CD-R's

[pcefreak]

Quick question... is it a bad idea to play CD-R's is the tg 16 cd player or duo?

Yes, it is a bad idea to use CDRs on any pce/duo systems.  Download the magic engine emu and play your CDRs on your cpu if you must.  

The lenses on these systems tend to gear off track, if this has happened, you might need to manually adjust the laser lens.  I can't tell you how this is exactly done, but it definitely works.

Or just have someone with knowledge take the machine apart, and manually adjust the laser lens.

[zborgerd]

I must know, if I play CD-Rs on my PCE CDROM 2 system, will it damage it in any way like they damage Turbo Duo units?

I use them with mine and have had no problems with it.

Again...  I still think it's a myth that they "damage" drives, but that's just my opinion.  By that logic, scratches and dust can "damage" the laser even though nothing ever touches it.

The DUO's CDROM drive is just poor quality compared to the CDROM of the TG16/PCE add-on.

[nodtveidt]

The CD drive that NEC used in the CDROM addon is a standard model that they also used for other types of computer equipment, so it'd been in use for a few years. Not so with the Duo...obviously, the machine was a brand new design and like all brand new designs, was subject to imperfections. That's probably why the later Japanese models have reportedly far fewer problems...they were revised from the original Duo design. I've seen other NEC equipment using the standard drives (one of the offices I used to visit was full of them) and they came in all kinds of nifty colours too.

[Keranu]

I've heard from different sources that Duo systems actually have slightly faster loading times. Has anyone else heard this and confirm it's true?

[nodtveidt]

The spinup time is faster, giving the appearance of faster initial load times. The old drive doesn't spin up quite as fast. Data transfer is still the same speed.

[NEC Avenue]

The spinup time is faster, giving the appearance of faster initial load times. The old drive doesn't spin up quite as fast. Data transfer is still the same speed.

This is not true. The Turbo DUO uses a 2X CD drive while the older CD attachment used a 1X CD drive.

Anyway just to give my 2 cents, when I purchased my Turbo DUO back in 1992 I noticed that the optical pickup mechanism had difficultly reading the outside tracks of games and even music CDs. I came to this conclusion because the CD drive would skip more often if I tapped the cover of the DUO while it was reading the outer tracks of a disc. When it was reading the inner tracks of the disc, it required a harder tap to force it to skip. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the orange ribbon cable that was connected to the optical pickup mechanism would tension higher when the pickup was reading the outer tracks of the disc. In other words when the pickup is at the farthest point from the spindle, the ribbon cable would have the most amount of tension and hence try to pull the pickup back towards the spindle or center of the disc. I came up with an idea to fix this design flaw and so I glued part of the cable to the pickup so as to minimize the tension. My fix worked for the post part, but later I contemplated writing a letter to TTi to notify them of this problem. In the end I never did write them a letter since I had more important things to do during that time and just forgot about it.

In summary the laser and pickup itself in the DUO was of fair quality. The problem was actually the way the ribbon cable was mounted and the length of the cable. The cable restricted the laser from doing a full inner to outer track stroke without increased cable tension. I don't know if NEC fixed this in later Japanese DUOs or not, but it was indeed a design flaw. The irony in all of this is that NEC now makes one of the top DVD burners on the martket today and command almost 1/3 of the worldwide DVD burner market. In fact the first 16X DVD-RAM burner will be using their 16X microchips. They will also release their own drives using this chip later in the year.

What I would love for NEC to do is release a little PC Engine PCI card with a single controller port that you simply plug into your computer and play all the CD games that were available on your computer CD or DVD drive. It would also be cool if they released all of the HuCard games on CDs too for play on this PC card. They could sell this card at maybe $40 and hardcore oldshcool gamers would buy it in a heartbeat. Anybody want to start a petition?

[nodtveidt]

This is not true. The Turbo DUO uses a 2X CD drive while the older CD attachment used a 1X CD drive.

Come again? I've never heard a single thing about the Duo using a 2x drive...in fact, everything I've ever read always stated that it was a 1x drive. If you can provide some further information about this, I'm sure everyone would be interested in seeing it. If it really was a 2x drive, load times would have been roughly half the time for the Duo when playing 1mbit CDROMs, and this was simply never the case. I had a hardware spec sheet a long time ago that listed, among other things, the spinup time for the model of CDROM that the original system used (as stated before, I used to spend a lot of time in an office where these things were widely used), but I don't have a similar spec sheet for the CDROM that the Duo used because it was proprietary. Also, it wouldn't make sense for them to use a 2x drive for the Duo, since at 2x, the data transfer rate would be 300kb/s max, and that only comes into play at max spin which takes a second or two to get up to, and the machine only had 256kb of RAM so that would make it somewhat of a wasted effort...and we all know how console manufacturers, even NEC, like to cut costs by going the cheapest way possible.

[NEC Avenue]

It was stated in a print TTi advertisment I saw in a game magazine. It was a long time ago but the advertisement compared the DUO to a the speed of a car or something. It was along the lines of "turbocharged and double the speed" or something like that then listes the features as 2x CD-ROM speed. If someone else has seen this ad then they can corroberate what I'm saying. I even remember the SCSI addon prototype NEC was working on to allow the DUO to function as an external SCSI 2x CD-ROM drive.

[nodtveidt]

I don't remember the ad, but I've certainly seen probably a hundred or so sites mentioning that the Duo had a 1x drive. What we see in advertisements doesn't reflect what is actually produced, especially when it comes to NEC. Also, the "drive card" as I usually call it was abandoned and with good reason...quad speed drives were available at the time it was being developed and were obviously hella faster than a 1x or even, if this was actually the case, a 2x. Anyone remember NEC's big SGX hype push, then how they produced a phenominally inferior machine? Or how about the PC-FX's 3D hype? None of that ever came to fruition, so the Duo having a 2x drive after being hyped about it is equally unlikely. Some solid specs would lay this issue to rest and the real truth about the system could be known...unfortunately, a single advertising block before the machine is actually released doesn't tell us very much.

[NEC Avenue]

Well if NEC themselvs said you can use your DUO as a 2x SCSI CD-ROM drive with the adaptor then it indeed is 2x. Regardless the point is not that you're going to be buying a DUO to function as an external computer CD-ROM. The point is you could use it as an external one if your pc didn't have a CD-ROM by simply buying the adaptor.

[nodtveidt]

That still doesn't prove that it actually is a 2x though, and the point was not to use the machine as an external drive, but rather to know why the Duo's drive seems to be slightly faster by some people's perception. The thought that it's a 2x drive would explain why it is slightly faster by some people's perception, since the drive might exceed 1x speed (but still likely won't quite reach 2x to read in a max of only 256kb) but since there are, as I've said before, scores of information sites out there that list the drive as a 1x, and since I have a bit of knowledge of the original drives (slower spinup), I'm still not even remotely convinced that the Duo used anything higher than a 1x. As I said before...how about some solid information on this subject?

[NEC Avenue]

Until somebody has some solid info then I guess we'll never know. I don't think websites posting the same wrong information is proof that it's 1x. BTW I'm not even sure why you keep mention 256K since it has nothing to do with anything.

[nodtveidt]

256k has everything to do with everything when it comes to the Duo, because that's the size of the RAM the machine has to load Duo games. 256KB, or 2mbit. A 1x drive can transfer data at 150k/s at max spin. A 2x drive can transfer data at 300k/s at max spin. So on and so forth.

[Keranu]

I have been having a great time reading you two's conversations! But I have to agree with nod on this one because I have always heard and read the Turbo Duo having a 1x speed CD drive.

[GUTS]

It seems like 2x would be overkill anyway since Duo games really don't take very long to load in the first place, I don't know why they would have bothered beefing up the CDrom when there wasn't a problem to begin with.