[GUIDE/INFO] Flash Carts, ODE, and more!

[Jagosaurus]

I was fairly impressed by the My Life in Gaming review, even with the caveats they mentioned.

Won't a re-capped Duo with arcade card cost you as much as or more than this device?

[JoeAwesome]

Won't a re-capped Duo with arcade card cost you as much as or more than this device?

At this point, just about, and the Duo will still need to be re-capped at some point in the future, never mind the life of the lens.

[Ziggy]

I was fairly impressed by the My Life in Gaming review, even with the caveats they mentioned.

Won't a re-capped Duo with arcade card cost you as much as or more than this device?

Yep, but at least you wouldn't ever have to worry about disc drive problems.

[marurun]

I do worry about the build quality of the unit.

Basically, here's what you have to evaluate.

Duo (recapped) with Arcade Card and flash card
vs
PC Engine/Core with Super SD System 3

The potential pitfalls are that the Super SD System 3 card has some incompatibility issues and flaws, some of which may be fixable in firmware, but we don't know which, if any, incompatibilities and issues may persist. That's still an unknown. Also, you have the issue of the hardware build quality. We don't know what the ultimate lifespan of these units will be.

But there are pitfalls for the Duo, too. If the recap job was good, you'll probably not really have to worry about that again. But the CD lens likely will need replacement at some point. It's not nearly as complex a job as recapping, but it sure ain't free. And while Duo hardware is otherwise pretty durable and reliable, those units are already 25+ years old.

If you can get a good deal on a Duo ($200-$250) I think either solution is cost comparable.

[Sarge]

I can confirm this. My recent Duo purchase was for just a smidge over $300, which was recapped, region-modded, and S-Video modded. I need to get a replacement lens at some point, just in case those fall out of use. The incompatibilities of the Super SD System 3 bother me; if they iron those out, I will seriously consider selling my current Duo and going down that route instead.

Unfortunately, I do not have the Arcade card, and the Turbo EverDrive can't act as one (although it can act as a System Card 3.0). There aren't a ton of games I really need that use it, however, so it's low on my priority list right now.

In other news, the latest revision of the Super FX core for the SD2SNES is very, very close to the performance of the original chip. Someone said it is now more accurate than the implementation of the chip on the SNES Classic (which isn't that accurate, but works). This makes me quite happy. There's also the ability to choose a "fast" mode that speeds up the chip implementation. I haven't tried it with DOOM, but it apparently makes it quite playable now. I did test with Stunt Race FX, and performance definitely seemed better there, too. Star Fox runs at a blistering pace on that mode.

[Ziggy]

Any word if this Super FX support will find its way into the official firmware? I hope so, I hate when there's splits. The firmware for the NES PowerPak is a nightmare because of how many people did their own work.

[Sarge]

Yeah, ikari has already said that he plans on merging it in to the next firmware release (redguy already gave permission). I think it's still mostly identical to the latest firmware. redguy also said the update is fairly standalone, so there shouldn't be any major issues with a merge.

http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=7451.240

[nightrnr]

Man, I've been silent through some major breakthroughs.

So I do have an SDsystem3 now. I was so pumped when it arrived.
It brought a broken Core Grafx back to life; it failed to read any hucards at all--> that is no longer an issue .
So far, I've only sampled a few games (a few shmups and an English Rondo translation). Also tried out the Mega Man CD fan port (1st Mega Man game with a rock-remix soundtrack).
I haven't run into any major issues with it yet (besides some confusion on iso/cue formats, but found what works). Just using a Genesis AV cord with it for now (and is good enough for me unless I run out of CRT TV sets). I think mine is a revision after the 1st run (pretty positive actually, after combing through the posts on neo-geo forums).

Still want the ODE Deunan is working on though, for aesthetics alone. I have a Super CD2 setup just waiting for it. But I'm patient and the SDsystem3 will tide me over nicely.

To that end, I have 3 Core Grafx systems now. One with an Everdrive, one with SDsystem3, and one with the CD unit (broken drive) and a 3.0 CD card.

As for the SD2SNES, I am excited to play Doom on it, along with some other FX games. I just knew Doom was going to be playable before Street Fighter Alpha 2 gets a compression chip patch (still bothers me, as it has been done for Star Ocean; but I guess I'm not up to snuff to do it either).
I'll wait until the official firmware, as I'm sure ikari will have something to add to the mix (even if just a bug fix).

[Tanooki]

I take it if you have that 10-15 year old decompressed files archive for SFA2 that won't work other than on the emulators of that time period? I have that package still.

And what's this Deunan and PCE thing? The only Deunan I know is from Appleseed.

[nightrnr]

I take it if you have that 10-15 year old decompressed files archive for SFA2 that won't work other than on the emulators of that time period? I have that package still.

And what's this Deunan and PCE thing? The only Deunan I know is from Appleseed.

Yeah, I copied the SFA2 files too (I think you may have linked them some time back). Just wanted to have them in case I ran into someone with the know-how to do something with it (won't work on a SD2SNES without a proper patch).

As for Deunan, he's the same guy behind the GDEMU and Rhea/Phoebe. He was working on the PCE ODE, but got sidetracked with making an ODE for the Marty.
From what I gather, the PCE ODE will only work with the older CD unit (so not a Duo or all in one system). It seems like he needed the diversion as the PCE project was giving him some trouble, but I hope he gets back to it soon.

Anyone working on a Sega CD solution yet? I think the XBOX is a good option for my emulation needs for that platform, but it would be great to give my model 2 Sega setup a reason to exist again.