Green Games Express CD Card?

[1010101]

I know I saw a pic of a green Games Express CD Card somewhere recently.  Can someone point me in the right direction?  I'm going nuts looking for it again...

[ParanoiaDragon]

Not sure, possibly over at pcecp.com?

[EvilEvoIX]

Obviously a Necro bump but I am curious about this card too, is it rare, collectable?  Is it worth owning?







I don't know to much about this, did a search and found this old thread.  Any more solid info?

[Bernie]

If you want to play the Games Express CD games, it required the card.  Each game came with a card, and I think...I think...you had to use the card designated for that particular CD game, though I could be wrong.

[Trenton_net]

What I always wondered is why Games Express required such a card in the first place. Why build a card that does the exact same thing as the official ones? Is it because in order to use the official ones, you need some kind of SDK which would never be given out to Games Express to use or something?

[SuperDeadite]

There were two types of Games Express cards.  Every Games Express game came with one though, so you should always get the card with the game.  Games Express releases were unlicensed, and the company was unable to create self-booting CD games, hence they used their own bootleg system card.  Be aware the cards don't have any RAM, so later games will only run on a SuperCD/Duo family system as they require the internal RAM to play.

[Opethian]

I only have Hi Leg fantasy now but when I had Bishoujianshi idol pai the games express cards would not work on the opposite games. not sure what the cross compatibility is on those cards.

[Trenton_net]

There were two types of Games Express cards.  Every Games Express game came with one though, so you should always get the card with the game.  Games Express releases were unlicensed, and the company was unable to create self-booting CD games, hence they used their own bootleg system card.  Be aware the cards don't have any RAM, so later games will only run on a SuperCD/Duo family system as they require the internal RAM to play.

Was getting a homebrew CD to self-boot really that hard to do at the time? I figure you would just reverse a regular game dump and work backwards? I mean, surely reversing someone elses code is easier than re-implementing the whole system card stack?

[SuperDeadite]

How many CD game dumps did you have in the early 90's?  In 1995 my PC had a 550mb HDD....  It was also probably easier since GE had been releasing unlicensed Huey games for some time, they had the tech to make those already, so may as well stick with what works.

[TheOldMan]

Was getting a homebrew CD to self-boot really that hard to do at the time?

Part of the oficial cd boot process is a signature check, to make sure the ipl is valid.
Include a copy of the hudson ipl, and get sued. Use any other ipl code, and the boot fails.
That's why they produced their own cards.

[xelement5x]

Was getting a homebrew CD to self-boot really that hard to do at the time?

Part of the oficial cd boot process is a signature check, to make sure the ipl is valid.
Include a copy of the hudson ipl, and get sued. Use any other ipl code, and the boot fails.
That's why they produced their own cards.

So do you just use the Hudson IPL now basically because they would probably never sue you over something at this point?  Also, if this is questionable to answer online feel free to tell me to f*ck a goose.

[Bonknuts]

Was getting a homebrew CD to self-boot really that hard to do at the time?

Part of the oficial cd boot process is a signature check, to make sure the ipl is valid.
Include a copy of the hudson ipl, and get sued. Use any other ipl code, and the boot fails.
That's why they produced their own cards.

So do you just use the Hudson IPL now basically because they would probably never sue you over something at this point?  Also, if this is questionable to answer online feel free to tell me to f*ck a goose.

 I think I remember that being eventually challenged and won, in court (Nintendo got around this for Gameboy by forcing you to have the Nintendo graphic logo on the boot area of the cart, and it's checked against an internal copy and then applied - for the game to work. If you copy it, it's copyright/trademark infringement, because it's a graphic and not a string of text or code). But that applied to the US, not sure about Japan.

[dshadoff]

As I recall, there were 2 versions of the Game Express Card - version 1.0 and 1.1 .

I don't recall if one of them (1.1) relied on the built-in memory of the Duo, but I believe that the original one did not (and games could only use the 64KB of RAM on the original system).

Games written for v1.0 could be used on v1.1, but not vice-versa.  I don't recall which games were associated with which, but I'm pretty sure there's a list somewhere on the internet.

The cards implemented ISO-9660 filesystems, so those games can more easily be read by computer.  Aside from the previously-mentioned copyright angle against using the original CDROM card, the ISO-9660 filesystem could have allowed them to have faster test-cycle times - since SCSI buses allow multiple hosts on the same bus, the CDROM on a PC-Engine setup could have been replaced by a PC hard drvie, which could also have been updated in real time by a PC, for fixes to graphics, sound, programming, etc.

[Bonknuts]

Is the connector on the bottom of the SuperCDROM^2 addon, a pass through for multiple devices?