PCE Super SD System 3 - Terraonion New Product (Dec 2017)

neosd

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08-12-2017 - 00:20 IMPORTANT - PAYMENT SYSTEM ISSUE

Hi guys, it seems we passed the per daily sales limit our payment system allows.
We see every incoming transaction blocked now, its 00:20 here today and tomorrow is National party in Spain, i will call some friends that work at our bank tomorrow to try to get the limited removed so if you can´t purchase, just try in some hours please.

Sorry about the inconvenience




Hello Everyone

So after NEOSD (AES and MVS), we came here today with our new product. Its called Super SD System 3

105.jpg


Super SD System 3 is a 3 in one device for Pcengine.

Its and ODE and a flashcart plus a AV Booster with RGB output using Mega Drive 2 video cables (both RGB and composite video cables are supported)

So where is the magic on this new device ?

It dosen´t requires ANY system card to play cdrom games and every game works.
It dosent matters if this a cdrom2 game a super cdrom2 game or an arcade cdrom2 game.

You just need the basic pcengine to play the entire pcengine catallog, and if you have a supergrafx you will be able to play the 6 released Super Grafx Games.


Turgbografx 16 NTSC is also working but as today we are not totally sure if the shell fit there, thats why we are not directly anouncing it. We will know it next week or in 2 weeks, as soon as the final shells arrive.

Here are the details about the device :

106.jpg



Super SD system 3 will be shipped with a nice factory made cardbox


108.jpg


107.jpg


This time shells will be made of black smoke transparent ABS plastic, at a different factory that did NEOSD shells.


Purachse/production/shipping status :

We launched the production of the pcbs in the first week of november, we expect those next week and the SMT soldering process should be done on the last 2 weeks of the year.

Mould has been sent to polishment process last monday and we expect to have final pieces by 12th december of this year.

We finished cardbox design yesterday and we will submit the design to printing by monday.

Every pixel art there is done by AlienPDX (great guy !!)

So we expect to have the final product ready to ship by the last week of december or the first week of january.

We have opened sales and as before we will respect purchase order while shipping

We are going to show the different bits while those arrive, so you guys get acurate shipping status.


We did our best with this new product, our goal has been to build the definitive device for the pcengine to play any game faster and in a better confortable way the original hardware does.


We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

In the meanwhile here are some videos :

The lst one done by Yodd, the review done by gadgetuk and the other one done by ourselves back in October.






 
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neosd

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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

final_pcbs_from_factory.jpeg


final_pcbs_from_factory_1.jpeg



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)

Super_SD_System_3_ready_to_ship.jpeg



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 ;)

SSDS3_final_Shells_2.jpg


SSDS3_final_Shells_1.jpg



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.
 
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greatfunky

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I was almost sure of that ! i'm on it !! sorry for my duo-r , i'll have to buy a pc engine or a turbographx ...
 

NeoTurfMasta

DANCE DANCE KARNOV!,
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Had to call my CC company but I was able to order one!

Has this been tested on the PCE LT?
 

Razoola

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Really nice neosd.... Not for me personally as I'm not really into consoles but this looks top notch which is what I would expect from you guys. I'm really liking that final 26sec promo video also, that is really well done.
 

neosd

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Really nice neosd.... Not for me personally as I'm not really into consoles but this looks top notch which is what I would expect from you guys. I'm really liking that final 26sec promo video also, that is really well done.

Thanks for the coments, the final video was done by a top guy, i just haven´t asked him if we should mention him or not, thats why i preffered to not do mistakes while mentioning him.

This time a lot of people wored on the artistic side of the project. We haven´t spent much time on this side with NEOSD and we have decided to improve every possible aspect on this new one.

BTW, we will use the seccond post to answer any tech questions.
 

Tripredacus

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Will the box have an actual barcode, or the partial one on the mock-up with the 0s?
 

Yodd

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This thing is going to knock the wind out of several other PCE/TG16 projects.

Gonna be great.
 

Neodogg

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is your company's name Onion because you make people cry from overwhelming joy?

Spoiler:
should have named it...TerraPantalonesTent...


looks very nice...
 

GohanX

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I've heard rumors for years of various people trying to figure out the whole CD emulation thing for PCE and Sega CD. I'm glad the NeoSD team figured it out, this is awesome.
 

flashbackx

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This blows away my expectations! Completely awesome!

EDIT: Had to contact my bank to order as well, but all set now.
 
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LDigital

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I was hoping it was a pce cd ode and you delivered. I am so super happy with this. As soon as someone does this for the sega cd then my life is totally complete. Hint hint :)
 

wyo

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Congratulations, looks amazing!

Is it a Mega Drive 2 cable for RGB though? Looks like MD1 connector on the packaging.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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This thing is going to knock the wind out of several other PCE/TG16 projects.

It sure will. Like my vaporware RGB Tennokoe Bank+ project from years ago.

Spoiler:

I hated that project. Rare proto.

wrNJOMb.jpg

Mnxdi5E.jpg

 

Razoola

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Thanks for the coments, the final video was done by a top guy, i just haven´t asked him if we should mention him or not, thats why i preffered to not do mistakes while mentioning him.

This time a lot of people wored on the artistic side of the project. We haven´t spent much time on this side with NEOSD and we have decided to improve every possible aspect on this new one.

BTW, we will use the seccond post to answer any tech questions.

Its very easy to see you guys have lifted the bar over the neoSD (NeoGeo) in many aspects not directly related to the hardware itsself. Thats not to take away from the NeoSD at all but its these small areas where you have improoved that make a big difference in what I guess I would call product marketing. The end result is the final product looks really professional.
 

ShootTheCore

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Ordered. I already own 90% of the PC Engine games I've ever wanted, but that last 10% is too expensive these days. Plus I've lost a few discs to bit rot, and this will help my peace of mind in that department. Great job TerraOnion!
 

neosd

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It sure will. Like my vaporware RGB Tennokoe Bank+ project from years ago.

Spoiler:

I hated that project. Rare proto.

wrNJOMb.jpg

Mnxdi5E.jpg


Not wanting to get anyone out of the market at all, we just want to build things we would love to own and use. Obviously the easy things are already done and we are working on the hard ones
 
Last edited:

neosd

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Its very easy to see you guys have lifted the bar over the neoSD (NeoGeo) in many aspects not directly related to the hardware itsself. Thats not to take away from the NeoSD at all but its these small areas where you have improoved that make a big difference in what I guess I would call product marketing. The end result is the final product looks really professional.


While developing NEOSD the goal was to have a perfect pcb and a perfect firmware. We should spent more time on that aspect with NEOSD but resources were limited, we are maturing as company aswel on those aspects, we are really glad with this new project on each side.
 

coreykun667

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Now I'm glad I didn't buy an Everdrive for my PC Engine. Holy hell, I love this! Great work!
 
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