dire51
Deep Blooper
Posts: 19
Fave PCE Shooter: Soldier Blade
Fave PCE Platformer: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Splatterhouse
Fave PCE RPG: Ys Book I & II
Currently Playing: Mr. Heli
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Post by dire51 on Apr 14, 2022 20:39:03 GMT
Wasn't sure where to put this. Mods, feel to move it if I put this in the wrong forum.
This is something that has me a bit baffled. I recently bought a PC Henshin adaptor (rev. 2.1), but half of the PCE HuCards I try to play on my TG16 refuse to work properly, or at all sometimes. Off the top of my head, those games include Rastan Saga II, Dragon Spirit, Genpei Toumaden: Kan no Ni, Youkai Douchuuki, 1943 Kai, Final Soldier and Parodius Da! I usually get one of several results:
1. Game loads fine, then crashes a few seconds into gameplay. 2. Garbled graphics followed by an immediate crash. 3. Game loads fine, then goes bonkers and crashes.
I've cleaned the games and the adaptor several times now with rubbing alcohol. I've also done my best to clean the card slot on the console (also, every one of my U.S. TG16 cards load just fine, no issues whatsoever). A couple things I've considered that might be the problem:
1. I have an SHDS3 connected to my TG16, which might be interfering with it somehow?
2. The cards in question are going bad. I really hope that's not the case, but for the record I've used the SHDS3's card dumper, and several of the games I mentioned dumped perfectly. Other games that run fine with the adaptor never dump properly, which is also weird.
I will be getting a CoreGrafx soon, so that'll give me another way to test out the problem cards, but I don't want to just see the adaptor go to waste either. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
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Post by SignOfZeta on Apr 15, 2022 14:21:25 GMT
It’s not your cards going bad…don’t even say such things, please.
If Deoxit doesn’t fix it (way better than low grade alcohol) then yeah, it could be the combo of the adaptor and the SSD doodad. Converters suck in general and I wouldn’t recommend them in any situation.
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dire51
Deep Blooper
Posts: 19
Fave PCE Shooter: Soldier Blade
Fave PCE Platformer: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Splatterhouse
Fave PCE RPG: Ys Book I & II
Currently Playing: Mr. Heli
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Post by dire51 on Apr 15, 2022 16:40:15 GMT
Based on all my experience with the TG16/PCE, I questioned that whole thing about cards going bad. I mean, I still have well-used Atari 2600 games from the late '70s that fire up like they just came out of the box, and I see no reason why HuCards would have any kind of a high failure rate, especially since none of the ones I owned ever failed on me before.
I was looking for an all-in-one solution to playing all of my HuCards on one console, so I figured an adaptor would be the way to go. I realized too late I probably should have just sprung for a CoreGrafx in the first place.
Deoxit, though? Hadn't heard of that until now. I'll have to pick some up.
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Post by dshadoff on Apr 15, 2022 19:34:53 GMT
It’s more likely that one of the connectors (hucard->PC Henshin, or PC Henshin->console) has some sort of weak physical connection, if you’ve already used a cleaner.
The connection is made by having a uniform pressure across all pins , but it is possible that the pressure of the pin against the card edge is insufficient at one or two points.
You might want to try putting a strip of cellotape across the backside of the converter (and/or the HuCard) in order to make it an iota thicker to establish better contact.
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dire51
Deep Blooper
Posts: 19
Fave PCE Shooter: Soldier Blade
Fave PCE Platformer: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Splatterhouse
Fave PCE RPG: Ys Book I & II
Currently Playing: Mr. Heli
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Post by dire51 on Apr 15, 2022 23:45:15 GMT
Thanks for the tip! I'll give that a try.
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dire51
Deep Blooper
Posts: 19
Fave PCE Shooter: Soldier Blade
Fave PCE Platformer: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Splatterhouse
Fave PCE RPG: Ys Book I & II
Currently Playing: Mr. Heli
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Post by dire51 on Apr 17, 2022 16:28:26 GMT
My CoreGrafx arrived, so I tried out all the games that were giving me problems. As one might expect, they all worked fine. So the problem is definitely the adaptor, the SHDS3 interfering with it or the TG16. I'll see what else I can find out.
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Post by SignOfZeta on Apr 18, 2022 13:45:47 GMT
It can also just be a combination of factors that individually won’t cause an issue. That converter may work fine in another machine, for example. It’s best to just not use them though. Every converter doubles the voltage drop across the HuCARD slot and while that isn’t always problematic it’s never something you’d want. If you absolutely have to play cards cross-region a relatively simple mod that costs $10 will do the same thing much better and you won’t have a giant diving board sticking out of the system.
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Post by dshadoff on Apr 18, 2022 14:55:59 GMT
"...doubles the voltage drop across the HuCard slot" ? No. A properly-fitting connection will have a negligible voltage drop, and proper PC Board traces will also have a negligible effect of voltage. However, if you run traces too long, there might be signal delays or impedance effects. For a console like this, I wouldn't want to run traces more than about 15 cm... though they might be fine beyond that.
Higher-frequency signals will need shorter lengths, and more care must be taken beyond about 50MHz. (Since this console is 7MHz for any of the cartridge port signals, we don't have to worry so much about those measures.)
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Post by SignOfZeta on Apr 18, 2022 17:21:16 GMT
"...doubles the voltage drop across the HuCard slot" ? No. A properly-fitting connection will have a negligible voltage drop, and proper PC Board traces will also have a negligible effect of voltage. However, if you run traces too long, there might be signal delays or impedance effects. For a console like this, I wouldn't want to run traces more than about 15 cm... though they might be fine beyond that. Higher-frequency signals will need shorter lengths, and more care must be taken beyond about 50MHz. (Since this console is 7MHz for any of the cartridge port signals, we don't have to worry so much about those measures.) I disagree. Whatever the normal voltage drop is across the HuCARD slot, and there will be some unless you soldered the card in, it WILL double (more or less) with a converter, even if the card, the converter, and the system are all brand new and perfect. This is because there are now twice as many HuCARD slots. There is no debating this basic fact. In no way am I saying that it will %100 for sure cause a problem but it will %100 for sure double the voltage drop. It would be impossible for it not to.
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Post by dshadoff on Apr 18, 2022 18:27:57 GMT
Normal connectors are ~0.03 ohms, which is negligible on a HuCard which draws in the 10’s of milliamps maximum, which would give it an effective load resistance of hundreds of ohms. Effective voltage drop is ~0.0001 volts. It’s like saying that a darkroom can’t be totally dark. On the other hand, if the HuCard were drawing a few amps, it might be worth discussing as a small percentage drop.
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Post by SignOfZeta on Apr 19, 2022 9:51:04 GMT
I never said the voltage drop was large, I simply said it doubled.
Since everyone has had a HuCARD once in their life that wouldn’t play without cleaning I’d say everyone has experienced voltage drops too large across the HuCARD slot and would understand that having twice as many contacts to clean could make for a large pain in the neck.
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Post by dshadoff on Apr 19, 2022 14:47:13 GMT
The term ‘voltage drop’ also implies that the connection is present, and is not intermittent (across all pins)… which is almost certainly not the case.
In every case I’ve seen (and I made the Kisado), it was due to an ‘open circuit’ or complete lack of connection across one or more pins, either stable or intermittent.
The better way to express this state is ‘bad connection’
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Post by SignOfZeta on Apr 19, 2022 15:26:41 GMT
The term ‘voltage drop’ also implies that the connection is present, and is not intermittent (across all pins)… which is almost certainly not the case. In every case I’ve seen (and I made the Kisado), it was due to an ‘open circuit’ or complete lack of connection across one or more pins, either stable or intermittent. The better way to express this state is ‘bad connection’ A bad connection at a connector and voltage drop at a connector are the same thing, both are quantified with a meter across both sides of the connection. If you put your meter across both sides of a working data connector the number it reads is ideally zero but never actually will be. If the pins are so bad they don’t even touch and it’s a 5V bus you’ll read 5V there. It’s still voltage drop. This is probably the #2 most important test in all of electrical repair after “Does it have power and ground?”
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Post by dshadoff on Apr 19, 2022 16:43:34 GMT
Ok, I see that you’re still fixated on this, so I will say just one last thing. An open circuit (no connection) incurs no voltage drop, which is why I took exception to the terminology you started using. That’s all I have to say on the subject.
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majors
Punkic Cyborg
Have cabs, will travel
Posts: 158
Fave PCE Shooter: Parodius
Fave PCE Platformer: Legendary Axe
Fave PCE Game Overall: Spriggian
Fave PCE RPG: Ys
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Post by majors on Apr 19, 2022 20:51:43 GMT
And in other news...
I have a Duo that I RGB and region modded and after that, I have issues with loading games from the (old) TED. It seems to have gfx corruption in most games I load but I never had any game crash on me, as far as I can remember. I can load games on my RX right next to my Duo (also region/RGB) just fine then swap the TED to the Duo and it plays peachy. I did some trouble shooting looking at power, but it did not seem to be the culprit. I'm coughing it up to a sloppy mod on my part but not worth tracking down since I have other PCE's and I do not need the TED running on my Duo that much.
Just tossing out my experiences to the OP.
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