Super SD System 3 - SD Card Reader for PC-Engine & Super CD-ROM / MY LIFE IN GAMING

there's so many new developments in the vintage gaming scene these days everything from RGB mods to ever drives are giving fans new ways to play and preserve our games and it keeps coming as such a staggering pace that is kind of hard to keep up one of the most interesting projects that come to light in recent months is the super SD system 3 from Terra Onion this add-on for the PC engine family of consoles allows you to play hugh card roms and cd-rom game images off an SD card while playing on real hardware but in addition to that functionality the Super FC system 3 also gives you access to RGB video output all in one mod free unit of course I was pretty enthusiastic when I first heard about it I couldn't wait to see what it was like and thanks to Tara onion who sent us a unit I can now take a deeper look at the super SD system 3 and see what's really capable of [Music] hailing from Spain para onion rose to fame thanks to the neo SD a flash cart for the Neo Geo AES and MVS hardware in December of 2017 they confidently unveiled the super SD system three or SSDs three for short which garnered a lot of interest right out of the gate at nearly 300 US dollars what kind of value proposal does this thing have to simply define the SSDs 3 is a bit of a challenge because it wears a number of hats it uses an FPGA an ARM processor to emulate not only the super CD ROM hardware but the super system and arcade cards which are needed to run cd-rom games and more it can then read CD disc images off a microSD card in addition it can also load Hugh card roms into memory playing the base games for that format in short it's basically an optical drive emulator a clone console and flash car all in one mod per unit and that's not even all of it encased in a smokey translucent plastic the SSD s3 connects to any console in the PC engine family that has an expansion port in the back the form factor allows it to slide seamlessly into place on any of the Japanese systems while the u.s. turbo graphics 16 was a bit snug for my liking I alleviated the stress on the plastic by loosening the screws a little bit allowing it to split apart it doesn't require any sort of external power and is simply powered by the console itself adapting the video signal from the pins in the expansion port the SSD s3 has a Sega Genesis 2 style mini-din on the back of the unit allowing for RGB and composite video output at the consoles native 240p resolution this functionality is on par with the graphics booster from DB electronics although that device cannot be used with a CD ROM attached to the console the first production run of a super SD system 3 had a number of video issues resulting in incompatibility with some RGB cables and lots of visible video noise thankfully this was discovered and fixed before most of the sold units were in customers hands this new board revision does exhibit some noise in the video but it's a massive improvement from the old version composite video if you choose to use it is about what you'd expect it exhibits the usual attributes such as rain bowing and blurry edges if you're a fan of this look you won't be let down you can also use the consoles built in AV or RF outputs if you'd like but CD games won't have any audio but if your goal is pristine video quality then here's where things get a little bit complicated most users will either want to use a scart cable for RGB or ypbpr via the HD retro vision component cables if you go RGB then you'll need a scart cable specifically designed for the Sega Genesis - from there you'll need to choose between C Sync or sinking composites scart cables that meet these specs can be purchased from the us-based retro access as well as retro gaming cables in the UK using a cable wired for C sync I had a very faint hint of diagonal noise that was mostly wiped clean as long as I was using a device equipped with a decent low-pass filter such as the open source scan converter sync on composite also displays a fairly clean signal with your typical checkerboarding that can appear if you have an unshielded cable however there is a bit of a caveat when it comes to this type of sync more on that in a little bit although the super SC system 3 is not officially supported the HD retro vision component cables will work in a plug-and-play fashion unfortunately the diagonal pattern does become more visible across certain swathes of colors such as the Lords of thunder opening cinema an LP F will do nothing to hide that pattern outside of this the image quality between RGB and component is basically identical although you may need to adjust some color settings depending on what type of scalar or monitor you're using just be sure to have the contrast switch turned off away from the Sun icon and the component cables or else your image will be overblown of course the jail bars which are inherent to the Hardware of the PC engine family will be present here they're just a fact of life for fans of the system and there's just no getting around them unless you modify the innards of the console the good news is is they're virtually invisible on a CRT monitor one final note I'm video quality as we were going into production on this episode it was discovered that the tantalum capacitor at locations C's 60 on the PCB of the SS ds3 was mounted backwards while this has no bearing if you are using ceasing for sync it could result in various issues over time such as degraded video quality if you're using stinkin composite or simply composite video if you're handy with a soldering iron this is super easy to fix heck even I could do it with my limited experience but if you want the best possible cleanest picture with the SS ds3 then ask our cable wired 4c sync is definitely the way to go audio wise the SSDs three outputs line level audio and sounds great when playing you card games there's a slight volume difference but honestly to my ears it's pretty negligible [Music] seedy games however can be a bit of a different story a set of a subtle pop in the audio that is sometimes audible when a CD track begins I could tell if there was something weird about certain audio tracks putting the audio recorder from the SS ds3 and a turbo duo unit side by side confirm that something was definitely up eise the ideal utopia once a country so peaceful and prosperous a country where children was free as the wind a country what harmony blew through the hearts of all men now audio isn't exactly my forte but thanks to some friends we determined that there is an issue with a dynamic range of CDDA and adpcm which was causing some sort of distortion you can easily see this in the opening of the dynastic hero take a look at the waveform of the audio [Music] we've been informed that Tara onion is already working on a fix for this audio issue via future firmware update which is a relief because this could be a complete deal breaker for some considering that cd-rom games are perhaps the main draw here alright some people might not even care at all about the video output I mean the real selling point here is the ability to play some senior ROM games off an SD card right before powering on your system you'll need to get some games on that microSD card of yours the Super SD system 3 can read both fat32 and exFAT file formats with the maximum supported size at 256 gigabytes this is more than enough space to hold everything you can probably ever want for Hugh card games the ROM dumps must be in the dot PCE format do you want to play one of the handful of super graphics games that exist you'll need to have the SSDs three attached to a super graphics console when it comes to cd-rom games a number of formats are supported dad Ben and Q are probably the most widely used while the iso + q + wave rips you can generate using night wolf's free turbo rip application are also supportive put each CD games files in their own folder on the SD card that pc files can be sorted in folders if you want but just dropping them into the root folder allows for easy access once these files are on your microSD insert it into the slot and boot the console without a game in it if you do have a you card in the console and a run that game by default while making the system think there's a cd-rom attached to it this is handy for games that make use of the built-in save memory like dragon's curse but more on that a little bit later after a short boot up screen the LED on the side of the unit illuminates and you're faced with a pretty cool looking menu interface containing two tabs tab one is labeled hue card and will show a list of all the dot PCE files in the root directory of your SD card if you decide to sort things into folders these will be listed at the top of the list for you to navigate deeper press run to make your selection hitting select switches over to the cd-rom tab here you'll see a list of CD games that you put on your card each game listed corresponds to the folder that the disc image was placed in once again if you have some games in a subdirectory select it and you'll be able to view them everything is perfectly functional as it is now but I do wish you could use the one button to select the game or directory and the two button would cancel or go up a level in the directory tree anyway pressing the two button takes you to the option menu here you can enable and disable features some of which might prevent certain games from running correctly I think it's important that we skip to the bottom of this list first before talking about anything else because it has a direct effect on the rest of the options.the select cd-rom system card menu allows you to choose the BIOS file that the super cd-rom uses when booting a CD based title for the uninitiated these system cards contain the code and RAM to boot the super cd-rom Hardware there were four released in total with each card backwards compatible with the ones before it the final super system card was 3.0 which was also integrated internally into the turbo duo consoles it's important to state that these BIOS files are still under copyright so however you decide to obtain them is completely up to you once you have the BIOS files ready you want to copy them into the directory on the SD card simply called BIOS you'll choose from the list of files in that directory and it's basically a one and done deal some games require certain cards to play if you don't have a high enough card version can you get a unique splash screen or minigame if you want to check those out then just load a lower BIOS file than a game requires alright back to the top of this list is the boot last game toggle if this is checked whenever you power on the console without a game in it the SSD s3 will automatically boot up the last game you were playing this is pretty handy if you're gonna be spending a lot of time with a specific game but if you change your mind one day and want to play something else just hold down the start button when powering on the system I personally like to keep this turned off because you can quickly boot the last game played from the top of the menu anyways next up is the in-game trigger if this is checked you can conveniently return to the SSDs 3s main menu by holding down start and select for several seconds during the game while generally pretty useful this option still needs some work and can cause some issues from game the game it even gives you a warning when you choose to enable it on a normal turbo duo console you turn it on without a game in it you're taken to the super cd-rom splash screen and then you press run to start the game toggling the cd-rom press run option makes it so the system just does this for you of course you can't access the savefile memory that way which brings us to the per game backup Ram option save game management can be a bit of a challenge with the pc engine with just a paltry two kilobytes to work with if you have the / game option checked the SSD s3 works around this limitation by making an individual 2k Ram sector for each game that you play effectively giving you unlimited space the stay file will show up on the SD card and the BUP folder at the root directory and will sport the same name as the game image tackling this option off creates a single 2k file called back Ram BUP which consists up the entire save file pool for that system this will function just like a regular console and you can delete game saves using the normal method via the CD ROM BIOS menu this in itself is a pretty killer feature but what if you have game stays on a console you want to restore to the SSD s3 well if you have an item like the Tenneco a bank you can do this in a pretty roundabout way first back the memory up to one of the four banks of the card and boot the tenneco way in your system with the SSDs three connected to it and load the card back into the system this will create a back Ram vup file on the SD card which you can then duplicate and rename to match the file of your disk image when you load up the game the stay file should be intact towards the end of the consoles life a final expansion card was released they had an additional 2 megabytes of memory which enhances some games and is required for certain others pry the most well-known game to use this card is the ultra expensive vertical shooter sapphire but a bunch of other games use it as well the arcade card's functionality can be easily toggled on the menu and I've just pretty much chose to leave it activated in case I was playing a game that needed it however if you seem to be experiencing some compatibility issues try turning it off and seeing if that fixes the issue after all that how do the games actually play I mean that's what we're here for right select the game you want to play from the menu and press run to get started you'll see the LED on the side of the unit illuminate and flash as it accesses the card at times I could hear a kind of faint audio buzz come from the speakers as it was accessing the SD card but this noise is drowned out as soon as the game audio kicks in however it may be audible on quieter moments during cd-rom games as a side note I found the led kind of handy because most of the consoles that the SSDs 3 can be attached to have no built-in indicator to show that the console has turned on and running now I won't accidentally leave the system on for a week now Hugh card games boot up especially quick the even cd-rom pedals move pretty quickly as well in fact load times are cut down across the board with games like cosmic fantasy 2 benefitting significantly from the shorter load times check it out huh who's making that racket oh it's van sounds like he must be off to play somewhere again Laura Laura what what what are you doing here it even eliminates the pauses in some games that occur when the game is loading a new audio track from the CD [Music] but not everything is rosy here Sherlock Holmes vol 2 has some severe glitching with FMV playback rendering it basically unplayable having two clueless to the lady or ladies in question might have been on the hugh card side of things i ran into a number of glitches like dragon spirit constantly resetting of course other incompatibilities will probably crop up as the SS ds3 makes its way into more and more consumers hands and we hope that tera onion might be able to fix everything via firmware i had a lot of fun checking out the hacks and homebrew available for the pc engine although the megaman nes conversion seems to glitch apart pretty quickly on the cd-rom side ripping and patching in the fan translation to ease for donna V's worked great this is absolutely must play material with voice acting and everything hey Don Asteria we're almost there it's been a while can you believe you've been gone for two years despite some issues with hardware related video quality I think that the pros of the super SD system 3 far outweigh the negatives some of the firmware level issues may have been ironed out by the time you're watching this video optical gaming Hardware going solid-state is one of the most important and exciting trends in vintage gaming today with the challenges that lay ahead regarding older cd-rom game tech and is increasingly deteriorating mechanical nature I'm glad that teams like Terra onion are coming up with devices for the long term now can someone get ahead making something like this for the Sega CD [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: My Life in Gaming

Views: 81,368

Rating: 4.9097347 out of 5

Keywords: RGB, video, tutorial, nintendo, sega, sony, microsoft, snes, nes, n64, gamecube, hack, genesis, saturn, xbox, playstation, Playstation, Component, Image, Quality, resolution, 240p, 480i, 480p, CRT, PVM, BMV, HDTV, 4K, Framemeister, XRGB, OSSC, Super SD System 3, TerraOnion, SD Card Reader, RGB video, PC-Engine, Super CD-ROM, SuperGrafx, TurboGrafx-16, HuCard, TurboChip, ODE, O.D.E., SD Cards on real hardware, xrgb-mini, scart, Console, Modding, Mod

Id: embglSBWF8E

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 16 2018