European Turbo Grafx

[grimm]

Consolegoods.co.uk has them new in box from £49.99. Willingness and shipping cost to the US? No clue.

[Black_Tiger]

The Turbografx-16 never really took off in Europe, though it DID get sold from 1990 onwards. Most available consoles were parallel imports however, mostly US-consoles that were refurbished to emit a PAL signal (that's what probably makes modding harder, since they took out the original NTSC-module and replaced it).

At least in Germany the console was better known by the moniker "PC Engine" anyway...

It seems that it was either test marketed or came close to that before the excess stock was eventually dumped. The PAL version is actually just titled "TurboGrafx".

I doubt that they are refurbished TG-16 units, because they are so different. They have a Duo/CoreGrafx/Model 1 Genesis AV jack on the side and no TG-16/NES/Genesis/etc style RF out jack.

I just took a look at mine and the accessories are in one white box with single tone print. So it's a two box set. They come with a random loose HuCard and photocopied game manual. The system and controller are gray with a unique logo, which adds to its uniqueness as a collectible. Anyone desperate to make one NTSC should just drop a TurboGrafx-16 into the PAL TurboGrafx shell.

[Chilly Willy]

From what I understand from sites on the TG16/PCE, the "PAL" TG was a hack to begin with: they would take an NTSC TG16 and add a small board with a processor (supposedly a Z80) that was programmed to wait for the bottom of the display, then HALT the TG for enough scanlines to extend the screen from NTSC to PAL. The whole system is halted - you get no extra CPU time, and no video on the extra lines. The CPU speed is exactly the same as it was for NTSC. Needless to say, some games fail to run on the PAL TG because they can't deal with the time spent halted in each frame.

I would avoid these things like the plague unless you're a hardcore collector who plans to put this in a display case along with a bunch of other collected items you never intend to use.

[chinitosoccer]

From what I understand from sites on the TG16/PCE, the "PAL" TG was a hack to begin with: they would take an NTSC TG16 and add a small board with a processor (supposedly a Z80) that was programmed to wait for the bottom of the display, then HALT the TG for enough scanlines to extend the screen from NTSC to PAL. The whole system is halted - you get no extra CPU time, and no video on the extra lines. The CPU speed is exactly the same as it was for NTSC. Needless to say, some games fail to run on the PAL TG because they can't deal with the time spent halted in each frame.

I would avoid these things like the plague unless you're a hardcore collector who plans to put this in a display case along with a bunch of other collected items you never intend to use.

What a waste, all of that just to "simulate" the PAL signal slowness, they could have left the system run at 60hz and only changing the xtal.

[16-bit]

Couldn't you just get rid of the board to have it run NTSC? It'd be cool to have one of these, especially since boxed NTSC TG-16 systems are expensive boxed.

[Chilly Willy]

You'd need more than getting rid of the mod - you'd have to put everything back to normal. This is one of those things most people can't do without a good guide, and there's certainly no guide at all on this that I'm aware of.