| Main > Project Announcements |
| Making PC Engine HuCards |
| (1/12) > >> |
| pbj:
We all knew where this was going. You start with a PC Engine Duo and a $30 flashcard. The flashcard can play the entire library, no exceptions, and loads games in less than 10 seconds unless it's SF2. SF2... I dunno.. 30 seconds? Anyway... First you start trying to buy SF2 to go along with your joystick. Gotta have at least ONE legit HuCard. Feels like the right thing to do. And you notice you can't get one for any less than stupid money on Ebay. So then you decide to wrestle with Yahoo Auctions Japan again. This round, I used Jauce. Unlike Buyee, Jauce will operate on good faith after your initial deposit and let you settle things up once they calculate shipping fees. Buyee will automatically debit whatever the ---fudgesicle--- they want from your bank, even if it's 4-5 times as much as they estimated. Then when you file a fraud complaint and claw back your money, it's suddenly, "wait, wait, wait, did we say $350 shipping? We really meant $60! Wait!" ---fudgesicle--- Buyee. Hope they enjoyed that box of "as is" PC Engines. They spent 2 years contacting me afterwards. :lol Second, you realize you just spent a -lot- of money on random HuCards. Then you start looking into exactly what's in the things. Well, they're a surface mount ROM under a blob of epoxy and covered with black plastic. The white plastic surrounding it contains nothing. Even on SF2, there's nothing in that bump. Fraud! So, ---fudgesicle--- it. I'm in this deep on a system with like 3 actually good games. Might as well keep digging. There's 2 PCB designs floating around. One you have printed at 1.6mm and then bulk up the bottom. The other is two separate 1.2mm boards that you glue together. There's nothing on the bottom board besides a couple of holes for the EPROM legs. Here's the first one: Found it here: https://z-team.itch.io/diy-pc-engine-hucard Here's the second one: Found here: https://www.aussiearcade.com/topic/90002-pc-engine-pcbs-rgb-amp-hucard-controller-board/ Ordered up 10 of each. Also ordered 10 27C801 & 10 27C040 EPROMs. We shall see how this goes... :cheers: |
| pbj:
So, PCBWay has given me total hell over that board with no traces on it. We’ve gone back and forth for over a week and I’ve paid shipping twice. We shall see. HuCards are the size of a business card and 2.4mm thick. My repro cartridges will involve those small PCBs with an EPROM soldered on them. I’ve also, as previously shown, bought a few loose cards. I got to thinking about the size challenges, and considered cards holders and all that but then I remembered cassette tapes. For $12ish I got a box of 30 sealed tapes. Some selection of beautiful Spanish ballads. Here’s a quick prototype.. I also finally bought a legitimate PC Engine CD - some of you may dimly remember The Manhole from the late 80s. It boots, plays, and transititions beautifully which is everything a CDR doesn’t do on this thing. Good to know. :cheers: |
| pbj:
Made a few more… pretty quick and easy. These are on photo paper but don’t really look any different once in the case. And since I have all these cassette racks laying around… It’ll make more sense once I start assembling EPROM cards. :cheers: |
| firedance:
Very nice work again 8) On the artwork for the cassette cases have you thought about adding some pc engine logos as for me there seems to be a lot of dead black space :embarassed: |
| pbj:
Yeah, I agree it feels a little dead but it also reminds me of KMFDM album covers so I've enjoyed that, too. This next blurb involves far, far too many hours of research on my part and may be incorrect, but so far I've just got a stack of chips in hand and no PCBs yet. Might as well document this before I forget. So there's a design for a USB flashable HuCard out there. The creator doesn't sell them anymore but he's released all the plans and software for free. This is important because his software can do the appropriate mirroring and strip region protection. 384Kb roms need the first 256Kb of the image mirrored. USA roms contain a region check. JAP roms will run on anything. That takes care of those obstacles. The next issue is that D0 - D7 are reversed on PC Engine vs TG-16. The PCBs I ordered are for PC Engine. So, until I can actually test this, that means that USA roms are going to have to be rearranged to run this board on PCE, and PCE roms will need flipped for TG16. Not sure on TG16 roms on this board to a TG16, too bogged down in details to keep it straight. Anyway, this very helpful app that prepares the rom files refuses to save a version with the outputs flipped. It will only write to his flashcard (which I guess you could then in turn dump). I've emailed him and asked if he would consider modifying this, but it's very old software. Everyone I've asked about how to scramble outputs on roms assures me it's easy but can't point me to a utility or instructions. So here comes AFS Megadrive Rom-Suite to the rescue. It's incredible how handy this program has been. There's also another program intended for NES chips which can be made to work with the 512Kb chips. I'm not sure how it would do with the 1024Kb eproms as pins 1 is now A19 instead of VPP. It'll probably work. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |