System Card Version Guide

[Vecanti]

Tatsujin already answered. I was talking about NEC, Sega and Nintendo.

One thing that should be pointed out when it comes to scaling and rotaion, is that when it comes to 2D perspective games, individually drawn sprites that are loaded into memory can be more effective than hardware scaling/rotation,

Is this the old joke about Hardware(Snes) vs Software scaling?

[henrycsc]

If anyone has a boxed original CD RomRom that Rag and Tats are referring to and would be willing to contribute a pic of it for my PCE-volution tree I've been working on, please PM me.  Thanks!

This version seems to come up less frequently that a boxed Super CD RomRom or Boxed LT  does anybody have statistics on unit sales for the different configurations?

I believe the reason you see so many of the 2.0 and 2.1 cards loose is that they were probably packed in with the IFU + CDROMROM boxed set.

This is not just probably, this is a fact

[rag-time4]

If anyone has a boxed original CD RomRom that Rag and Tats are referring to and would be willing to contribute a pic of it for my PCE-volution tree I've been working on, please PM me.  Thanks!

This version seems to come up less frequently that a boxed Super CD RomRom or Boxed LT  does anybody have statistics on unit sales for the different configurations?

I believe the reason you see so many of the 2.0 and 2.1 cards loose is that they were probably packed in with the IFU + CDROMROM boxed set.

This is not just probably, this is a fact

I have a pic to contribute!! Obtained from the greatest of all ebay sellers!

[Necromancer]

How big is the BIOS on an Arcade Card Pro?  The ROM I use with Magic Engine is 256KB (2Mb); if the real BIOS is the same size, then it equals the size of Street Fighter II'. 

It doesn't really matter, as it's a mix of RAM and ROM and just a number anyway, but it's interesting nonetheless.  And yes, I'm easily entertained; especially by shiny things.

[henrycsc]

Thanks Rag... That CD Rom2 is a toughie to find boxed!

[shubibiman]

basically it looks like cardboard that was cut to shape by Stephen Hawking

 

[Joe Redifer]

Damn, you had the buy the interface unit and the CD-ROM separately?

Also, isn't everything pre-version 3.0 just using 64k of RAM and not 128k?  System 3.0 seems like a giant leap over the earlier games that used 2.0.  Maybe the extra 64K being counted in this equation is from the dedicated ADPCM chip RAM?  I know Monster Lair used that as program RAM, damned if I can tell, though... it still seems simple even by System 2.0 standards.

[ApolloBoy]

Damn, you had the buy the interface unit and the CD-ROM separately?

Early on you had to, but I think NEC bundled them together later on. The 101 PC Engine Secrets page said this about it:

Secret 41:
The first CD ROM add-on for the PC Engine was sold in two boxes: the CD-ROM drive itself, and the interface unit that connected it to the PC Engine system. This helped keep the cost of the system down, as 'audio devices' (the CD-ROM) were taxed, but the interface unit was not.