MOD - Pin 29 - PC Engine Duo video tutorial

[seefuu1]

I have 1 of those dentist tools but it is too thick I think. I will check it out again but the hobby knife works great because it flexis more. .I just add a little pressure and it pops the pin up

Well the one i have is very thin and just hooks under those ting IC legs.

[BlueBMW]

I talked to Red Ghost and he said that he could never get the IC mod on a US TG16 to work.  I had one with an 8PDT pushbutton mod and it worked perfectly standalone and with a turbo cd.  But it sounds like trying to do the IC mod on a regular TG is an exercize in futility.

[SignOfZeta]

I can't understand why that would be the case. They do the exact same thing.

[Necromancer]

Perhaps it's like the flash carts - it requires slightly more power and there's not enough to spare from some power supplies.

[SignOfZeta]

You mean to power the IC itself? That really shouldn't be a problem. Where was Red Ghost getting his +5?

[BlueBMW]

When I was trying to do it, I sourced 5V for several different sources with the same result each time.  The only thing I can think of is maybe the signals over the hucard connectors are too weak to go through the IC's / extra wires and still have a strong enough signal to be processed.  Here's what Red Ghost said in a message to me when I mentioned my failed IC mod on a TG16...

"As unfortunate as it is, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who learned the IC mod the hard way for the TG16. I messed with that for waaaay too long before finally determining that it just doesn't work."

I dont know if we really know WHY it doesn't work, it just doesn't.  Maybe you're luck will be different, but its a lot of work to do just to have it not work!

[SignOfZeta]

This is interesting.

Back in the day there were some Arcade Card games that wouldn't work right on US systems (only the US Duo, from what I remember) using the diving board and Barney converters. I remember them being Mad Stalker and Sapphire. Sapphire would crash on stage 2, Mad Stalker would only run the cinema. I knew two guys with useless copies of Mad Stalker, the Sapphire issue was mentioned on the Turbo Mailing List (never knew a guy who could get a Sapphire at any time near the release date).

At the time we had the same theory, that voltage drop across the add-ons caused signal quality issues. The Kisado was awesome because it didn't cause this problem and worked with everything.

[Platinumfungi]

Duo_R - Nice work  The addition of video tutorials is a great asset to the community! This should help out a lot of people.

BlueBMW and SignOfZeta - As per the IC region mod not working on TG16 units... It's been probably two years ago that I messed around with it, so my memory is a little fuzzy.

However, here's what I do remember:
- I did some digging and found a random hint from D-Lite's ancient messages that he was unable to get the IC mod to work with the TG16.

- My mod initially appeared as though it would work...but would always glitch out and have odd issues. USA games would play for awhile but have very bad on screen graphical problems and eventually freeze. JPN games seemed like they never wanted to get past the title screen. The few games I had to test would always freeze.

- I tried tapping +5V from several different locations. No change.

I tried everything I could think of at that point in time, but once I found the reference of D-Lite's same result I just gave up and was satisfied with the push button switch.

I'm sure it's possible...but someone really has to do some R&D to figure this one out...

[goombakid]

Thanks for chiming in, Red Ghost. And Duo_R, apologies for the slight tangent your thread is going through.

I'm gonna play around with the IC mod for my TG16. I may try applying the +5V and Ground to the IC individually. Possible voltage drop might be causing the ICs to fail? Just thinking why it fails.

Otherwise, the whole region mod basically switches the pin positions, correct? There's something I want to try if this IC mod fails (which I'm sure, at this point, will).

PC Engine Duo and IC mod, though, is OK?

[SignOfZeta]

The IC mod I did on my Duo R is still going %100. The chip came from D-Lite.

When trying to get this to work on the TG-16, the only things I can think are a) make sure your power supply is as solid as possible (ie: the white one from Radio Shack) b) tap it right at the DC in on the board, and c) try building some isolation into the +5 for the IC like...uh, I don't know. A capacitor or something, to smooth out possible voltage changes.