Ok, now I know this is a dumb question because I'm sure I've heard that it's impossible to do this, but I can't find any of the posts or sites that mentioned it, so here goes. Why is it not possible to convert a PC Engine HuCard ROM to run on a CD-ROM2 system. I know that if you were going to try it with a straight regular system card it wouldn't work, because there would not be enough memory to load the whole game, and you would then have to write some sort of loader to stream it from the disk as needed, but I have an Arcade Card Pro and that gives me something like 17.5Mbits of memory, so wouldn't it be possible to load most (all?) HuCard Roms into memory. Wouldn't that be possible? Like the code can't be that fundamentally different that it wouldn't run with a little coaxing, right?
Would it be possible to write a small app that would fit into the ArcadeCard Pro RAM along with the game code and fed the code as needed through that port? I've never done any PC Engine coding myself but it seems like it might be possible, and it would definitely leave room for most (all?) HuCard ROMs. If this is possible I would be willing to pay for such work to be done. Alternatively, are there any coppier devices besides the MGD2 that function on the PC Engine?
Old console games aren't that flexible; they directly interface with the hardware, execute off the ROM, rarely abstract hardware behind the BIOS if they even have one and besides they're very timing dependent and computationally slow. There are more copiers besides the MGD2 such as the MGD1, Magic Super Griffin, Super Twin but all are even more obscure and expensive than the MGD2. The cheaper solution would be to buy a Tototek PCE-PRO (requires parallel port) or the Neoflash PCE (requires Neoflash GBA crap) flash carts. Hucards are dead simple, they're just an 8-bit ROM. If you're handy you could make a PCB with a flash ROM and DIP header that could be programmed through a device programmer. Simplest flash cart ever.
There is a disc out there with a loader for the Super CD-ROM (System Card 3.0) which does what you are talking about. However due to certain limitations I believe the project was abandoned and that it isn't possible to get every game to work. As Calpis said, if you want to play PCE roms on real hardware you should get the Tototek PCE Flash Card. It's not that expensive and will let you play every HuCard game.
I'm ordering the ToTotek card sometime today. Do you know what the name of that boot disk is? And will it work with my Arcade Card? I imagine it would because the Arcade Card is the same bios as Super System, and has the same memory, but just has the 16MBit on top of that. Please let me know if you remember what it's called.
It's called the Super Hucard and it works only because games have been completely hacked to run from an alternate memory space (the 2M which *is* memory mapped for SCD games).
Ah yes, I remember running into that disk about a year ago, I downloaded it but never got around to trying it, and then I forgot about it. Well I'm downloading it again right now and I'll have a go at it. Thanks you guys. By the way, I'm actually working on a simple mod for my Core Grafx that will allow you to play US games with just the flick of a switch instead of the humongous Kisado converter. I was thinking about it the other day, and it's so easy I'm surprised no one has done it yet.
That's exactly what I'm doing, I've just never heard of anyone doing it. I have heard lots of talk about the converters but never heard of people doing that before.
The eight-pole switch mod is well documented over on GamesX: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=38.0 There's also a method to switch the signals using an IC instead of a physical switch: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1061.0
Speaking of PC-Engine, you might want to look into the NES "emulator" for it. Mega Man 1 and Castlevania 1 (I think) run on the PC-Engine through a sort of emulation of sorts. It's pretty nifty. I forget the details as it's been awhile but if you search around you'll find it.
I'd never ever heard of that! I never thought such a thing would be possible. The processor is the same(ish) but just about everything else is different. I'll look into it!
The PCE's CPU supports all the NES 6502's opcodes plus additional ones, so unless a NES game used unofficial opcodes it will run on the PCE's processor fine. As I recall he wrote some kind of wrapper type code for all the NES register access (to the video and sound hardware for example) and while it's not automatic loading up NES roms it does work but each game has to be done individually. Anyway, the results were very nice, Mega Man ran great when I played it and he was still working on Castlevania.
