Retron 5? Lets dump the Genesis!

The NOAC is hit-or-miss as some Super Retro Trios don't have NOACs that hit false notes (we're not talking reversed duty cycles here, we're talking outright incorrect notes).

So here's the list:

-Contra (very rare, but it can happen)
-The Hunt for Red October
-Snake's Revenge
-Top Gun (may hit random false notes)
-Side Pocket (this game hits false notes almost non-stop)
-Image Fight (randomly spews out false notes after an armored ship is hit)
-Castlevania II
-Vindicators (emits false notes while shooting)
-Galaxy 5000 (random false notes during races)
-Gradius II
-Castlevania III (although the game is unplayable, the sound test is still functional and A LOT of false notes are hit here)
-Akumajou Densetsu (this one is playable and while the VRC6 is inaudible due to the lack of expansion audio mixing, you can clearly tell the 2A03 clone is hitting many incorrect notes)
-Rad Racer II (the game itself has SEVERE graphical errors but is playable, and yes, it hits false notes at times)

There are still some Famicom games and Falsion on the Famicom Disk System that I didn't test, but this list should be enough for you.

To bad you have to mod it to play Castlevania III on the SRT, But it's not easy

But it an easy mod to get VR to run

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Originally Posted by Guntz

I've never heard about such anti-piracy with X2 and X3 before, now that is just strange. Never before have I heard of a game that will break like that if you attempt to dump it. The closest equivalent I know of is anti-piracy protection having some flaw that will cause premature failure some years after production, like suicide batteries and the Altera MAX chip in Metal Slug X.

One should probably share this information on NintendoAge. I don't think anyone today is brave or stupid enough to try dumping one of those carts seeing how expensive they are, so this would probably be a safe warning.

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Like I said, I read it from a doc in which the author explained it (the doc was for something else, related to dumping, hacking, and emulation and the Cx4 chip). And it was discussed on IRC, on an old console coding channel years ago. But other than that , I don't have said doc anymore. It was more of a passing "heh", since it didn't really pertain to me. An like I said, I'm not sure if it was a region thing (Japan only). He strictly stated that all the carts he tried to dump from, no longer worked afterwards - and stopped requesting donors to dump until he could figure out what the problem was. Maybe it was a coincidence that the carts were getting damaged and at the same time the data wasn't retrieved correctly, until he did non-linear readout of the cart. At minimum though, the dump shouldn't work if the Retron system does a linear read of the cart.

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Originally Posted by Ace

The NOAC is hit-or-miss as some Super Retro Trios don't have NOACs that hit false notes (we're not talking reversed duty cycles here, we're talking outright incorrect notes).

So here's the list:

-Contra (very rare, but it can happen)
-The Hunt for Red October
-Snake's Revenge
-Top Gun (may hit random false notes)
-Side Pocket (this game hits false notes almost non-stop)
-Image Fight (randomly spews out false notes after an armored ship is hit)
-Castlevania II
-Vindicators (emits false notes while shooting)
-Galaxy 5000 (random false notes during races)
-Gradius II
-Castlevania III (although the game is unplayable, the sound test is still functional and A LOT of false notes are hit here)
-Akumajou Densetsu (this one is playable and while the VRC6 is inaudible due to the lack of expansion audio mixing, you can clearly tell the 2A03 clone is hitting many incorrect notes)
-Rad Racer II (the game itself has SEVERE graphical errors but is playable, and yes, it hits false notes at times)

There are still some Famicom games and Falsion on the Famicom Disk System that I didn't test, but this list should be enough for you.

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Thanks!
I think that will do. Of all these games I have Contra (famicom) version, Akumajou Densetsu and Castlevania II for NES. I will be sure to try all of them.

Just bought the SRT. Sadness ensues, I have the bad APU >_<
I could immediately hear the mess in castlevania II and Akumajou densetsu.

As Ace said, the genesis side is pretty good but I find the audio extremely noisy. Even when using good quality cabling.
It is the same DAC noise that some genesis version have worse than others, and the SRT is pretty bad.
Subcarrier noise on the S-Video is insane, maybe this can be modded...

The best part is indeed the SNES. I played a few games and so far it is very good. Great S-video and clean audio.
Out of the box cable less support for the Super Retro Advance/Ad adapter. And you can use a 6 button genesis controller to play your SNES game.
I think the SNES part is win so far.

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Originally Posted by MaxWar

That is very nice of you! I hope you do not have 300 carts to go through :p
I have about 80 Nes/Famicom carts. Sadly I do not have a computerized list of all my game ( something I should do ).
Could have saved some time.
But then this list might be useful to other people too.

I hope Retro-bit fixes the problem.
I am also wondering if the store would accept a return in case I get a Bad APU. They will probably just tell me this is clone hardware and is normal that the sound is not 100% like original.

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There is a very nifty app on the Apple Store called "Genesis/MD Collector" by Pieterjan Vandegaer that's super helpful in keeping track of games. He also has apps for SNES, NES, and others.

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Originally Posted by MaxWar

Just bought the SRT. Sadness ensues, I have the bad APU >_<
I could immediately hear the mess in castlevania II and Akumajou densetsu.

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Return the console and get another one. It seems like the black/red paint job is most prone to getting NOACs with bad APUs in them, so keep that in mind.

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Originally Posted by MaxWar

As Ace said, the genesis side is pretty good but I find the audio extremely noisy. Even when using good quality cabling.
It is the same DAC noise that some genesis version have worse than others, and the SRT is pretty bad.

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The TCT-6801 is one mother of a noisy GOAC; pretty much every single clone using this chipset has a lot of audible VDP noise, but the Super Retro Trio makes it more apparent than the others. Makes me wonder how the Mega Amp would affect this VDP noise, and I will install one in Satoshi's Super Retro Trio once I finish recording all my NES, Super NES, GameBoy (via Super GameBoy, obviously), Genesis and Master System (via a hand-built converter) games on unmodified hardware. I'll report how that goes when it happens.

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Originally Posted by MaxWar

Subcarrier noise on the S-Video is insane, maybe this can be modded...

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That highly-visible subcarrier noise may be the result of improper termination of the S-Video signal out of the amps for Chroma and Luminance. I will look into that once I start modding Satoshi's Super Retro Trio.

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Originally Posted by MaxWar

The best part is indeed the SNES. I played a few games and so far it is very good. Great S-video and clean audio.
Out of the box cable less support for the Super Retro Advance/Ad adapter. And you can use a 6 button genesis controller to play your SNES game.
I think the SNES part is win so far.

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Not so fast, MaxWar! It may be the best-performing part of the Super Retro Trio, but its longevity is really put into question. Reason: the TCT-978 clone CPU and TCT-975 clone APU, at least on Satoshi's system, are running on 3.3V RAM that's being run FAR out of spec with 5V VCC and 5V I/O with zero protection. That is going to severely limit the lifespan of the Super NES side as if that RAM fails, the Super NES side becomes a doorstop until you replace the RAM by 5V equivalents, and these are TSOP chips, so good luck with that if you don't have some kind of hot air rework station.

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Originally Posted by Ace

Return the console and get another one. It seems like the black/red paint job is most prone to getting NOACs with bad APUs in them, so keep that in mind.

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I got the gray one and it still has the damn glitch :p I do not think I will return it. No worth the hassle, it is not like I will play famicom on that thing anyway. Not when I have an RGB modded original one.

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Originally Posted by Ace

That highly-visible subcarrier noise may be the result of improper termination of the S-Video signal out of the amps for Chroma and Luminance. I will look into that once I start modding Satoshi's Super Retro Trio.

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I will try putting a resistor on the chroma for starter. Also, wasnt Tiido recommending to isolate sync line or something?

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Originally Posted by Ace

Not so fast, MaxWar! It may be the best-performing part of the Super Retro Trio, but its longevity is really put into question. Reason: the TCT-978 clone CPU and TCT-975 clone APU, at least on Satoshi's system, are running on 3.3V RAM that's being run FAR out of spec with 5V VCC and 5V I/O with zero protection. That is going to severely limit the lifespan of the Super NES side as if that RAM fails, the Super NES side becomes a doorstop until you replace the RAM by 5V equivalents, and these are TSOP chips, so good luck with that if you don't have some kind of hot air rework station.

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I trust you on that one Ace. If worse happen I do have a hot air station :D

Btw I have ordered the super retro advance. I think it is the same PCB as the AD adapter but might be a more recent revision. This thing is seriously nice. Really good GBA clone. Has a better video output than the Gamecube GB player. But the audio needs modding in my experience.

Personally, I found the best way to get clear video on the GameBoy Player is as follows:

-Mod a Component cable into a VGA cable
-Set the GameBoy Player to output at 480p (blindly)
-Run the resulting VGA output through a VGA to HDMI converter with AT LEAST 720p upscaling (in my case, that would be a Lenkeng LKV351)
-Do not stretch the games
-Use the sharp screen filter

While the screen area is a bit small, the games look FAR clearer than by using any form of analog video off the GameCube. Only thing is that if your TV or upscaler doesn't support aspect ratio correction, you will get horizontal stretching. Regardless, I will try to get my hands on a Super Retro Advance Adapter and compare its Composite output to all the video signals possible off the GameCube.

As for the subcarrier noise issue on the Super Retro Trio, you absolutely CANNOT isolate Composite Sync as the video encoder is built into the TCT-6801. The only thing you can do is play around with the S-Video amps. I do see that they're terminated with 15ohm resistors, so perhaps those need to be changed, or perhaps 220uF capacitors will need to be added in. I'm not going to delve into this yet as I have to finish recording all my games running on stock hardware and I'm waiting for an SD2SNES to show up so I can include that in the comparison to show if it works or not.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ace

Personally, I found the best way to get clear video on the GameBoy Player is as follows:

-Mod a Component cable into a VGA cable
-Set the GameBoy Player to output at 480p (blindly)
-Run the resulting VGA output through a VGA to HDMI converter with AT LEAST 720p upscaling (in my case, that would be a Lenkeng LKV351)
-Do not stretch the games
-Use the sharp screen filter

While the screen area is a bit small, the games look FAR clearer than by using any form of analog video off the GameCube. Only thing is that if your TV or upscaler doesn't support aspect ratio correction, you will get horizontal stretching. Regardless, I will try to get my hands on a Super Retro Advance Adapter and compare its Composite output to all the video signals possible off the GameCube.

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I certainly did not try with all this equipment but I tried with Component out and the sharp filter and it still resulted in a pretty smudged picture. But that is just how the game cube filtering looks like I guess.

The AD adapter (SRA?) does a very good upscale job and outputs 240p so with the scanlines and all I think it looks better than the gamecube even though it is only composite. But very nice composite mind you. No wavy line artifacts, no resizing pixel effect during scrolling. It is definitely my favored method of playing GBA at the moment.
If you do get one of them you might be interested in taking a look at the audio fixes I made for the AD adapter. I think they also applies to the SRA, soon I will be able to say what PCB version is inside.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums...NES-AD-Adapter

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ace

As for the subcarrier noise issue on the Super Retro Trio, you absolutely CANNOT isolate Composite Sync as the video encoder is built into the TCT-6801. The only thing you can do is play around with the S-Video amps. I do see that they're terminated with 15ohm resistors, so perhaps those need to be changed, or perhaps 220uF capacitors will need to be added in. I'm not going to delve into this yet as I have to finish recording all my games running on stock hardware and I'm waiting for an SD2SNES to show up so I can include that in the comparison to show if it works or not.

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Looking forward to your experiment. I will also try a few things when I have the time.

Ace

So the other colors for the SRT have good APUs while the Black/Red Systems have bad APUs?

There's no real way to tell, but from what I'm seeing, black and red Super Retro Trios seem to have the problem occur more often than the other paint jobs.

I love Black/Red

I hope Retro-bit fixes the APU problem

I'll take my authentic hardware over emulation (in any form) any day of the week. Is there even a reason to purchase this with some many emulators on the net?

The ability to plug and play without having to be connecting and disconnecting laptops and configuring controllers to those laptops. Convenience is key.