PCEngineFans.com - The PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 Community Forum

NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG/PCE Repair/Mod Discussion => Topic started by: db-electronics on February 04, 2014, 02:34:57 AM

Title: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: db-electronics on February 04, 2014, 02:34:57 AM
There's alot of talk about homemade converters to play Japanese games on US consoles - I've made a semi-professional one myself...

But what about the reverse? Is there any value to creating a modless means to play US games on a Japanese console? I know there are mods you can do to achieve this, but some people are weary of cutting up their consoles - or like myself - want to keep my consoles in original condition.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: Necromancer on February 04, 2014, 03:13:33 AM
I don't think it's possible.  How would you bypass grounding internally?
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: BlueBMW on February 04, 2014, 03:21:22 AM
The same converters for JP>US can be used on Japanese systems to play US games on them.  But as Necro said, the pin needs to be grounded for it to work.
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: db-electronics on February 04, 2014, 03:21:49 AM
Isn't the TurboEverdrive completely region free?

A converter would have to detect when the code is trying to read the region bit in the IO register and change the compare value from '1' to '0' to fool the console. It's like a game genie really...
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: Keith Courage on February 04, 2014, 08:23:33 AM
Your converter would work the way it is as long as someone opens the console and grounds the needed 29 pin on the hu6280 chip. No way to do it via the hu card slot.
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: db-electronics on February 04, 2014, 11:09:27 AM
Not really, because JAP games already work on TG-16, so if a converter can make all consoles look like US consoles then it would be agnostic to the voltage level on pin 29. You can even go a step further and read the region of the game on the header and set the particular region value accordingly (which is, I'm sure, how the Turbo Everdrive does it).
Title: Re: MOD - Any value to making a converter to play US games on Japanese consoles?
Post by: turbokon on February 04, 2014, 12:03:44 PM
I believed the games roms used by the everdrive have their headers stripped some how that's why grounded is not needed to play us roms on pc-engine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk