Phase
Deep Blooper
Posts: 25
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Post by Phase on Feb 16, 2019 0:50:55 GMT
Looks like a new revision is out or coming out soon with the FBX and FU-RGB fixes
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keithcourage
Punkic Cyborg
https://www.facebook.com/turbografxfan/
Posts: 231
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Post by keithcourage on Feb 17, 2019 20:40:32 GMT
I'm a firm believer in using original hardware and usually play via a DUO in S-video on a CRT. Something about the Super SD 3 and the upper grafx just feel wrong to me. Yes they are technically using real hardware but once you just load up a device with a bunch of roms and ISOs it starts to feel like emulation to me. No more having to pick up a CD or put in a cartridge takes the nostalgia away for me. Plus those boot up screens/menus on both devices just look ugly. Might as well just load up a Wii with everything instead. The Wii's TG16 emulation via mednafen is spot on and then you don't even have to mess with a video upscaler for the RGB signal since you can use a component cable instead. Also, how many people really need to play those few Arcade card games? Once you take arcade CD game function out of the equation then real hardware setups get much less expensive.
Oddly enough though I have no weird hangups about using an everdrive. Probably because it looks like a physical hu card and I can actually put it into my system. So it doesn't feel like a rom device to me. Just a super special HuCard(LOL)
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 17, 2019 21:33:30 GMT
I understand where you're coming from, but on the subject of emulation/compatibility... real hardware can be unreliable too (see CD seek time notes below).
Does the SSD3 accurately emulate CD seek times ? I know that Mednafen does NOT (although I have provided some raw data to be used at some point when they decide to implement).
There are several games where inappropriate CD seek time delays detract from the game (not just lip-synch issues either).
I have been working with the UperGrafx creator to accurately emulate "expected" CDROM seek timing recently (this was just released in the past 48 hours). I say "expected" timing, because there are bigger-than-expected variances between actual hardware units, and even variances between seektime samples from the same device. This real-hardware variance is a random amount between 8 and 20 VSYNCs, even without a seek error-retry (which can occasionally add an entire extra second or more). This happens even on well-maintained machines, and happened back in the early '90s as well.
The main titles where seek time becomes obviously problematic include:
- Brandish - several minutes into the opening cinema, as the female wizard is about to unleash a fireball, an improper noise will occur if inappropriate seek time. (* NOTE - I have also seen this once on a real machine) - Double Dragon - opening auio phrase ("Double Dragon") is cut short if insufficient seek time delay - Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari - if you set text speed high, entering/exiting the bookstore in the first town will cause ADPCM output to continue beyond appropriate point. - F1 Team Simulation Project F - At startup, a horn should honk. If inappropriate seek time delay, this will be followed by noise - Mugen Senshi Valis - serious desync in cinema, suddenly, about 1.5-2 minutes into the opening cinema, after the girl enters the schoolyard (visible during rain scene) - Super Daisenryaku - insufficient delay will cause a noise and sprite issues during the opening cinema - Super Darius, at the initial start - ADPCM and CD audio will overlap without appropriate delay
- and of course, in general, you will see desynchronizations during cinema scenes on many games (i.e. lips do not match the sounds).
Could somebody please tell me - do (any/all of) these issues appear on the SSD3 ?
Dave
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Post by soop on Feb 17, 2019 22:16:14 GMT
I'll try when I get mine - could be a while tho
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 17, 2019 22:19:26 GMT
Some of those or similar issues occured with the SSS3, but their tech/engineer guy looks into every issue that's reported and tries to figure out what actually is the diffrrence from real hardware and adjusts the firmware.
Lots of games got fixed already, but many reports also revealed imperfections with real games running on real hardware. The Sherlock games are tough to narrow down what is accurate because they are sipposed to be out of sync and random.
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 17, 2019 23:11:40 GMT
Some of those or similar issues occured with the SSS3, but their tech/engineer guy looks into every issue that's reported and tries to figure out what actually is the diffrrence from real hardware and adjusts the firmware. Lots of games got fixed already, but many reports also revealed imperfections with real games running on real hardware. The Sherlock games are tough to narrow down what is accurate because they are sipposed to be out of sync and random. This is good... is there a central site which identifies "known issues", and which games are tested/untested ? Dave
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keithcourage
Punkic Cyborg
https://www.facebook.com/turbografxfan/
Posts: 231
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Post by keithcourage on Feb 18, 2019 1:05:58 GMT
dshadoff, it's definitely cool that people such as yourself are making devices like this better. It helps a lot along the lines of video game preservation. I just don't see myself ever owning a device like either one.
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 18, 2019 1:18:41 GMT
I understand. I personally see it as growing into a necessity (at some point), as old equipment ages and replacement become more difficult to find.
We're fine for now, and costs are still reasonable for hardware - but, I've been going through my media, and found failures which didn't previously exist: - 3 American HuCards which needed replacement (due to one or more bytes being incorrect) - 5 Japanese HuCards which needed replacement (due to one or more bytes being incorrect) ...This is about a 2% overall failure rate, and some titles are getting quite expensive to replace.
So far, my CDROMs are still stable, but I re-ripped my CD collection about a year ago, and I had a roughly 1% rate of failure (1 or more tracks with "unrecoverable errors" on a disk). I expect the PC Engine library to be about 10 years behind my music collection (due to average date of issue).
I'm not trying to persuade anybody... but I thought I would mention this, as this information may come as a surprise to some people.
Dave
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keithcourage
Punkic Cyborg
https://www.facebook.com/turbografxfan/
Posts: 231
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Post by keithcourage on Feb 18, 2019 1:30:08 GMT
Did you test your CDs out on a 2nd computer? I found that I had errors when ripping maybe only 3 of my games but it turned out to be either the PC I was using or my DVD drive because I then tried them out on a 2nd computer I have and the games that previously gave errors ripped right through without any problems. Weird that it only happened on 3 games and none of the rest that I have.
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 18, 2019 1:59:39 GMT
The CD failures were music from the '80s; I tried on each of 3 different drives, using dbPowerAmp software (which has a sophisticated multi-pass retry algorithm, including skew adjustments and many other things).
I ended up with about 30 problem CDs out of a set of about 3000; of these 30, 20 or so had problems limited to a single track... but there were perhaps an additional 100-200 which needed to enter the retry algorithm in order to be successfully ripped. That would be devastating for a data track on a PC Engine (but maybe not so bad for audio).
Luckily, none of my PC Engine CD's have had this sort of problem yet.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 18, 2019 17:41:24 GMT
Some of those or similar issues occured with the SSS3, but their tech/engineer guy looks into every issue that's reported and tries to figure out what actually is the diffrrence from real hardware and adjusts the firmware. Lots of games got fixed already, but many reports also revealed imperfections with real games running on real hardware. The Sherlock games are tough to narrow down what is accurate because they are sipposed to be out of sync and random. This is good... is there a central site which identifies "known issues", and which games are tested/untested ? Dave Lost a couple post attempts. Bottom line: look for username neodev on TerraOnion, neo-geo.com and shmups forums. shmups erased much of the discussions once o twice though.
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 18, 2019 18:43:23 GMT
Yeah, I've already looked through terraonion forums several times and found nothing central. Just a small number of scattered reports. I avoided neo-geo.com because comments in the terraonion forums called it out as being editorially slanted, and outdated (the newer information should be on terraonion). But I went there just now, and found what I had expected - totally random reports, all of them old, and many of them conflicting (indicating use of bad ROMs/rips).
Haven't been on shmups, but I'm not really interested in going to the third-most likely place to find it, only to sort through random threads.
I appreciate the advice, but I was hoping that somebody could point me directly at one, or agree that they also hadn't found one despite searching.
So, basically, I am concluding that nobody is managing *CURRENT* reports on which games play OK and which games have issues, and there doesn't appear to be any interest to maintain such a thing (if there was, it should be a wiki, a sticky, or a webpage on its own). I would also assume that 60% of the library hasn't even been tested lightly, because of the language.
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Post by Gentlegamer on Feb 19, 2019 1:28:50 GMT
I'm a firm believer in using original hardware and usually play via a DUO in S-video on a CRT. Something about the Super SD 3 and the upper grafx just feel wrong to me. Yes they are technically using real hardware but once you just load up a device with a bunch of roms and ISOs it starts to feel like emulation to me. No more having to pick up a CD or put in a cartridge takes the nostalgia away for me. Plus those boot up screens/menus on both devices just look ugly. Might as well just load up a Wii with everything instead. The Wii's TG16 emulation via mednafen is spot on and then you don't even have to mess with a video upscaler for the RGB signal since you can use a component cable instead. Also, how many people really need to play those few Arcade card games? Once you take arcade CD game function out of the equation then real hardware setups get much less expensive. Oddly enough though I have no weird hangups about using an everdrive. Probably because it looks like a physical hu card and I can actually put it into my system. So it doesn't feel like a rom device to me. Just a super special HuCard(LOL) I prefer 100% authentic, but we don't all have your skill at repairing hardware, or the bankroll to collectard our way to all the games we want, so I love things like SSS3 that preserve the original experience without every modern hassle. By the way, this should be your avatar:
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keithcourage
Punkic Cyborg
https://www.facebook.com/turbografxfan/
Posts: 231
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Post by keithcourage on Feb 20, 2019 7:42:23 GMT
I'm a firm believer in using original hardware and usually play via a DUO in S-video on a CRT. Something about the Super SD 3 and the upper grafx just feel wrong to me. Yes they are technically using real hardware but once you just load up a device with a bunch of roms and ISOs it starts to feel like emulation to me. No more having to pick up a CD or put in a cartridge takes the nostalgia away for me. Plus those boot up screens/menus on both devices just look ugly. Might as well just load up a Wii with everything instead. The Wii's TG16 emulation via mednafen is spot on and then you don't even have to mess with a video upscaler for the RGB signal since you can use a component cable instead. Also, how many people really need to play those few Arcade card games? Once you take arcade CD game function out of the equation then real hardware setups get much less expensive. Oddly enough though I have no weird hangups about using an everdrive. Probably because it looks like a physical hu card and I can actually put it into my system. So it doesn't feel like a rom device to me. Just a super special HuCard(LOL) I prefer 100% authentic, but we don't all have your skill at repairing hardware, or the bankroll to collectard our way to all the games we want, so I love things like SSS3 that preserve the original experience without every modern hassle. By the way, this should be your avatar: I forgot all about this pic. Absolutely love it.
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Post by dshadoff on Feb 23, 2019 20:40:29 GMT
Does the SSD3 accurately emulate CD seek times ? . . . The main titles where seek time becomes obviously problematic include: - Brandish - several minutes into the opening cinema, as the female wizard is about to unleash a fireball, an improper noise will occur if inappropriate seek time. (* NOTE - I have also seen this once on a real machine) - Double Dragon - opening auio phrase ("Double Dragon") is cut short if insufficient seek time delay - Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari - if you set text speed high, entering/exiting the bookstore in the first town will cause ADPCM output to continue beyond appropriate point. - F1 Team Simulation Project F - At startup, a horn should honk. If inappropriate seek time delay, this will be followed by noise - Mugen Senshi Valis - serious desync in cinema, suddenly, about 1.5-2 minutes into the opening cinema, after the girl enters the schoolyard (visible during rain scene) - Super Daisenryaku - insufficient delay will cause a noise and sprite issues during the opening cinema - Super Darius, at the initial start - ADPCM and CD audio will overlap without appropriate delay - and of course, in general, you will see desynchronizations during cinema scenes on many games (i.e. lips do not match the sounds). I'll try when I get mine - could be a while tho I appreciate any feedback I can get on this. Dave
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