too with the region mod because Dean does it in a package. Either way its time people stopped putting all their eggs in one basket,as in relying on Dean to do everything,when he does not even come around here anymore.

When talking to the OSG guy in the past, he was pretty much only interested in doing the mods listed on his site. Which means only composite out and no region mod for Turbografx-16.

It would be worth asking again. People change their mind all the time.

[CrackTiger]

I bet OSG would prob do the region switch too. I guess I assumed this guy would want a video mod too with the region mod because Dean does it in a package. Either way its time people stopped putting all their eggs in one basket,as in relying on Dean to do everything,when he does not even come around here anymore.

When talking to the OSG guy in the past, he was pretty much only interested in doing the mods listed on his site. Which means only composite out and no region mod for Turbografx-16.

It would be worth asking again. People change their mind all the time.

I guess I can try again in the future, but he made a point of flat out ignoring my SMS pause button mod question when I e-mailed him about a a couple things some time after my initial Turbo mod questions.

The way he put it, was that although he may learn more mods in the future, he wouldn't do any that weren't already listed on his site.