Getting the NEO PCE Super Flash Cart, now need console to go with it!

[Missyrelm]

My wife and I have been wanting to get into the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 scene.

We are planning to order a NEO PCE Super Flash Cart in a couple days. The prices of the games are so high, at least for us, that we feel like it would be taking too much of a risk not to back them up.

Now we just need to pick a system to go with it! Since the NEO PCE Super Flash Cart will play all regions, we will be pretty set as far as being able to play any region HuCard/ TurboChip games that we buy.

So what we are concerned about is being able to play PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 CD’s and back-ups of CD’s.

I’ve read a lot of people recommending the Duo-R for beginners, but we are really concerned about the sound issues that we keep reading about for all of the Duo models.
I’ve also read that they don’t like to play backups very much.

I’ve also looked into systems with the CD attachments and I am confused as to which one would be best for playing both US and Japanese CD games, as well as backups of those games.

It’s not that big of a deal if we have to buy a Arcade Card and/or Super System card separately, so we can play more of the games available.

On Ebay, I’ve seen a TurboGrafix-16 with CD and System card for around $250 + $30.00 shipping,
Or a PC-Engine White Core System w CD Turbo-Graphix-16 (Would I need a step-down converter to play it in the US? For around 250.00+$25.00 shipping
Or the Dou-R route, for $119 in Japan, with $61.00 EMS shipping

I have no idea if these are good prices or not or how well the CD attachments will play all region games and backups of our games…

Any advice?

[hl718]

Considering the Neo PCE flash cart can't back up anything, it's a pretty poor item for your stated goal.

Of course if by "backup" you meant "download a bunch of pirated games" then go to town.

Realistically however, PCE carts/games are some of the most durable things out there. HuCards can take a beating and a half and keep on kicking.

-hl718

[MottZilla]

Other than CD-ROM games maybe, you aren't going to be backing up PC-Engine games. You don't have to lie about using roms you downloaded from the internet. Infact it's insulting to think you can fool us.

The PC-Engine is pretty affordable until you get into the CD-ROM part. If you want to play CD games I recommend getting a DUO system. I had good luck with the original Black model. And I'd recommend it.

But first please goto: http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php

That is a great forum dedicated to TG16/PCE. You may even be able to find a good price on a system there. Also, for playing PC-Engine HuCard games you should get the Tototek FlashCard here: www.tototek.com

For the burned CD games you should go all out and use premium CD-Rs like Taiyo-Yuden brand. www.cdrom2go.com sells them. If you don't want to go forthat, but Sony brand CD-Rs in a local store I guess.

It's a great system if you can afford it. Unfortunately I ended up selling mine. Now I just use the emulators on the Xbox.

[Missyrelm]

I'm sorry if it came across like I was actually trying to trick people and lie.
I think it's pretty obvious what the Super Flash Cart is made for.

I was actually trying to *AVOID* this degenerating into a thread about downloaded rom's, which is why I chose my words carefully. Guess I didn't do such a good job on that. I'm very sorry if I came across as insulting people's intelligence.

I'm really not concerned with backing up Hucards.
My concern is about the *cd's* only!

All I was trying to ask is if any of the various forms of the CD player will play burned CD's any better than any of the others.

In particular, we are drawn to the Duo-R because the price is lower but we are worried about the sound issues with the Duo-R CD player.

[hl718]

Piracy issues aside, using CD-Rs for an extended length of time is likely to degrade the CD transport a lot faster than normal. In short, it actually can damage your hardware.

They'll all play them fine initially, but those units weren't designed with CD-R in mind and they don't really have the tolerance for regular usage.

-hl718

[MottZilla]

That's why I recommend you use a premium/high quality CD-R and writer if you do. But keep in mind even if you do, the laser can and probably will get stuck. It's a known issue with CD-Rs on the system. I never played CD-Rs for a long time on the system I had, but the laser got stuck a couple times while doing so when I tried that Super 6 in 1 or something CD game.

If you want something solid, I've heard there's nothing better than the PC-Engine with the Super CDROM add-on. Best of all with it you could later upgrade to the SuperGrafx and still be able to use the CD add-on with it I guess. So ya, for durability it is said to be better than the Duo. Otherwise I'd buy an original DUO. Either way buy it from a good seller that describes it as fully working. Again, check out the forum I linked you.

[ASSEMbler]

The cd-rom in the duo is inferior in alomst every way and WILL fail.
In my opinion, using CDR will probably wear out the drive faster.

If you habe to use CDR, use it at 2x or 1x if possible and use
a quality media designed for archiving.

I would direct you to buy a real game rather than waste $10 on media
that won't last morew than ten years anyway.

[the_steadster]

For pure style, The original PCE (RF out)+ briefcase system can't be beaten! Don't bother with an arcade card, theres so few games and they can all be played better on other systems. Do bother with an extension cable though, the cables too damn short for sofa gaming!

[Cephalgy]

Hi, fuck off this illegal backupunits from HongKong and Thailand!
The qualaty of this cards ( Tokotek or dr.neo was very crappy... ). You can restore the cards like 100 restets...and then...fuck off.... use Magic Engine V1.10 and all roms of this system..better grafx and sound as the original system...spend the money for a good helping hands ( Childrens sisterhood ) or anythins else ;-) Cheers!

[AntiPasta]

Those who managed to make sense of above, please raise hands... anyone?

[AlbinoLove]

Let me break it down:
1. Fuck off the illegal backupunits from HongKong and Thailand! (exclamation mark for emphasis)
2. The qualaty of this cards.
3. You can restore the cards like 100 restets...and then...fuck off
4. spend the money for a good helping hands

If you can't comprehend this you are pretty much a moron. ;)

[Missyrelm]

Ok, I know I said I didn't want to get into the whole piracy issue, but I want to apologize for how obnoxious I made the title and content of my original post to this thread and to explain myself. It’s more than a little embarrassing. Not quite the first impression I was hoping to make. I didn’t want to get into this originally but at this point I feel the need to explain myself.

I am *VERY* new to the scene here and did not understand how that was going to come across. The Subject line basically suggests that I would use a PC-Engine or Duo-R purely to play downloaded ROMS and even play CD images that might damage a perfectly good Duo-R instead of buying any of the original games.

This is not the case.

The truth was that I made that original post the same night I first even heard about Flash-Carts. I didn’t know that anything like that even existed. I got over-excited about it for about a day or two, and my original post shows this, but it is NOT reflective of how I really operate. That attitude lasted about a day and a half. Then I got over it and came back to my senses! J

I am blessed to have a wife who likes to play retro games with me. We only play co-op games together with only a few exceptions, and we pick old systems based on what co-op games are made for it, namely the NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn. But the PC-Engine would be a very nice addition indeed as while it doesn’t have the most co-op games, but the ones we know of, are pretty weird and interesting!

We’ve never used an emulator ever, and while someday I might try one, neither of us are particularly interested in emulators.

I downloaded some ROMS that same night I first heard of the carts and started this thread, but I’ve honestly never used them yet, partially out of laziness because I don’t want to take the time to learn about how to run an emulator but mostly for some reason we just don’t like the idea of an emulator. We just love the actual consoles way too much!
We love the actual machines and just really don’t want to get started emulating the games…

We’ve gotten pretty much all of the systems that have a variety of co-op games along with *only* real games we want except for the PC-Engine, because both the system and the games are out of our price league.

But the PC-Engine games we’ve watched on Youtube have been her absolute favorite.
So…. I was naturally excited about some of these $100-1000 games suddenly being within our reach, not to mention some of the few fan-subbed translations out there..

We do plan on getting a Duo-R we can’t afford and a Flash Cart that we can’t afford. But we don’t plan on using the Flash cart only. We will also get real games we can’t afford too! Ethics aside, we LOVE the cool HuCards and there’s nothing like the real thing!

But honestly I don’t see how someone can get a feel for whether or not they want to spend $200-$1000 on a game without actually playing it for more than 5 minutes or even just for one day like some people claim to do.
Or why we should pay over $100.00 for a 1-player game that we just want to check out for an hour or two out of curiousity when we only really play co-ops.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to for us to try out a game for a while, and if we like the way it plays co-op, then save up and buy it, and if we don’t like it, why buy it because then we won’t be playing the game anymore anyway. Try and find old games reviewed strictly on co-op play and you’ll see what we mean. Even the Youtube videos mostly only show 1-player play.

And I guess we are just stubborn but we don’t want to mess with emulators, at least not yet anyway. . I also don’t really feel like its unethical to play a downloaded rom over a period of time while saving up the money to play the real game. I guess everyone has to draw that ethical line somewhere.

Honestly, this way will allow us to buy WAY more games. Also influencing our friends to buy real games. It’s just easier to justify the cost of one of these expensive games when we know we are going to be actually playing it a lot.

It’s already an ethical grey area because none of the money goes to anyone involved in the making and selling of the game, not any at all. Usually it all goes to some Ebay seller who wasn’t involved in the making or marketing of the game in any way.

It’s just not the same as downloading roms for a Wii or Xbox 360, Ps3 or even a Xbox, Gamecube or PS2 because you can still rent games for those at the video store if you want to try them out. I find that unethical and the old mantra “if you can’t afford it then don’t get it” makes more sense for these systems. But for the old, unsupported systems this really stops making sense.

As for the CD’s, I’d like to redirect this thread to them because there is *VERY* little information on how to be the easiest on a Duo-R or the many variations of the CD-player with CD-R’s. And I’ve read a LOT of threads on a lot of different forums on the subject.
The problem seems to be wear and tear on old systems. Any CD causes wear and tear but it seems that CD-R’s seems to cause more wear and tear than other CD’s.

It’s important because there are a LOT of very valid reasons to honestly Rip and backup PC-engine CD games that one owns. My wife and I are pack-rats, and I just know that we’d find a way to scratch or step-on or otherwise ruin really expensive CD games, so to save them from ourselves its better for us to play backups than to risk the originals that we plan on buying.

Some of the original CD’s are cheaper on Ebay if they are scratched but still play. In this case wouldn’t the original CD possibly damage the player more than a back-up?

Some people say never to play CD-R’s at all and to only play the original CD’s, but this is one extreme.
On the other exetreme, other people say there’s no problems with CD-R’s at all because its they are old CD players and will give out about the same time as they would without playing CD-R’s.
And still other people say that REAL back-ups won’t hurt the consoles but downloaded ROMs will because the code is different on the ROM’s and made for emulators. This makes partial sense but it would seem like any properly Ripped ROMs with TurborRip (is this the right name?) would work fine by this logic.

So it would be good for people to know the safest way to back-up their expensive Pc-Engine CD’s and if some people use that knowledge to just pirate games, well that’s just something that can’t be helped.
While there are some threads about the basics of making back-up copies of CD games for the Pc-Engine, a lot seem to not explain how to lessen the damage on the PC-Engine Cd’s or Duo-R’s old, sensitive CD-players. And what’s sad is I think that the people with this knowledge are leering of spreading it around because they don’t want to encourage piracy. I find this sad.

In particular its hard to get the following information without just being told to “play the original disk”:
1) Is it really true that if you back-up your own CD games with Turbo-rip, there will be less stress on your CD player than if you download a ROM, whether the ROM was made with Turbo-rip or not?
2) If you intend to rip your CD-games and then to just play the back-ups to preserve the original games, would it be better to use the Super CDROM add-on or will a Duo-R be just fine?
3) Some people say just use really high quality cd’s like Taiyo-Yuden brand
and use a high quality CD-burner and if possible burn at 1x or 2x.
This doesn’t make any sense. Modern High-quality media doesn’t support low speeds like 1x or 2x, and neither do any modern high quality CD-burner.
So that means either

a) Buy a really old used CD burner and somehow find a way to drive it using your current operating system, and then buy old media to burn onto with.

b) Try to figure out what modern CD burner plays nice with the PC-Engine CD’s,
And what speeds work the best (I’ve seen some people say 4x, other people insist on 8x with a specific CD brand I can’t remember at the moment, others have said speeds even higher. There’s virtually nothing out there as to what are the best CD-burners for the delicate old CD-players like the PC-Engine’s CD players.
c) Try to figure out what media to use. Is it better to just get High Quality CD’s like Taiyo-Yuden, or does it make more since to buy one of the super-high reflectivity CD’s like diamond silver?

Assuming that there are loads of people who are honestly backing up their own games or are only downloading roms to decide what games to buy or to play English translations and such, it seems like we should help inform people how to cause the least amount of wear and tear on these old, delicate machines. And if some snot-nosed kids use the information to download pirated material on their virus ridden machines on their way to surf some porn benefit from the information, than that’s an unfortunate side-effect, but not a good reason to not try to figure out the safest way for honest users to play their backed-up games or even to try out downloaded roms to decide what to buy.

But anyway, just for the record, we DO agree that its wrong to just download ROMS to pirate games with no intention to ever buy the games, ever.
Again I apologize for the obnoxiosnus of my original post and especially the subject line, and I swear it was temporary insanity! I’m rather embarrassed by my original post, but oh well, that’s life…

[AntiPasta]

Let me break it down:
1. Fuck off the illegal backupunits from HongKong and Thailand! (exclamation mark for emphasis)
2. The qualaty of this cards.
3. You can restore the cards like 100 restets...and then...fuck off
4. spend the money for a good helping hands

If you can't comprehend this you are pretty much a moron. ;)

If it weren't for that gun in your pocket I'd smack you for that! :110:

(now if you'll please explain the "children's sisterhood" bit too it'd be splendid!)

[Calpis]

Missyrelm, here's a rundown on grey-area etiquette so fewer people will be frustrated with you:

-Don't tell us your illegal intentions
-Don't ask for assistance in illegal matters
-Don't justify any illegal acts (especially with a 3 page response!)

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

Here is what you need to know in hopes you won't talk about this stuff again:

-There is no region protection or copy protection on any PCE or TG16 CD system. There are no exceptions.

-All PCE and TG16 CD systems can play copied discs. There are no exceptions.

-All consoles are prone to "audio issues" due to very old failing analog components, these issues can be resolved by simply replacing them.

-CD-R will always cause slightly more stress to your console as if you were playing a scratched CD, high quality media will only last longer in storage, that's it. If you worry about damaging the console, buy a backup console.

-There is no special way to backup a PCE CD game. You can use practically any CD copying software which can work with mixed mode CDs. If you plan to make backups of your games, you shouldn't worry about absolute quality since you have the original.

-If you are actually downloading games, you and have the nerve to worry about the audio, you should know that retro console "scenes" are composed of undiscerning pirates who make images from second generation copies, throw away the game's original table of contents or even compress the audio tracks in lossy formats to save bandwidth. TurboRip doesn't appear to do anything special, it just makes the image more convenient for illegal distribution. It CERTAINLY doesn't do anything magical to save your console and it doesn't sound as if it's as good as EAC at extracting audio tracks. If you care about absolute archival, you will learn to compensate for your CDROM and take all the necessary steps for accuracy: http://redump.org/guide/cddumping/

[Tatsujin]

a good friend of mine, just broke it's old (white) cd-rom while playing an ISO of sylphia for the first 5 minutes. he used a ISO DLed from the net and burned it to a normal cd-r, since he didn't want to use his uber mint over $200 original. even he tries now to run original soft (CD, SCD) the cd-drive doesn't respond anymore after push the RUN button.

so my question is, how a cd-r is technically able to crash a cd-rom drive?!? is it because jittering, since sloppy made cd-rs tend to jitter a lot, so the laser mechanism (sledd) get vexed and doesn't know anymore where to go. but why it doesn't reset itself after a power off/on?

the other story could be, that the reflection of the cd-r is different to a normal cd-rom and then affecs the laser receiver itself(?).

[archcosmo]

Maybe the laser mechanism on the guiderails is stuck - will the CD unit play/spin an audio CD and seek to track 1 after powering it on and pressing the play/pause button?

The laser unit in my white CDRom2 player will stick if it hasn't been used for a while, and it's a simple fix to get it working again.

Unscrew and remove the lower half of the plastic case, then unscrew the PCB inside and you'll get access to the laser unit on the rails. It might be necessary to disconnect any ribbon cable to the PCB, so as to get enough space to access the motor, otherwise it is possible to carefully lift it up and aside a small amount. Use the tip of your finger to shift the plastic cog on the end of the drive motor shaft and dislodge it when this happens. Hope this helps your friend!

(Disclaimer of course - I'm not responsible if this doesn't work and your friend's CDRom player blows up etc etc by following this advice!)

cheers

a good friend of mine, just broke it's old (white) cd-rom while playing an ISO of sylphia for the first 5 minutes. he used a ISO DLed from the net and burned it to a normal cd-r, since he didn't want to use his uber mint over $200 original. even he tries now to run original soft (CD, SCD) the cd-drive doesn't respond anymore after push the RUN button.

so my question is, how a cd-r is technically able to crash a cd-rom drive?!? is it because jittering, since sloppy made cd-rs tend to jitter a lot, so the laser mechanism (sledd) get vexed and doesn't know anymore where to go. but why it doesn't reset itself after a power off/on?

the other story could be, that the reflection of the cd-r is different to a normal cd-rom and then affecs the laser receiver itself(?).

[Calpis]

I would bet a fortune that the CD-R didn't damage his console, it must have been chance. It is true that the reflection of CD-Rs is poorer, but that will only potentially hurt mechanisms that increase their power when the disc can't be read, I doubt PCE does this. In cases like the Dreamcast where a copied game's file layout is entirely different than the optimized GD file layout, the CDROM has to seek far more often causing more wear and tear on the motor, that's not the case with PCE games since they can't have a different layout. Copied PC Engine games, especially downloaded ones, do have damaged table of contents, but that will only affect audio track playback, it won't damage the console.

[MottZilla]

I second that his drive is not really dead, that the laser got stuck. It happens. You move it back from the edge and you should be fine. However you may have a CD-R that is prone to causing that and should stop using it. I really doubt using a CD-R has much effect other than getting the laser stuck because it tracks too far to the outside of the disc with some games or poor media perhaps.

But I had no problem playing CD-Rs on a PC-Engine DUO for hours and hours. I only had 1 CD-R that caused the lens to get stuck. I didn't even open the machine, I just gentle pushed the lens from the very outside back a few centimeters where when powered on it would be able to move again. Still, no idea why with certain CD-Rs it would track so far out that it can't come back. But I don't think these things were made cheaply in china so they should be durable enough to last.

Honestly I think it's the fanboys that hate anyone that downloads their beloved games that spread rumors or just misinformation about this subject.