Turbografx Compatability

[alienjesus]

I recently won a PAL turbografx off of eBay for quite cheap, and was just wondering if it's possible to use an American Turbo CD with the PAL turbografx unit. As far as I know, the PAL turbografx is literally just a mildly modified US turbografx (it even accepts US HuCards) which displays in PAL 50hz, but information on it seems pretty thin on the ground.


It's not a big deal if it doesn't, I still get to play some good games without the CD expansion, but it'd be nice to know if i ever decide i want to fork out a big wad of money for gates of thunder, whether i could or not

[Breetai]

Not that I am 100% certain, but if it accepts US HuCards then it should run a US CD-ROM with a US system card fine (get a 3.0!). The one MAJOR concern would be power issues. The EU Turbo is probably on 240V, but the US CD-ROM would be 120V. That might pose a problem.

[sneth]

of all the PCengine/grafx compatibility questions.... this one doesn't come up that often.

So it sounds like you have the UK model. That one is the USA board, so compatibility is not really an issue. There might be some games where the video conversion to PAL gets cropped funny.

The rest of europe got the pcengine board tho.

[alienjesus]

So there's no issue with power supply differences either? That's great if so, i thought i'd miss out on Turbo CD stuff

[Hobie-wan]

So there's no issue with power supply differences either? That's great if so, i thought i'd miss out on Turbo CD stuff

If you get a console from another region, the thing is making sure that your TV will like the signal it spits out and to check the power specifications. If it is the wrong 240/120, then you can get a stepdown transformer or you can find a power brick replacement in your country that puts out the same voltage and polarity. The mA rating would need to be the same or higher than whatever the console lists it needs.

[alienjesus]

I understood that much, I just wasnt whether the US system running off of 120 being attached to the PAL system running off of 240 would be a problem. Am I just being stupid? I'm a bit slow when it comes to electionics i'm afraid.

[Hobie-wan]

I understood that much, I just wasnt whether the US system running off of 120 being attached to the PAL system running off of 240 would be a problem. Am I just being stupid? I'm a bit slow when it comes to electionics i'm afraid.

Since the PAL units were slightly modified US ones, I imagine the plug on the back that goes to the CD unit is the same, unlike the PC Engine one which is slightly differently shaped. The CD unit is just feeding data to the console, so I *think* it would work ok. But I don't know for sure.