Pc engine on par technically with snes / genesis ?

[Joe Redifer]

Ah yes, I remember now.  It was the extra video chip.  It had to be controlled by the regular old CPU which did not see any increase in speed, thus giving it a heavier workload than the PC Engine normally had to deal with.  It didn't have it's own graphic controller or anything of the like.  A faster CPU would have probably solved that, but a graphics GPU may have been cheaper.... not sure.

[Tatsujin]

for me the arcade hiryû strider is the most disapointed version exist on consoles! the fact that the scrolling is struggling with a horrible frame rate/scrolling, and the gameplay also couldn't reach even the MD standard and as well as most of the parts palette is looking awfull (ex. the ball in the gravity room). allthough an advantage is the sometime nice drawed back grounds (ex. the astrodome of the russian parlament in the 1st stage..) which appears in a huger and closer way to the arcade! the rest just suckz!
 

[malducci]

Tatsujin's right on the money with Strider for AC - what a huge let down. I have a friend who's dying to play it, but I won't let him as I don't want him to experience such a tragedy

Ah yes, I remember now. It was the extra video chip. It had to be controlled by the regular old CPU which did not see any increase in speed, thus giving it a heavier workload than the PC Engine normally had to deal with. It didn't have it's own graphic controller or anything of the like. A faster CPU would have probably solved that, but a graphics GPU may have been cheaper.... not sure.

 Not quite It's funny really, when you read all the rumors of the SGX. I've written some demos/test code and SGX lib for HuC compiler. I don't want to type another 10 paragraphs so I'll try to make this short( it's getting late here).


 Basically- saying the SGX CPU is under powered by the additional VDC(GPU) is like saying the Genesis CPU is also under powered by the additional BG scroll/layer and larger sprite buffer(80). It takes all of 30 cycles to update the background position of the second VDC - out of a possible 120,000 every 1/60 of a second(frame). Taxing? Hardly.  

 The SGX has an addition Video Display Controller with it's own 64k or vram and it's own set of sprites(64) just like the original VDC. So the SGX has 4 planes/layers - BG2, BG1, Sprite 2, Sprite 1. You can set priorities to rearrange the order(on the fly with Hsync interrupts too). And either VDC does not require the CPU to maintain display. There's also this neat(limited) little transparency effect you can do too - ala Jack Chan but cooler.

 The SGX has a total of 128k of vram which is twice that of MD and SNES, so it wouldn't require as much dynamic updating (e.x. Sonic). And even though the SGX divides the 128k into two seperate 64k chucks, updating isn't really a problem because you can write to either display(vram) pretty much at any time.

 The other parts of the SGX include 24k more ram for a total of 32k system ram (more important for hu-cards) and a Video Priority Controller(VPC) which handles priorities between overlaping sprites and backgrounds of the two VDCs as well as clipping options and turning on/off the second VDC output.

 Two interesting things about the SGX is the VCE - another 16bit processer that handles the color, palette, resolution, and composite/RGB output. The SGX version has an 'A' revision that nobody seems to know what the changes are as well as the CPU having an 'A' revision. Probably nothing much, but I figured I'd mention it.

.....

[Keranu]

Malducci is the Super Grafx king, haha.

[Joe Redifer]

Do you think it would have been possible for Hudson/NEC to have made the SuperGrafx into a card for the existing CD-ROM, kind of like the 32X works as a giant expansion cartridge or the SNES with its FX chips?  Granted, it would have cost a bit more than the standard System Card 3.0 update for existing PCE and TG-16 users (and it could have been built right in to the Duo as mentioned before), but I think it would have been worth it.

But then again I am a complete geek so I love things others may not.  

[nodtveidt]

Often times in IC manufacture, "A" and later revisions are slightly redesigned to drain less. Perhaps they were planning on using the same power source but there was too much drain with the original spec, so hence the "A" revision. The PCE itself has quite a heavy drain from its three core ICs so I imagine that's what they did. Can anyone give the specs on the power adapter used for the SGX?

I doubt it would be possible to build the extra circuitry into a system card, and even if it was, it's unlikely that it'd be a performant as the real setup. I'm not sure the cartridge port has the means to do this but I couldn't say for sure...but I do know from my time in electronics that it wouldn't work as well as the original setup.

[malducci]

It's possible to make an SGX add-on through the back BUS of the system - excluding the Duo units since it's an all in one unit. If I can find another SGX for cheap, I would try to make one. Talking with Charles, he said you'd probably need an additional VCE on the add-on and not use the original output of the onboard VCE. Everything - every pin and address line is rerouted to the back bus, it's amazing - that they never took advantage of it.

 You can't do this through the cart port, but you could add additional hardware to interface to the system via the card port. You could add additional processors or logic ICs. The AC has a(hardware) small 3 byte adder and a 4 byte roller that could be cleverly used for other things such a decompression routine, etc.

 Nod- Remember the Jack Chan tranparency trick? You can do two other tricks similar but cooler then that with the extra VDC in the SGX

[guyjin]

Does the PCE/TG16 epansion bus exist inside the duo, or did it get replaced with something else? Could you make a 'breakout cable' to get access to it?

[FM-77]

There's no exp port on the Duo-R, but you can supposedly make one yourself if you like soldering.  

[guyjin]

I was thinking about the possibility of a SGX add on today, and I have to say I'm skeptical.

NEC was obviously not shy about selling add-ons. If an SGX add-on was possible, they would have released the add on first; that's kind of like releasing the duo before the separate CD add on.

I suspect you will run into compatibility problems if you try this - but this is one case where I would love to be proven wrong.  

[malducci]

NEC was obviously not shy about selling add-ons. If an SGX add-on was possible, they would have released the add on first; that's kind of like releasing the duo before the separate CD add on.

 I'm not so sure. There's alot mystery was why the system was quickly abandoned even after they had already spent the money on developement and had a working system on the market. They could have included it in the Duo design, but obviously they didn't - not even empty sockets on the board or such. I think it had a something to do with internal politics conflict between NEC and Hudson. Maybe the PC-FX was supposed to be released earlier than it evenually did and they didn't want to steer attention away from it. I dunno. I believe "HE" stands for Hudson Electronics or Hudson Entertainment - is this logo anywere on the PC-FX?

[SignOfZeta]

I don't know man, seeing the Saturn mentioned in such a way, as if it were kindred spirits with the 32X and Jag...that's just insulting.

The Saturn was a 1st rate system all the way. It had world class titles in  every genre. Hundreds of games were made for it. I had a Saturn when the system was new, and I'm *still* finding little undiscovered jems on eBay, and from trades with friends. If I could only have one system...it would be a handheld probably, but if I could only have one system, and it had to be a TV console, it would probably be the Saturn or PCE.


The 32X was mearly left over detritus from SOA versus SOJ infighting. I'm a huge Sega fan, but the 32X to me is one of the most embarrassing, disappointing, poorly conceived, and useless add-ons/systems ever made. The Jag...the Jag just sucked. It sucked so bad it makes the 32X look good. How many good Jag games are there? I mean actually good games. Good games that a non-nostalgic person can have fun with if they were introduced to them today? Two...maybe? Rayman, and that isometric Rally game. That's all I can think of.

[GUTS]

Haha, yeah the Jag is worse than the Virtual Boy.  I've bought one a few times and tried to enjoy the games, but between the god-f*cking-awful controller and total shit they call games on that system it's impossible to enjoy.  Every game that's any good on the jag can be played on another system without the phone-controller.  

Hell, I even really had a blast with my 3DO and found a bunch of good games on that, but the Jag is easily the worst system of all time unless you need to make a phone call while playing.

[Keranu]

I'm pretty unexperienced with Jaguar, but from the games I have played for it, I enjoy it. I do plan on getting a Jaguar eventually and one of the main resons is because of the amazing homebrew support it gets. Even if I end up buying a whole bunch of games for it that I'll only end up playing one or two of, I can still have hope for new games to come out for it and from the looks of the home brew games that have came out for it and are coming out, they look pretty neat.

Here's a question I have about the Jaguar though, how come the Jaguar gets so much homebrew support? I know there are a lot of hardcore Atari fans out there, but isn't programming on the Jaguar suppose to be excruciating?

[nodtveidt]

Keranu, because Hasbro decided to "open" the console to anyone, so anyone can legally dev for it.

The machine had a few good games, to be sure...Tempest 2000 and the port of Wolf3D come to mind.