"Like the sound of this. I was contemplating the Everdrive for the PCE but that didn’t cover the CD games."
Affirmative, before these only HuCard flash cards such as the Everdrive or Tototek (or Super Magic Griffin and Multi Game Doctor ^2 if you go back a ways to the floppy disk era of devkit/game copiers) existed. This is the first to market ODE (Optical Disk Emulator) device for the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 CD-ROM add ons. GDEmu for the Dreamcast, Rhea/Phoebe for the Saturn being some other similar devices which exist (albeit, different developer on those, who is also working on an FM Towns/Marty ODE more recently. Still no ODE for the PCFX or many other earlier CD-ROM systems, it would be nice if ultimately these sorts of things were made a bit more like GoTeks for floppy drives with re-flashable firmware for different system support).
"I’ll admit to not having a clue about all the different iterations of PCE consoles, so if I was looking to get one console that can play ALL games via this device, which one should it be? Is that even possible?"
No, it is not possible. There is no one PC Engine/Turbo Grafx that plays ALL the games. A SuperGrafx would probably get you the closest, but still miss LaserActive titles (which this device does not attempt to emulate, even slightly).
"Also, in terms of PAL consoles is the hardware locked down to 50hz like a PAL SNES, or can it output 60hz if ntsc software is used via this device?"
PAL systems are rare in PC Engine or Turbo Grafx-16 forms from what I have researched, apparently after market modifications in the UK and France primarily and not official from NEC, but it should in theory work, HuCards were region protected sort of, CD-ROM games were not, but region protection is separate from video syncing. Chances are playing NTSC developed games on PAL systems will result in timing errors are high, how the modifications were made likely varies extensively system to system. The play to change video syncing would ideally happen on a video processor/upscaler in between this and your monitor anyway, don't expect systems to support PAL and NTSC simultaneously natively. The Commodore Amiga did, but that was rare, and much more expensive than home game consoles in its era.
@Averagewriter No. The PCエンジンGT as well as its US counterpart, the TurboExpress, do not have an expansion port.
Similarly, the ShuttleGrafx had a limited pin expansion port, and is probably also not compatible, but I do not have one to test.
On the other hand: I have tested it with a TurboGrafx-16 and a PCエンジンエルティ「enjin eru ti」aka a PC Engine LT.
It functions, but so far, leaves a LOT to be desired.
Not muxing audio back in like the original IFU and Super CD-ROM systems for example makes me wonder a lot about their design. Particularly as they are so upset about the RGB output bugs (I have a second revision, at least, but they repeatedly stated on their forum they regret including that functionality since they incorrectly implemented it and it has cost them. Given how they mux in CD-DA audio over the RGB output port though, there is fundamentally no other way they could have created this given their engineering, which I don't think is demonstrably amazing, I am pretty certain none of the original CD-ROM drives muxed audio that way, albeit I only had a TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM unit and a Super CD-ROM^2 drive for a Core Grafx II, not an original IFU).
The device itself seemed to work better when I first got it than when I used it again last night. Maybe the develo box I was using between a controller and the LT was causing memory mapping issues? All arcade card functionality ceased working. I have not had time to debug it further, I am hoping to at least get it back to levels of functionality where it was when I was first testing it and Arcade CD game images function again but I can't begin to express how frustrating it was to see that fail despite preliminary successes, maybe the RAM got fried somehow? I don't know how. Moreover, given that they use the Neo Geo forums full of, to put it euphemistically: underneath the bridge dwelling trolls (their chat is about as bad, merely ephemeral being cursed at with middle school level vulgarities and insensitivities), support is by all appearances, a disaster of flame-war level proportions even with legitimate concerns.
I want this to work better than it does. Maybe in time it will. I think it is awesome in theory. In practice it has some serious bugs. The cool looking menu system with artwork by a former Paradox member looks neat, much shinier than the Everdrive! However, it is ASCII only. In 2018, that is inexcusable, especially for a system peripheral where the majority of the games are Japanese and do not use ASCII encoding nor have English titles.
I look forward to improvements with future firmware revisions and will doubtlessly be submitting some PR/bugs if they ever demonstrate a semblance of actual support, but for the time being it is a work in progress and off to a patchy start. The Everdrive, already is less reliable than Tototek flash cards ever were in my experience, and while in theory this would be a great development device, in practice it doesn't seem to function properly with actual development tools for the console from decades ago, and seems woefully under-tested by deeply inexperienced and quick to take offense individuals.
Comments 2
Re: Hardware Review: Terraonion Super SD System 3 Unlocks The Entire PC Engine Library
@GravyThief
"Like the sound of this. I was contemplating the Everdrive for the PCE but that didn’t cover the CD games."
Affirmative, before these only HuCard flash cards such as the Everdrive or Tototek (or Super Magic Griffin and Multi Game Doctor ^2 if you go back a ways to the floppy disk era of devkit/game copiers) existed. This is the first to market ODE (Optical Disk Emulator) device for the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 CD-ROM add ons. GDEmu for the Dreamcast, Rhea/Phoebe for the Saturn being some other similar devices which exist (albeit, different developer on those, who is also working on an FM Towns/Marty ODE more recently. Still no ODE for the PCFX or many other earlier CD-ROM systems, it would be nice if ultimately these sorts of things were made a bit more like GoTeks for floppy drives with re-flashable firmware for different system support).
"I’ll admit to not having a clue about all the different iterations of PCE consoles, so if I was looking to get one console that can play ALL games via this device, which one should it be? Is that even possible?"
No, it is not possible. There is no one PC Engine/Turbo Grafx that plays ALL the games. A SuperGrafx would probably get you the closest, but still miss LaserActive titles (which this device does not attempt to emulate, even slightly).
"Also, in terms of PAL consoles is the hardware locked down to 50hz like a PAL SNES, or can it output 60hz if ntsc software is used via this device?"
PAL systems are rare in PC Engine or Turbo Grafx-16 forms from what I have researched, apparently after market modifications in the UK and France primarily and not official from NEC, but it should in theory work, HuCards were region protected sort of, CD-ROM games were not, but region protection is separate from video syncing. Chances are playing NTSC developed games on PAL systems will result in timing errors are high, how the modifications were made likely varies extensively system to system. The play to change video syncing would ideally happen on a video processor/upscaler in between this and your monitor anyway, don't expect systems to support PAL and NTSC simultaneously natively. The Commodore Amiga did, but that was rare, and much more expensive than home game consoles in its era.
Re: Hardware Review: Terraonion Super SD System 3 Unlocks The Entire PC Engine Library
@Averagewriter No. The PCエンジンGT as well as its US counterpart, the TurboExpress, do not have an expansion port.
Similarly, the ShuttleGrafx had a limited pin expansion port, and is probably also not compatible, but I do not have one to test.
On the other hand: I have tested it with a TurboGrafx-16 and a PCエンジンエルティ「enjin eru ti」aka a PC Engine LT.
It functions, but so far, leaves a LOT to be desired.
Not muxing audio back in like the original IFU and Super CD-ROM systems for example makes me wonder a lot about their design. Particularly as they are so upset about the RGB output bugs (I have a second revision, at least, but they repeatedly stated on their forum they regret including that functionality since they incorrectly implemented it and it has cost them. Given how they mux in CD-DA audio over the RGB output port though, there is fundamentally no other way they could have created this given their engineering, which I don't think is demonstrably amazing, I am pretty certain none of the original CD-ROM drives muxed audio that way, albeit I only had a TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM unit and a Super CD-ROM^2 drive for a Core Grafx II, not an original IFU).
The device itself seemed to work better when I first got it than when I used it again last night. Maybe the develo box I was using between a controller and the LT was causing memory mapping issues? All arcade card functionality ceased working. I have not had time to debug it further, I am hoping to at least get it back to levels of functionality where it was when I was first testing it and Arcade CD game images function again but I can't begin to express how frustrating it was to see that fail despite preliminary successes, maybe the RAM got fried somehow? I don't know how. Moreover, given that they use the Neo Geo forums full of, to put it euphemistically: underneath the bridge dwelling trolls (their chat is about as bad, merely ephemeral being cursed at with middle school level vulgarities and insensitivities), support is by all appearances, a disaster of flame-war level proportions even with legitimate concerns.
I want this to work better than it does. Maybe in time it will. I think it is awesome in theory. In practice it has some serious bugs. The cool looking menu system with artwork by a former Paradox member looks neat, much shinier than the Everdrive! However, it is ASCII only. In 2018, that is inexcusable, especially for a system peripheral where the majority of the games are Japanese and do not use ASCII encoding nor have English titles.
I look forward to improvements with future firmware revisions and will doubtlessly be submitting some PR/bugs if they ever demonstrate a semblance of actual support, but for the time being it is a work in progress and off to a patchy start. The Everdrive, already is less reliable than Tototek flash cards ever were in my experience, and while in theory this would be a great development device, in practice it doesn't seem to function properly with actual development tools for the console from decades ago, and seems woefully under-tested by deeply inexperienced and quick to take offense individuals.