Discussion of game backup, reproduction, burning, and ripping. Covers ROM backup, cartridge reproduction, optical disc ripping, burning, and storage. Focus on archival purposes and not deceptive selling.
Tanooki wrote:I'm waiting on the PCE side of things, don't really care for the SSS3 around all the drama, broken problems, and the price too, not to mention it's still crap SD.
Can you elaborate on any of this? What drama? What broken problems? I haven't heard anything. Links? And what do you mean by "crap SD"?
To a point yeah. Basically TerraOnion was using them stupidly as their forums to do much of their business interactions with users due to starting with the NeoSD. The SSS3 as like the NeoSD was talked up, got people really jacked for it, went on about their development process and QA and all that good shit so people thought they were getting this really great deal.
When it came out the complaints started to accumulate fairly quickly. The forum regs(I'm sure you know that places reputation, if not google it) staff and all started to just pound the shit out of anyone who wasn't glowing about it. Bans, locks into a war room, harassment you name it. It's like they didn't want the face of the company (alex) there to get worked up as he didn't take it well. Some people even went as far as investigating, documenting, and reporting it on there in a mature nice fashion and got kind of destroyed for it. You had these nasty visuals artifacts, buzzing of audio, problems around the SD card slot itself and RGB if I remember right. Some of the dumb stuff wrong could be fixed easily just doing a 180 rotation on a piece on the board so it wasn't vital so it made the maker look a bit incompetent. Finally owning up they did a fix, a fix that didn't fix everything, just partly. Denial mode kicked in, more childish attacks and stupidity, more attempted help into deaf ears, the works. Eventually TerraOnion got their crap together and setup their own forums to deal with products good and bad, but I stopped paying attention a bit before that. I read they finally broke down and did a 3rd revision of the board, which I figure probably fixed it as I have not seen even more bitching on social media and elsewhere. But the thing is, if you make a product and it's broken, you man up and deal with it, not lash out, act rotten, deny issues, refuse initially to fix, have to be goaded into taking refunds or v2 swaps from original broken board owners.
It's all around shitty antics and it turned me off from them entirely. I'd rather at this rate have nothing for the PCE than that until someone competent and mature can do it right. And if I wanted a Neo Geo kit, I'd buy from Darksoft long before those clowns because they seemingly only like to nicely back products they don't fuck up in the first place well.
And by crap SD, I just meant it doesn't do HDMI like the Upergrafx2 unit from Japan for much the same price.
Well I'm not sure, but you might be talking about the capacitor that was placed with reverse polarity. I don't even know which forum you're talking about. But I get what you're saying about owning up.
As for SD (as in Standard Definition, not Secure Digital) that depends. Me personally, I much prefer the standard def output so I can use it on my CRT. And if I want HDMI, I'll plug it into my Framemeister. But if it ONLY outputs HDMI, well then anyone that wants to use it on a CRT is shit out of luck.
Ahh I must have hit the button and it removed a line, neo geo forums, well known for horrible treatment to most people on and off site. And yes that would be the reversed part I was thinking of.
Outside of my neo geo cabinet, tv games devices and pc engine I don't touch pre-HDMI anymore, have zero love for it. If I could replace the CRT and get a module for the others I'd be completely happy.
Well, you're not wrong Tanooki, about the bad PR with SSS3. I do understand how all that would turn you off of it.
No one really needs these items anyways.
Of course, I have heard various complaints about the business practices of GDEMU and the usb-3DO guy too. Sometimes you just put up with the annoyances to get a niche product.
And there always seems to be hotheads/fanatics that spring up on all ends of the matter. I just stay silent, read up on what I need to know, make an order if (and when, after hearing feedback) it's worth it to me, and totally ignore the rest of the drama.
So jerk business treatment aside, is it still a good item? That's how I see it.
Anyways, I'm just glad it revived a broken Core-grafx for me. I'll probably have to install a cap at some point for the audio fix (mine is a rev 2 I think?, audio fix was rev 3), but being hooked up to CRT's, it's not even an issue for me right now.
Still want the briefcase setup though... I hope GDEMU doesn't get too swamped with orders when he completes his option.
Well from what I can tell, maybe. It took them being dragged into 3 revisions due to oversights their vaunted and storied engineering crew somehow missed each time but the buyers caught.
If it is working, then you have a RGB capable lock on device that'll run anything optical you throw at it along with all the hucards too.
Speaking of, my Core Grafx II just died this evening and I don't know what to do about replacing it. Just when I got a PC Everdrive 2 weeks back, and today finally Devils Crash complete and a hucard of Time Cruise II show up and I can't even inspect them. The stupid board in mine blew, looks like I got a sneaky Japanese dude console who did junk inside to slap something together so it would last long enough. Stripped screw, loose parts, wobbling caps, damnit...
Tanooki wrote:Well from what I can tell, maybe. It took them being dragged into 3 revisions due to oversights their vaunted and storied engineering crew somehow missed each time but the buyers caught.
Dude, all electronics go through revisions and bug fixing. Even after production starts. You can find "bodge jobs" in plenty of things that already went into production, some revisions of the Sega Genesis come to mind. Early revisions of the PS1 are known to overheat, as well as have parts fail in the optical drive. Sony even had a class action law suite because of PS2 DRE. Hobby projects like these are even more forgivable being that it's usually just one person doing everything. They can't be expected to test the product as thorough as a big company can. I think the Sd2snes is on revision H, for example. It's kinda assumed that if you're buying the first revision of one of these homebrew or hobby projects that you're rolling the dice on what bugs the community will find. If you're holding the first revision of something like this to the same standards that you would a product from Sony or similar company, I think you're being unreasonable and unfair.
I don't, but you had to be there and watch how it unfolded so I get why it looks like just honest accidents in development.
The thing is, when v1 came out and it had these problems, that's fine. Where it broke down was the rudeness, lockdowns, harassment of people trying to help. All the issues were sorted out by buyers of all things, and some tried to give the plans to fix it, what steps needed to help it, and effectively were told to go fuckoff and die. The company did nothing to stop the forum acting as such and used it as a buffer. Then when a fix was done, they didn't take the advice and it came out still broken, just less broken as some of it was ignored (or missed though I don't see how.) Again help was given and more bad behavior. it's hard to feel sorry, be nice about it, or come off as acting fair when your own consumers fix the problems, give you the plans, and then you ignore it twice (fix for v1 and fix for v2.) Also they didn't even want to take returns, had to basically get coaxed into it, and then it was batch returns coordinated in various regions to send them in as lots for swap out.
If that makes me unfair, so be it, but when stuff like that happens, it's hard to defend it.
The problem was attempting to release that and do all your support discussion on a forum. Forum culture (with the exception of a few places like here) is usually pretty rude and abrupt, and that's just the standard for communication.
Just when I got a PC Everdrive 2 weeks back, and today finally Devils Crash complete and a hucard of Time Cruise II show up and I can't even inspect them. The stupid board in mine blew, looks like I got a sneaky Japanese dude console who did junk inside to slap something together so it would last long enough. Stripped screw, loose parts, wobbling caps, damnit...
