WTB: Arcade Card Pro

[jperryss]

EDIT: All set, found one!

[jperryss]

Still looking for one.  :-"

[jperryss]

Bump! One last attempt before eBay...

[Trenton_net]

Not to highjack your thread, but Is there a reason why these cards are harder to find than other system cards at a decent price? I assume it has everything to do with supply and nothing to do with demand? I can't imagine there being a whole lot of people who have an IFU setup + want to play the handful of games it supports. Unless people just buy it for the 'perceived' value that is 'better' in some way compared to duo cards.

[jperryss]

My guesses:

-Maybe more Duo cards were produced than Pro cards.

-I believe the Pro card also works in the Duo, that could make it "better" than the Duo card.

-Perceived value, since it has additional RAM. Also, it's called Pro!

Any idea if they were the same price when new? If the Pro was more expensive, that could be a factor too.

For what it's worth, the price on both cards doesn't seem to have gone up much since I got my first Duo back in 2008. I paid $25 for a Duo card at the time, and I remember Pro cards being around $60.

[Trenton_net]

I assume there are some owners who are irrational and want a Pro card just because they learned it works with everything (even though they have no intention of getting an IFU setup), thus depriving IFU users of them. Of course this is just speculation regarding reasons for the price gap.

Considering the card is like $60, it won't break the bank by any means. (^_^);

[MNKyDeth]

My guesses:

-Maybe more Duo cards were produced than Pro cards.

-I believe the Pro card also works in the Duo, that could make it "better" than the Duo card.

-Perceived value, since it has additional RAM. Also, it's called Pro!

Any idea if they were the same price when new? If the Pro was more expensive, that could be a factor too.

For what it's worth, the price on both cards doesn't seem to have gone up much since I got my first Duo back in 2008. I paid $25 for a Duo card at the time, and I remember Pro cards being around $60.

From what it looks like the Arcade card pro will not provide extra benefits to a Duo system. Well, at least I don't think it will.
It has the same amount of extra ram as the Duo card except it has the extra 192kB that the Duo's already have. No idea if using the Arcade card pro overrides the ram bank in the Duo console itself thereby making the data go to the Arcade Card pro or if the console still uses it's own ram bank. I wonder if there is a speed difference in this scenario, faster or slower?

This is speculation on my part as I generally have no idea how the system communicates with other parts of itself but it intrigued me to think about that extra video ram on the Arcade Card Pro and if it could be used or if it did get used when in a Duo system.

From wikipedia

Arcade Card Pro - 17.5 Mbit RAM (2240 kB as 2 MB+192 kB) – RAM upgrade. This greatly expands the RAM available for the CD-ROM unit to 2240 kB. The BIOS revision was unchanged from v3.00. Games developed for this System Card bore the title ‘Arcade Card CD’, and could not be played using an older System Card. The Arcade Card Pro includes the extra 192 kB needed by the non Duo CD system. The 2 MB of RAM is accessed through ports or units of single 8 kB banks and is intended for graphics data storage rather than program code; its flexible addressing system allows for rapid transfer of data to VRAM.

Arcade Card Duo – 16 Mbit RAM (2048 kB) – RAM upgrade. This greatly expands the RAM available for the PC-Engine Duo system to 2048 kB. The BIOS revision was unchanged from v3.00. Games developed for this System Card bore the title ‘Arcade Card CD’, and could not be played using an older System Card. This will only work on the Duo systems, as it does not include the extra memory built into the Duo system.

[Pokun]

I read here that although it can be used without any particular problems, NEC-HE doesn't recommend it. I always wondered what it means.

[jperryss]

Still lookin'.   :-"

[Digi.k]

what's decent price?

I think I paid 7800 yen plus 1200 for EMS shipping my total came to 8,992 yen since I had a little discount.. not much but a little.

That was around christmas time.
I ordered from japan game stock and it came with plastic sleave and case, instructions etc.

ah.. I think their website is down ?

[shubibiman]

Every time I see someone looking for an Arcade Card Pro (which yoou don't need if you're gonna use it with a DUO system), it reminds me of that day back in 2001, in Japan, when I entered a toy shop, and saw a basket full of shrinkwrapped Arcade Card Pro, maybe 50 of them. They were sold 100 yens. And I tought "I don't need this, I already own an Arcade Card Duo." And I walked out of the shop without byuing any of those...

[SignOfZeta]

The difference in price originally was 5000 yen, enough to buy a game. This was because the Pro basically has the Super System 3.0 built in as well. Now the entire card doesn't cost that much.

I have a Duo and a Pro because I have multiple systems. I could have two Pros but it just didn't work out that way. The main reason to opt for the Pro would be that PC Engine hardware is super confusing and if your system breaks you might not end up replacing it with the exact same thing. With a Pro you are covered. With a Duo you have to make sure your next system is a Duo (or SuperCDROM2) or you'll have to buy another arcade card too. Another thing to consider would be that the Arcade card is kinda useless so if you have multiple systems and only want to waste money on on Arcade Card, obviously it should be the Pro so you can use it on everything.

There's something really cool about playing Fatal Fury Special on an IFU. A virtually perfect port of a game that originally ran on arcade grade hardware released years after the IFU was. It would be like being able to perfectly run a PlayStation 5 game from four years in the future on the XBox 360 you bought last year.