Doing an audio-video mod on a couple of Turbografx-16 consoles and thought you all would enjoy taking a look inside the console. I also tear down the original Japanese PC-Engine this console was based on. Enjoy!
Those Hudson branded chips are probably the cutest chips I've seen. Can't wait to see the X68000 videos! My favorite Japanese computer since it was so ahead of it's time in looks and graphics. So much Yamaha FM goodness in the games too! I'd love to see a collaboration video in the future when you have less projects with Joe from Gamesack fixing his precious Golden Axe: Revenge of the Death Adder PCB. No sound even though the game works great otherwise. It'd just be an all around interesting video especially since it would be quite a complex board and who doesn't like Golden Axe!
14:25 Shatner doing "Common People" from his album Has Been. Amazing. I actually liked the album Has Been. I mean obviously the original of "Common People" by Pulp is still better.
This and Sega CD were my fav systems as a kid. I was like the only one that had them. I got my TG16 for 50 bucks with 8 games at a clearence sale at a toys are us with my XMAS money. Biggest mistake of my life was selling it later to get a PSone.
That’s a definite oof sadly when i was younger i did the exact same thing so many people did but as kid and a teen you don’t think about it because you just want the next best thing as adults you can get them again and have the best thing as well. silly story i knew someone who had a ok console collection they spent a couple of thousand on the collection at the time they had a ps1 ps2 ps3 og xbox a 360 n64 limited edition with gold controller and a dreamcast with a lot of rare games and they sold the lot at a loss and that was after two months of collecting it and they were an adult they even had a decent paying job i outright said to them your an idiot
I don't recall if you mentioned the issue or not, but the composite signal coming from the expansion port is apparently not safe to "break out" without some kind of additional processing. I guess cheap third party composite connectors don't clean the signal and so have the potential to damage either the console or the tv. I'm no expert, but its worth looking into if anyone is thinking of trying this mod.
Or just use something like the dbgrafx booster ttp (also sold as the "engine block av") which plugs into the rear connector and gets you composite, s-video, RGB, and component (via HDRV cables). There's a full RGB signal going to the rear connector, so any sort of video mod on the TG16/PCE is kind of pointless unless you're going to be plugging the CD drive into the expansion port. There is also technically a connection to the video bus through which you can construct a pure digital video signal, and there are expansion boxes that do that, but they're extremely expensive.
"cubits! Heck yeah!" **Drills directly into finger** (I'm working on my own electronic project stuff and half paying attention, and I look up just to see him drilling the hole with his hand right behind it there and I thought for a second that he really did hit his freaking finger)
That Trent Reznor story reminds me of when I met Dr. Martin Luther the King in 1962 in Memphis, Tennessee. I was walkin' down the street minding my own business, just walking on. Feelin' good. I walk around the corner, a man walks up, hit me in my chest, right? I fall on the ground, right? And I look up and it's Dr. Martin Luther King. I said, 'Dr. King?' and he said, 'Oops, I thought you were somebody else'.
i would love to see Ben look at a Neo Geo CD or CDZ system, they use multiple daughter boards and are quite well labeled including telling you how to region mod the system.
Fajny typek, ale przez to jego ciągłe pierrrdolenie i śpiewanie tego filmu się zwyczajnie nie da oglądać. Koniec imprezy, dziękuję, do widzenia... edit:: po wyciszeniu audio jest lepiej :-)
Back when I was young, maybe like 25 years ago, my pals dad owned a video rental store that rented consoles too and they had a Turbographx-16 that we took out once for a weekend to play. I've never played one since but I'll always remember how awesome of a console I thought it was. I remember playing Bonk and thinking it was the greatest thing ever. For like the last 10 years or so I've thought about buying one all the time and I'm sure it's something I'll end up doing eventually. It was just such a cool system and pretty underappreciated, and I've never even seen any around except for that one time.
I was that weird kid, I always thought the PC Engine was way cooler to look at. smaller, sleeker. giving it a black/grey shell and selling it as the TurboGrafx-16 I think would have sold more of them. but I guess we will never know
Great video =D Audio comes out of the 6280 (which is primarily the CPU) btw ;) One benefit of the huge US version - heat dissipation is much better! Less chance of one of the main ASICs dieing imo. The 6260 (DAC) does not change between regions, but can be switched using one of the pins going into it. The region "protection" is litterally just the cart databus bits flipped around into a different order.
The reason they used a separate chip for encoding analog was to keep the digital output from the VDC available to be combined with an expansion. This was utilized with the Supergrafx, where they added a second VDC along with a muxing chip that muxes the output from both VDCs before it goes to the VCE (color encoder AKA "DAC"). The digital output from the first VDC is available on all PC Engines, which can be used for a direct digital adapter like Upergrafx UGX-02, which gives you DVI/HDMI video which never existed as analog.
the 8bit CPU of the PC Engine was actually quite powerful as hell due the combination of high clock rates and high IPC, as in it could execute twice the number of instructions per second of the sega genesis, but they were 8bit instructions. So if the game was doing a lot of 8bit math, like positioning sprites onscreen, settuping registers etc, the PC Engine would trounce the genesis, but if it's a "smarter" game, like one with a lot of physics and 3D graphics or AI that use a lot of pointer mangling, then the genesis claws back the victory. Meanwhile the snes just sit, watch and does mode 7 things to distract you from it's quite crap CPU.
@@BenHeckHacks not completely pipelined, it's still the 6502 but it has a minimum of 2 cycles per instruction, while the 68000 has a minimum of 4 cycles. Of course, most instructions on both takes more than that, but it's still a faster average on the 6502.
Awesome fix. 14'30": William Shatner's, er, "take?" on Jarvis Cockers very well known and well influencal hit, Common People. Questionable work, Shatner. Regardless, a super entertaining video (per usual). Thanks Ben!
The most valuable game I own is Jack Bros in box with manual for the Virtual Boy. I had a lot more games but was dumb and sold many of them years ago when they were worth around $50 like Waterworld. That's now a $500 game. I had bought about all of them used from Blockbuster for less than $10 each.
@@BenHeckHacks I had two of those systems. Since I got one so cheap I took it apart, removed all the extra weight and put an elastic band on it so I could wear it. Unfortunately, I got rid of those as well after they stopped working. I'm glad VR has more colors and more pixels now. Nintendo is a great company because they're willing to take risks with graphics quality for a unique and affordable gaming experience. And more often than not, it pays off.
Well it's a bit different when your selling it, which is much of what context Voultar stuff is in - fixing terrible eBay sellers glue jobs it's a bit different when it's your buddy or your own, which he's mentioned
This is unamplified audio. It will be very noisy when you crank the volume. Your composite will also be the wrong levels. There is some concern with direct composite since you have no components to isolate it from external voltages.
They are not locked but the data bus on the hucards are flopped from TG16 to PCE, though it’s not hard to make a circuit to make the switch, my PCE can play either with a flip of a switch.
Ben, to answer your question about whether the PC Engine was popular in PAL regions, it kind of wasn't. It was released in France in 1989 and in both the UK and Spain in 1990, but they were discontinued after around 4 and 3 years on the market in each region, in 1993. Also, the Hu-Cards are, in fact, region-locked. You'd have to play an American TurboGrafx-16 game on an American TurboGrafx-16 and a PC-Engine game on a PC-Engine.
No, PC Engines are NOT region locked. Not even the usual PAL/NTSC thing. If by some weird chance you had a PAL system (they do exist apparently, but very rare indeed), you can get japanese games to run on the system without any modifications, but they'll run at 5/6th the speed. (as was common for PAL games anyway, since devs rarely felt inclined to fix the timing...)
Being in the military the Duo was where it was at, hundreds of great games both import and export, most were practically just simple side scrolling or shooters, and if it was rpgs you just had to click through dialog. I was a total completionist when it came to Duo superCd and Hucard collecting as well as Saturn. Duo and Saturn were my 90's jam, SNES just had like, Mario World, Zelda, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2 and Turbo, and Soulblader so it was a big skip coming from 80's NES days but for SF II it couldn't be beat when you had weekend long tournies with pals.
I believe the PC Engine is still the world record holder for smallest home gaming console. A record Nintendo refuses to break out of respect to NEC, since NEC doesn't manufacture consoles anymore. (Reportedly Nintendo made the Wii slightly larger than the PCE on purpose) The PCE is region locked, the TG16 is not. They also have 2 different HuCard pinouts. The PCE region lock can be defeated, disabling one game. I have an official PC Engine GT (the handheld) with a broken LCD screen. It was gifted to me in the hopes I would replace the screen. I never found a replacement at the time, and it has just sat and collected dust. I can pass it forward to you if you'd like.
The PC Engine / TurboGrafx16 is region locked, but GameTechUS makes a super easy to install region switch mod, as all the region lockout is several pins flipped on the HuCard.
14.25 ... i HATE YOU and i love you. Jeez it's such a great LP. And 'what have you done' made me cry in bus when i first heard it. Fook me sideways im in my late 30's and i went emotional. Cheers Bruce :)
You know, it's funny. I suffer from the same tendency to umm... I call it channel surfing memories. Where I sing random snippets of songs or say random quotes while working, but they last for about the duration you'd hesitate on a channel when surfing the dial. Of course I tend to pepper in old Norelco commercials ("Give 'em a blade close shave, or put a shine on their shoes!"). hehehehe Oh, and I'm compelled to occasionally say, "Hey, man, is that freedom rock? Well turn it up, man!" :D
If I could save time in a bottle The first thing that I'd like to do Is to save every day 'Til eternity passes away Just to spend them with you If I could make days last forever If words could make wishes come true I'd save every day like a treasure and then Again, I would spend them with you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find them I've looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to go Through time with If I had a box just for wishes And dreams that had never come true The box would be empty Except for the memory Of how they were answered by you But there never seems to be enough time To do the things you want to do Once you find them I've looked around enough to know That you're the one I want to go Through time with
For pre-1975 systems, it was not uncommon to have the RAM be on one or more separate boards from the CPU, especially in minicomputers and card-cage-and-backplane type computers.
Hi Ben was wondering if you have any pointers on fixing a sony psOne 5"LCD got your book and it details the fuses but bridging that didn't work, actually bridging them was causing a the psu to short so somethings blown but really appreciate any ideas what to check?
Hey Ben! How are you doing? We are a small independent film studio and we have a question. The cool scifi mask you made, could you make one for us? We have a upcoming film that is about a post apocolyptic world. Don’t wanna go into many details but what we can say is that the mask you made would be perfect for our villain! If you’re interested in helping out and learning about we can do for you. Please let us now and write to us. Best regards HalfBlood Productions
Thank you for sharing your curiosity and knowledge with us (www). May I suggest on making a home console out of a Nintendo Switch without the LCD, within a classic Nintendo home console case of the past. I was hoping Nintendo themselves would provide a cheap home console version but I past out while holding breathe and when I came to, I decided to bring this idea up to the wise men among us to decide if this idea is worth the time. It's a long shot. Keep up the sharing Mr. Heck. ;-)
What's the US obsession with RF shielding in computers and consoles? Do they really emit that much or susceptable to some badly designed products there? I know not a single British micro that needed such shielding, not one that caused an emotion problem or was susceptable. Is it just FCC overkill that drove this and the Japanese felt they compelled to do this to their products too?
@@braddl9442 I can only imagine. They relaxed it in the early 80's, which you can see with the tank-like construction of an Atari 800 vs the much flimsier (relatively speaking) 800XL... But that doesn't mean they didn't still impose some serious shielding requirements... Still get a laugh out of the late era C64's and their metalised cardboard 'shielding' though... XD
Am I hearing things? Did Ben just say he's bringing the Halcyon by RDI video systems console to the bench??? I'm looking for the light switch to make sure this isn't a dream.
That edge connector does a lot more than just Composite and stereo. "castlemaniagames.com/products/dbgrafx-booster-ttp?ref=w9_zngec1o_" Fun look inside but you're settling for very little AV improvement ijs.
Oh and there is a PC Engine portable, but it's 4-800$ now and called the PC Engine GT. There's an LT too I forget what mode of transport that is for lol
That is some seriously annoying shielding, for sure. XD In terms of weird things you find in systems from that era though, it doesn't beat the cardboard shielding of late era Commodore 64''s though. Shielding? Eh. Just stick some metallic looking cardboard in there. It'll be _fiinee._
Wait, you just wired the composite from the expansion port directly to some RCA jacks. I remember there being some sort of issue with that in one of the cheap aftermarket composite video adapters that Hyperkin sells. www.retrorgb.com/hyperkin-tg-16-composite-video-adapter-analysed-spoiler-its-bad.html
That’s crazy both consoles are playing the same games but the pc engine board is much much smaller. Why would they make the us version with a much larger board?
In my town they say "that each one kills fleas to his "manners"". I can see some faults in the "ground" connections, those connections can generate a lot of unwanted noise. ¿do you use isolated foiled wires(chords)?. Regards.
At one point he said "I'd like to use this kind of cable for a little added shielding" and later you can see him connect that shield as the ground to the composite connectors.
Having a twenty year old battery and it still works and holds a charge is amazing compared to today an iPhone battery will lose six to ten percent of charge as soon as you unplug it and just check it for the time
Did that philips head screw driver at 3:30 your using come from your dads set of tools? My dad had the same one, it was the best one in his kit. I was never able to find one as good. Dad recently decided to hand down his tools to me and that screw driver was still in his kit. It’s now the first one I go to when I need a philips head
I would love to go to your workshop carrying my Sega Gamegear to see if we are capable of repairing it It was an "easy" recap that turned into a hell of a mess Every single voltage is correct but the console doesnt load any game at all... I've tried to repair it during 5 months and finally i gave up, but i'm sure you would tell me something like: Ya see this pad? This is where your problem belongs, and solve it with a flick of the soldering iron haha
@@waltercomunello121 Tried everything Walter, i used everything in my hands, the only thing i managed to get is a turquoise color on the display caused by Fantasy Zone cartdrige, but after this, console got back to its normal gray display condition...
If only a hack existed to take a random cd drive and convert that to a turbo cd drive. You still would use the turbo cd cards but hey, can a guy dream?
