PC Engine Super System3 RGB Tech Support.

Neodogg said:

well...you are French...

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Well....what about you ? ......
No .... it doesn't worth talkin bout you .....

RevQuixo said:

Latest RetroRGB video talks about the SSDS3 9appound the 3 minute mark) and how the colors are going to be too bright now with the current RGB solution because the PCE outputs at a different voltage than the MD2... Apparently there is no winning in this situation.

https://youtu.be/rwbvAsF8OiE

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I saw his video but the best thing for now is to wait until we have the system in our hands , better than speculations.

I follow retroRGB for a long time now and he's a great guy but sometimes he is too much finicky.

RetroRGB is a Darksoft supporter...

He also has a beef with Neosd... it will be upto Neosd if he wishes to expand... but my advice is...

If a youtube reviewer wants free device to "review" a product... and when the vendor says NO... I'd suggest that he may NOT... be the most reliable source on the internet...

xROTx

greatfunky said:

Well....what about you ? ......
No .... it doesn't worth talkin bout you .....


I saw his video but the best thing for now is to wait until we have the system in our hands , better than speculations.

I follow retroRGB for a long time now and he's a great guy but sometimes he is too much finicky.

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About what he reported on his video : he is partially right,
I mean the image is a bit more bright than the one we would have using a rgb cable without caps and resistors and with our original design (with caps and resistors on the board instead of the 0ohm resistors we swapped those for to fit mega drive 2 cable compatibility)

Is it worth to mention that when you haven´t even saw how the image is ? if you ask me, i would say his decision about telling this on the video is more a personal decision than other thing ...

So back to topic, will anyone notice this more bright image without looking at a color bar test pattern for some secconds ? i don´t think so

Alex,

I wasn't aware about his support for darksoft ... too bad

like i said he is sometimes too much finicky , at a moment everything you see on a screen seems perfect then, someone say " no no we can improve it again" .
There are limits or we fall into absurdity...

greatfunky said:

I wasn't aware about his support for darksoft ... too bad

like i said he is sometimes too much finicky , at a moment everything you see on a screen seems perfect then, someone say " no no we can improve it again" .
There are limits or we fall into absurdity...

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Fact is : there was no perfect solution.

We had to decide to keep compatibility with the mega drive 2 rgb cables (with caps and resistors) or keep our original design that was perfect but needed a pasive cable without capacitors and resistors.

At the end of the day, it was our fault about not knowing the megadrive 2 had this hardware design issue and it needed a cable with caps and resistors, else we would have choosen the saturn connector and we would not have this drama ...

Retrorgb suggested us to change the connector to avoid people to get confussed and we thought it was a bad idea at our side cause we already had the shells in production and this would have caused a serious delay while we haven´t see any advantage while changing the connector at all.
I mean, changing the connector avoids people from plugging the cable but it would require a different cable at all, so whats the point there ? just to not get people confussed ? so much trouble for such a "solution"


So at the end we decided to choose the mega drive compatibility path, and yes the image is a little more bright but i don´t think this is possible to notice while not using a color patter test screen.

There was a great coment on shumps forum about this subject :

On the other side, if your concept of gaming is staying in front of your TV watching the various 240p test suite patterns then you might have a point, but I'd re-consider some of your priorities in life :P

neosd said:

Fact is : there was no perfect solution.

We had to decide to keep compatibility with the mega drive 2 rgb cables (with caps and resistors) or keep our original design that was perfect but needed a pasive cable without capacitors and resistors.

At the end of the day, it was our fault about not knowing the megadrive 2 had this hardware design issue and it needed a cable with caps and resistors, else we would have choosen the saturn connector and we would not have this drama ...

Retrorgb suggested us to change the connector to avoid people to get confussed and we thought it was a bad idea at our side cause we already had the shells in production and this would have caused a serious delay while we haven´t see any advantage while changing the connector at all.
I mean, changing the connector avoids people from plugging the cable but it would require a different cable at all, so whats the point there ? just to not get people confussed ? so much trouble for such a "solution"


So at the end we decided to choose the mega drive compatibility path, and yes the image is a little more bright but i don´t think this is possible to notice while not using a color patter test screen.

There was a great coment on shumps forum about this subject :

On the other side, if your concept of gaming is staying in front of your TV watching the various 240p test suite patterns then you might have a point, but I'd re-consider some of your priorities in life :P

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lol the guy who put this comment on shumps is so right .

I think this quest for image perfection becomes stupid , some years ago there was real discovery about rgb improvement on some consoles , now that everything is done, some are frustrated and are still searching for nothing to find;

greatfunky said:

lol the guy who put this comment on shumps is so right .

I think this quest for image perfection becomes stupid , some years ago there was real discovery about rgb improvement on some consoles , now that everything is done, some are frustrated and are still searching for nothing to find;

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if you look at this from the other hand :

What have been you using before Super SD System 3 ?


If you were obsessed with rgb : a modded pcengine that required to open the console, solder a pcb with the video amplifier and so ?
If not : the regular av output ?

If you had rgb on your console, you can use this rgb output while getting cd audio from SSDS3.
If you were using the regular video out, you will now have a good rgb output with a sightly brightness that you will only nottice using a test patern

On the other side, if you are so crazy about the purest rgb output, just swap the 6 resistors on the SSDS3 pcb for 3 resistors and 3 capacitors and remove the caps and resistors from the megadrive 2 cable. You had to make a bigger job to get rgb out on your pcengine before SSDS3.

To me all this is a no sense. Not having a great compatibility on the games library would have been an issue ....

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61467

At least I apologised... right?

xROTx

It seems all those guys make you doubt, mostly do not doubt neosd ! you made the right choices , for the plug , the scart , everything, this product will be a must have for sure !

Ps : Rot you have throw a cobble in the pond

greatfunky said:

I think this quest for image perfection becomes stupid , some years ago there was real discovery about rgb improvement on some consoles , now that everything is done, some are frustrated and are still searching for nothing to find

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:golfclap:

When the subject of lowering the SS3's output to satisfy the people who already MD2 expensive cables, I shook my head.

Any old cheap MD2 scart would have produced great results. Now we have people complaining about brightness...people need to stop clouding NeoSD's vision of perfection.

Second guessing has benefited no one.

Personally I'm just happy to have a device that plays CD-Roms via Bin/Cue with RGB. I really don't give 2 shits the quality might be slightly bright. Some games could benefit from a slight amount of brightness. Dungeon Explorer comes to mind.

Can't you just turn the brightness down on your television anyway?

greedostick said:

Personally I'm just happy to have a device that plays CD-Roms via Bin/Cue with RGB. I really don't give 2 shits the quality might be slightly bright. Some games could benefit from a slight amount of brightness. Dungeon Explorer comes to mind.

Can't you just turn the brightness down on your television anyway?

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I feel you Greedo. I rather have a nice bright picture that worst case scenario I could turn down on my monitor if need be than a dim picture at max settings on my monitor.

You guys wouldn't have to touch your monitor had the original design gone through. Just buy a cheaper cable.

Now people have to buy more expensive cables that may give you a brighter picture. Now some will have to find someone to restore the SS3 without voiding the warranty, more cost.

In hindsight, a few upped the cost of the SS3 for no good reason.

Syn said:

You guys wouldn't have to touch your monitor had the original design gone through. Just buy a cheaper cable.

Now people have to buy more expensive cables that may give you a brighter picture. Now some will have to find someone to restore the SS3 without voiding the warranty, more cost.

In hindsight, a few upped the cost of the SS3 for no good reason.

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Bit of crap analysis here. The fact of the matter is that no one knowingly makes passive MD2 cables at this point. Even the cheapie cables that GreatFunky just bought have caps and resistors in them. So did the cables NeoSD was using. So we'd all be left scrambling to find a proper passive RGB cable that didn't make the picture too dark...or the cable companies would have to make them special for us.

Instead we asked, "Well if you are going to use MD2 cables, why not follow the MD2 spec". The assumption here is that translating the PC Engine to MD2 would be possible since other people have done it successfully previously (db electronics booster for example).

There was a unfortunate bit of design weakness here with unknown variables that even the designers didn't anticipate.

RevQuixo said:

Bit of crap analysis here. The fact of the matter is that no one knowingly makes passive MD2 cables at this point. Even the cheapie cables that GreatFunky just bought have caps and resistors in them. So did the cables NeoSD was using. So we'd all be left scrambling to find a proper passive RGB cable that didn't make the picture too dark...or the cable companies would have to make them special for us.

Instead we asked, "Well if you are going to use MD2 cables, why not follow the MD2 spec". The assumption here is that translating the PC Engine to MD2 would be possible since other people have done it successfully previously (db electronics booster for example).

There was a unfortunate bit of design weakness here with unknown variables that even the designers didn't anticipate.

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+1

Agree completely.


Unless NEOSD wanted to be in the cable business, and I am guessing they don't, they made the right decision.


And, as mentioned above, even the dbGrafx Booster is designed to use a standard MD2 cable (with the 75 ohm resistors and caps in the Scart cable).


And this talk of brightness issues is complete nonsense. NEOSD originally had 75 ohm resistors and the (220uF?) caps in the SD3 and replaced them with 0 ohm jumpers (pretty much straight wire jumpers) so people can use MD2 cables that have the same components in the scart hood. Regardless of whether those components are in the console side or the cable side, there will be ZERO difference in brightness. So long as they are present, everything would be ok. What would have really fucked people is if NEOSD hadn't made that change and people used regular MD2 cable (with caps and resistors in them). Then the picture would have been super dim and they would have to remove the components from the cable to get a proper picture.


Really, you guys need to stop listening to neckbeard (aka RetroRGB) or at the very least step back and think for a moment. I don't remember him being critical of Rene and the dbGrafx Booster and it follows the same MD2 cable standard.

NEOSD made a decision to follow a standard and if you buy MD2 cables from an even remotely decent builder, then they will comply with that standard. So stop buying 99 cent Hong Kong cable specials.

Yodd said:

Really, you guys need to stop listening to neckbeard (aka RetroRGB) or at the very least step back and think for a moment. I don't remember him being critical of Rene and the dbGrafx Booster and it follows the same MD2 cable standard.

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+1

At first , the video of retrorgb did not disturb me because i have a great confidence in neosd and i'm pretty well informed (i'm hanging out here).

But, I realize now (after some revelations) that his message is maybe not so innocent .

It sows doubt and even fear , especially when he say : "do not use 2 outputs because you could hurt a lot , the amps , the console hitself"

These remarks has nothing to do here , even if the pce system 3 is not directly involved , why would you use 2 outputs at the same time , why talking about a potential dammage ? in a video of a non released product , unless you have a motivation.

Terraonion has created the neosd then now the pce system 3 , far above the skills of all those guys and they want us to believe they can not handle a basical RGB output ? it makes me laugh.....

greatfunky said:

I think this quest for image perfection becomes stupid , some years ago there was real discovery about rgb improvement on some consoles , now that everything is done, some are frustrated and are still searching for nothing to find;

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chasing those dragons...

On a side note, I'm surprised so many use the model two for gaming. I use a model 1 and would be set cable wise.

Neodogg said:

chasing those dragons...

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chasing you should be a good start...

Syn said:

On a side note, I'm surprised so many use the model two for gaming. I use a model 1 and would be set cable wise.

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Model 1 doesn’t output Stereo without patching it in from the headphone jack seperately.

RevQuixo said:

Model 1 doesn’t output Stereo without patching it in from the headphone jack seperately.

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Yes and

I was mentioning I was surprised so many use a model 2.

The RetroRGB/Voultar/db crew is really fucking annoying. That show they do together is awful. They're talking about fucking video games but act like they're curing cancer.

Jibbajaba said:

The RetroRGB/Voultar/db crew is really fucking annoying. That show they do together is awful. They're talking about fucking video games but act like they're curing cancer.

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Syn said:

Yes and

I was mentioning I was surprised so many use a model 2.

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Because Model 2 has enough pins to support composite video, RGB, and stereo sound.

If you are referring to systems..I would imagine that, yes, most of us are using Model 1 Gennys...but if you use a 32X, you are back to model 2 cabling again. Also, HD Retrovision uses the Model 2 as their base connector for the Genesis cables with adapters to plig into it..so again people have those.