UPDATE : 10-01-2018
Hello Everyone,
We got the first lot of pcbs from factory today, next week we will get even more.
So, those are the final pcbs factory soldered
We were able to program 32 units today (program, validate, assemble into the shells (this picture was talken while we were doing the shells assembly)
So, the good news are :
Pcbs look pretty aswesome.
We tried 32 and 0 errors.
We are ready to ship
There are two small things pending to arrive:
a) double side adhesive tape to glue the boxes.
b) brown cardbox to protect the Super SD System 3 cardbox.
Both things are going to be delivered tomorrow.
So : i think we may be able to ship some units tomorrow, worst scenario friday.
I am happy to anounce :
WE START SHIPPING TOMORROW (i hope) or FRIDAY.
Again i am going to ask for one thing :
Don´t email asking when your order is going to ship, we don´t know and we are not going to answer those cause we have a lot of work to deliver and ratter we spend our time delivering ratter than answering when are we going to deliver.
AND : PATIENCE.
I think it will take us about 3 weeks to be up to date with current orders, but we are selling a good number of units, so everyone i going to have patience .
I hope you guys understand that, we are doing our best to get as many units as possible shipped.
BTW we are super excited to see your coments about our work, guys.
UPDATE : 08-01-2018
I have called pcbs factory, they said we will have the pcbs soldered this week, so i expect we will start shipping this week.
They were unable to tell me the day they will have the pcbs done (as usual).
I will give you more details as soon as we have those, guys.
UPDATE : 05-01-2018
Cardboxes arrived yesterday. Only pcbs remaing to arrive now, we expect those next week, more details as soon as we have those.
I able to fast mount one without glue it. It was a fast job to see how those will look like once glued and assembled
UPDATE 03-01-2017
We got tracking number for the cardboxes and manuals.
Those should arrive by friday
UPDATE : 03-01-2018 We got shells in Sotck, we are just waiting for pcbs and cardboxes to start shipping. Shipment is inminent
Some videos of the shells :
UPDATE : 30-12-2017
We have a delivery date for shells
Wednesday, 03/01/2018 , by 14:00 (this is European date format. Next Wednesday, in 4 days)
UPDATE 26-12-2017 Manual
http://www.neosdstore.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/FINAL_SSDS3_MANUAL_v2.pdf
UPDATE 22-12-2017 Final Shells
This thingle is going to look pretty nice with the golden pads pcb inside
BTW, shells are being packed right now for shipment ....
EDIT 18-12-2017
Hello
New production update.
Final pcb panels have been finished, we got two samples and the rest have been sent to the SMT factory for soldering.
We still don´t know if SMT factory will be able to solder the chips on the pcbs the last week of december or if we will have to wait until the first week of January.
I expect to not know this until last day of December at all ...
EDIT : 13-12-2017
Hello everyone,
We have added the final barcode and changed the av output draw aswel.
So we have the final box art ready to subtimt to print.
Please, have a look and see if you guys can notice any mistakes or so before its too late
EDIT : 09-12-2017
First production update comes today
Mould has finished the polishment stage and we got samples of the final pieces, those SAMPLES are in solid black but FINAL PIECES WILL BE TRANSPARENT BLACK
Those pictures are good to see how the shells will look like :
EDIT : Pictures removed cause we added the final shells pictures
I hope you all like those
FAQ
Can you use a real system card on Super System 3 ? Is it a High Level Emulator ?
You can actually use an actual system card and it will work.
There is not HLE, it's the cd controller running on the FPGA, the SCSI interface,the ADPCM decoder and the arcade card, all running in the FPGA.
The fact that it works with standard system cards proves that the implementation is low level enough to make it believe it's a real cd briefcase what's on the expansion port
Out of curiosity: can the Super System 3 be used to dump HuCards to the SD card? It'd be a fun, if a bit unnecessary, feature for people who have a large library of games.
That would be an interesting feature for people who want to legally dump their own games.
Hello,
We discussed this back in the day, i myself would love this aswel.
The issue is that once you plug a hucard, it takes control over the expansion port so you would need to boot Super SD System 3 before plug a hucard and then dump it.
The plastic piece on the power button avoids the hotplug of the hucard aswel.
Had to call my CC company but I was able to order one!
Has this been tested on the PCE LT?
No, but it should work, the only board where we are sure it will not work is on the PAL Turbografx 16 cause the 50hz changes they did are so deep that ruin some pieces of magic we use
Turbografx 16 PAL runs at a different clock speed than the NTSC one or the japanese pcengines/coregrafxs/supergrafx
No one tried it on turbografx16 until today (gadget did) and it works fine. We were expecting that as we spent 3 months just polishing the firmware, so its pretty solid.
Will the box have an actual barcode, or the partial one on the mock-up with the 0s?
It will, we need one asap.
Congratulations, looks amazing!
Is it a Mega Drive 2 cable for RGB though? Looks like MD1 connector on the packaging.
Its Megadrive 2 RGB cable YES, megadrive 1 is bigger and it has a different shape aswel
I bought a Turbo EverDrive *today*. Well, fuck me.
Few questions for mr neosd:
- Can this also output csync instead of sync-on-composite?
- Does it come with a companion HuCard or can you 'boot' from the expansion port?
- I assume any existing internal RGB mod (tapping RGB from the expansion connector) would have to be removed for this to work?
It also outputs TTL level csync (negative hsync & vsync)
You don't need any hucard inserted for it to work. If you insert a hucard, the internal hucard emulation is disabled, although the cd emulation is still working.
I think even if there is an internal rgb mod, it will work fine, as long as no traces from the video chip to the expansion port are cut.
Do you have to use the rgb from the super sd sytem 3,or could i use the rgb from my mooded core grafx?
Otherwise i need to order megadrive 2 rgb cable.
You can use the pcengine video output BUT you will not get cd audio sound cause the pcengine lacks of ADPCM hardware that both Super SD System 3 and original super cdrom2 drive has, so you need to get atleast the audio output from the super sd system 3 mini-din connector.
Would it be recommended to get a stronger power supply (more amps) or will the stock one be just fine?
This is a nice discussion we had aswel,
Stock pcengine PSU is 450ma and this is quite low for the entire set but it just works fine. So this is up to everyone
This is huge! I'm so glad I kept myself from getting into PCE before now.
What's the best PCE variant (both from a cost vs features) standpoint to use with this?
This is a way personal question.
Both pcengine, coregrafx 1 and coregrafx 2 will give you the same performance with Super SD System 3, no differences at all. Actually Coregrafx 1 and Coregrafx are 100% the same hardware.
If you want to play the 6 exclusive hucard games SuperGrafx has, you should go for a SuperGrafx, else i would go for the cheapest one.
Just a few clarifications on the hardware:
- you don't need a new power supply, we have tested with the 650mA psu of pcengines and it works fine.
- you don't need a hucard. Everything is emulated in the sd system 3: hucards, system cards, arcade card... .
You can however use your own hucards and that part will be disabled on the sd system 3, so you can still benefit, for example, from the backup ram or use your own system card to boot cds. Some limitations apply though, so it's recommened to use the internal emulation and run without a hucard.
- csync is TTL but can be easily feed to a 75ohm sync inserting a 470ohm resistor in the cart. The sd system 3 has access to the original pce csync, that is 75ohm sync levels, but it's not selected, currently a TTL csync is generated from the h & v sync signals.
Didn't see it asked anywhere else yet, and I don't particularly care about other's opinions about if it should have been implemented or not, but why no HDMI output?
This would have increased the development costs, manufacturing and the final price aswel.
On the other hand people interested on upscalers are just using framemeisters and oss, so we thought it would be better to have a pure rgb output so everyone can use theyr favourite upscaler ratter than force everyone to purchase a included one.
thank you guys! I will buy it!
I have 3 questions for NeoSD member:
2) the RGB cable and the microSD aren't included in the box, am I right?
3) the cd games could have different format: bin+cue, iso+cue, wav files + cue and so on. Are all the format supported?
4) a lot of Pc Engine on ebay are RGB modded: do you think that the modded console with the RGB output could not work with Super System 3?
thank you!
RGB Cable and microsd are not included
The cart currently supports cue+iso and cue+bin, but adding cue+wav is easy. cue+mp3 and similar formats with compressed audio won't be supported.
I think a rgb modded console will work. You can also continue using your modded rgb output if you wish, but the audio must be taken from the sd system 3 connector, otherwise you'll miss the cdda + adpcm sound that is generated by the cdrom block
Regards jailbars - you will get them if you haven't modded your console, and no uber quality RGB cable or whatever will fix that. You would need to do the bypass cap mod to the PCE to fix it. I notice it more on my TG16 than the PCE if I am honest. But the Super SD System 3 has no influence on that issue at all - purely lack of the correct bypass caps on the Hu6260.
EDIT: What I am trying to say here is if you have jailbars, its not the Super SD System 3, and no expansion or RGB mod or cable mod can fix that particular issue. It's a mod you would have to do to your PCE. It's starting to feel like people are expecting the Super SD System 3 to solve all their problems in life, part the seas, walk on water etc =D True, it can walk on water, but it cannot magically fix an incorrectly sized capacitor next to the Hu6260 chip :o)
Yes, the jailbars are a problem in the internal hardware of the pce so there is little that can be done externally.
There is theoretically a way to fix it, by tapping the color bus and dot clock in the exp bus, capturing palette writes and regenerating a rgb signal from the digital data that is noise free. I guess this is what the dvi device uses, but they seem to have some issues (probably due to the varying dot clock and resolutions the pce uses). Also that would mean a more powerful and expensive fpga, video DACs and other non trivial stuff ( compensating the signal delays, etc...), bigger pcb to accomodate the extra needed hw... So as I said, it's theoretically doable, but really hard.
with PCE S³ is it possible to transfert old save data from interface unit/duo with ten no koe card ?
We haven't tried, but it's theoretically possible, as when when a real hucard is detected, the backup ram controller is still enabled, and you can read/write it, and it will be saved to the sd.
The process, though, will be a bit involved, depending if you have "per game saves" selected or not.
If you don't have the per game saves selected, the save data will be read and written to a file named backup.bup, so you have all the saves in a block, as if you had a normal super cdrom/IFU. Just insert your ten no koe card and transfer the saves to the cd backup ram.
With the "per game saves" option on is a bit more difficult, because each game will have its own .bup file, but when running an external hucard, it will use backup.bup, as it doesn't know which game you have, so you'll have to insert your ten no koe card, transfer the data from the card to the cd backup ram (of the SD system 3) then take the sd out, go to the bup folder and copy or rename the backup.bup file to the name of the game you want to use that backup for, and then you can run your game with the save data you transferred from the card, although it will have more save files there, apart from the current game, you can delete them from the backup ram manager in the bios (if you have "Skip 'Press Run' " on, just hold SELECT while booting, and it will not skip the press run message, and you can access the backup manager by pressing SELECT there.
