Hey, I've been playing a lot of TG16 lately... and as most people probably agree, the short controller cords are REALLY annoying. I picked up a controller extension cord (actually, an Alpine M-Bus extension), which works fine for a single controller, but as many people have noticed, it doesn't work for the TurboTap (you get lots of strange button presses, controlling the wrong player, etc). That sorta bugged me, so I spent some time tonight looking into it, and came up with a fix that seems to work. There doesn't really seem to be a good forum dedicated to discussing the TG16, so I figured this place is as good as any. Anyway, if you check this page here: http://arcarc.xmission.com/Web Archives/Deathskull (May-2006)/games/tech/tg16cont.html , you can see the pinout, as well as how the TurboTap works. I looked at the signals w/ an oscilloscope, and most looked fine... but the /OE line had some quite large spikes (of short duration). It makes sense that if the TurboTap is getting "extra" /OE pulses, it thinks it should start reading controller 1 again, even though the console is expecting data from the other controllers. Those spikes are much smaller without the extension plugged in, so they must be coupling from the other lines over the long (16') extension. My simple fix to the problem - Add a capacitor between /OE and GND, which helps filter those transients. The value that I found worked best for me was around 10,000pF (10nF, or 0.01uF). I simply opened up the TurboTap and soldered a small ceramic cap across the pins (I used a 12,000pF cap, since that's what I had laying around). I only have two controllers, so I haven't gotten to try 5P Bomberman simultaneously, though I did run a 5P game and swap controllers in/out of the ports, and it worked. If anyone tries this, be sure to post how it works out for you. It's possible that you might need to tweak the cap value for your specific situation. Another strange thing to note... the TurboTap (at least mine) doesn't have the cable shield wire connected between the TurboTap and the console. I noticed that when I connected it (just ran a seperate wire touching the shield rings) that the problem changed (didn't fix the problem, but it did behave differently). DogP
Your post was auto-moderated due to the links. You may find this happens again - it should stop a few posts down the line, but don't panic if a post disappears immediately - it's waiting to be approved I'm sure the admins at PcEngineFX Forums, PC Engine Support Forums and PC Engine Community Forums will be pleased to hear your opinion! ;-) Thanks for the info. I'd move this to the mods section as the PC Engine forum is more for programming advice, but people seem to ignore that anyway, so one more thread won't hurt! ;-)
Heh, screw the PcEngineFX forums... I signed up there a few days ago and never got approved... did a search, and apparently never getting approved is the norm (seemingly been like that for years). And the fact that you can't even READ the forums without an account makes me have no interest in being part of their community. Why should I contribute to a super-secret society rather than to a free and open one? I did come across the PC Engine Community Forums, but they seemed pretty dead. I've been a lurker over here at ASSEMbler for years (I thought I had signed up on the old boards, but maybe got deleted from inactivity or something), and since you guys have a TG16 section, this seemed like a good place to discuss. Oh, sorry... I saw Hardware Specific -> Turbografx discussion... didn't think about it being homebrew dev kinda stuff. Feel free to move this, if it's better suited for a different section. DogP
Hmm, that's not good. It never used to be like that. Maybe the admin isn't so active any more. There was an inactivity pruning system a few years back, but we don't do that any more. Welcome back! I think this will be fine here - considering the amount of people using the mods forum vs. the amount using this one, it's more likely to be read here.
Has anyone else had any luck with this mod? I did it to my Turbotap and thought that it was working, but after testing several games I've found that it just causes different problems like: Random triggering of Run on player 2's controller Up is always triggered in some games (like Bomberman '93 and '94) I used a 0.01uF ceramic cap and connected it exactly as in the first post.
