Just want to say thanks for this video. I've been restoring my Super CD2 for a few months now. This is one of the few, if only repair videos on this model. I did power and audio re-cap, super capacitor and new laser unit. I discovered a much better audio output on the 14T board. It's a little via under a resistor in the middle. Gives a clearer, louder and better balance between PC engine and CD audio. Thanks 🙂
Definitely one of the best retro gear repair video channels around. Always trying to spread the word to local retro computing group Im part of down here in South Australia.
Hahaha, I find your videos are great for showing repairs on the old retro gear. Ive been doing repair work for years and always find something new in your videos. Keep up the great work :)
I know lol - very long video, but very well worth watching. I plan on watching it again soon and will be making notes (trust me, make notes - by the time its finished you will remember less than half of the important things he mentions).
Im dreading having to recap one of these. Most of them look perfectly fine, so I think I’ll just do a partial. Mine reads discs perfectly fine but the AV port outputs no audio whatsoever (cd and card). The console video port would output the CD audio perfectly though. Also Nexzr specifically has glitched graphics. No other CD game I threw at it had issues though.
My unit has all 5 Torx screws. The mini pauses are normal and occur on various games (Gate of Thunder before each boss, for example) when the laser has to switch from the audio track to the data track on the CD. Remember, these things only have 2 megabits (256KB) of RAM or less if not System 3.0, it's a testament to the skilled programmers of the time that these games run as well as they do!
@@GadgetUK164 Thank you, I have a lost item as shown in the image and I don't know the initials, can you help me? drive.google.com/file/d/1SxI9rx196rMb9TxdCzMD1IxQqHvDwxl5/view?usp=sharing
Oh my god, that plastic bit drove me NUTS!! I have not looked at the SCDROM2 system I bought with a SuperGrafx a couple of years back for a while. I did take it apart but never touched the caps as I was planning on getting a desoldering station. I am planning on getting back into modding and fixing again now, so it is certainly one of the systems I want to fix. Thank god I will know where that damned plastic bit fits now! I just hope I didn't.'t toss it in frustration :D It is always a good idea to just replace EVERYTHING on these boards and the PCE DUO as they are shoddy as shit and bound to fail. No point doing a couple and having to do more down the road. But that is just my personal opinion.
i dont get any picture or audio from the av out on super cd but i do when i plug it into the coregrafx attached.. am i missing out on any any sound, or is plugging into the coregrafx just another option ?
As far as I understand, the sound is back-fed to the PC Engine. So you shouldn't be missing anything. Just test an audio CD, if you can hear it - it's working.
Thanks for the video. Question I was trying to recap this board and noticed I was missing the sub pcb? Does this mean that I can’t use the console? Thanks
I believe the sub PCB is for audio mixing. It's possible you have a revision where its not required?!?! You would need to test to see if you can hear all the audio correctly.
@@GadgetUK164 great news, it work although no audio but I am hoping to get audio after doing a rgb mod. Also, question why is it that my pc engine duo rx displays a white screen? Now, the board had cracks and managed to join the cracks with wire any help is greatly appreciated.
Why does it need the Arcade Card Pro when it has the same built-in RAM as the Duo? It must not be able to combine with this built in memory like it can with the Duos (conflicting memory bus?).
GadgetUK164 - Retro Gaming Repairs & Mods Yeah. They make an “Arcade Card Duo” for the Duo and Duo R/X specifically because they have some memory built-in from their Super CD-ROM^2 functionality. Just seems weird that this doesn’t apply to the Super CD-ROM^2 upgrade, since it has that too. NEC/Hudson sure made a mess of things, but I’m glad they did in a way. :)
Loading times seem normal to me, better than normal. Good tip on the media I'll try taiyo yudens one day, i have some verbatims to try. Good tip about cleaning the pads with desolder braid and flux too, I'll have to remember that.
It's possible but I am not 100% sure. I never inspected what all of them did. I suspect the ones nearest the PSU won't be your problem, but maybe the 4 under the drive. If it's not those it will be the caps around that little mixing board or some of the other SMD caps.
I just used Composite Video for the sync - csync wasn't strong enough I think and needs amplifying (perhaps with a THS7374 rather than the THS7314, since the THS7374 has 4 channels). I think composite just went straight to the composite pin on the SCART connection - no resistor was required.
Awesome system. I love the expandability there. Was many games released on CD-ROM ? Oh yes. CD-Audio overlayd the game, that's the same with playstation and Amiga CD32 (and perhaps PCDOS CDROM also?) .. Great work as always !
Yeah, there are tonnnes of games for the PC Engine on CD and many make really good use of the CD when compared to other systems that followed. Thanks =D
Still quite an extensive project. Do you really think cleaning the gears on the cd unit helped getting it to work properly after heating up? I wouldn't have thought of that. I think this unit has definitely improved with everything you did. It's a great system especially for what you paid.
Yes, it was quite a lot of work tbh - would have been way longer if I had to replace all the SMD caps as well =/ Cleaning up the mechanism did solve the problem where it stopped reading discs. The clue was going into the audio player and seeking from say track 1 to track 14, then suddenly the problem was gone. It could have been some dirt or dust in the home sensor switch - I forgot to mention I cleaned that too. It's a good idea to re-lubricate the mechanical parts though because the teeth can break on the gears etc. I love this system, I think it's one of my favourites now - so many good shmups on the PC Engine CD, and a lot of decent RPGs as well. Just trying to get into Ys Book 1 & 2.
Nice job. The PC engine's CD drives are pretty troublesome devices. Did NEC have bad luck sourcing components, or did they try to do things on the cheap?
Thanks! Yes, they do seem to suffer more than their fair share of problems - gears failing, lasers, caps etc. I think to be fair the design and parts were really good at the time but people just didn't know what would happen over the years to come. The gears break because of aging plastics, and the caps just didn't last forever either. I do really like the PC Engine CD-ROMs though, even the original model.
Whilst in general you are right - on this system they don't! I've taken a few off and they aren't leaking - they don't smell when heated, and they measure correctly!!! I will check back on them in another 6 / 12 months but right now they are fine.
I just bought a "Tested" super CD Rom2 , but the motor doesnt seem to spin up, as its a sealed unit im nut sure if the whole motor needs replacing (desoldering from the board). the laser moves ok (I greased up the gears).
I could barely understand anything you were saying during the gameplay... but was REALLY curious to hear what you were saying about soldering cus it seemed informative and important, but I STILL can't make it out... :(
Sorry, yes - sometimes I forget about the game volume being a bit loud etc. All I was saying is the difficult part imo was desoldering the shielding sections - those absorb a lot of heat and the way to solve that is to use a second soldering iron at the same time. It can be quick difficult to hold and use 2 irons and a desolder pump but that makes it much much easier.
Hey dude, So i purchased a supercd-rom2 from ebay lovely complete condition, but it suffers the dreaded clicking laser...the audio is completely fine, but could the caps be causing this laser issue? the seller reported having no problems with it.
It's hard to tell, it could be the laser, but bad caps can cause problems like that too. One I looked at recently struggled to read discs until the PSU section had been recapped.
If you've got no sound coming out of one of these it is most likely the capacitors. You would need to replace the capacitors like I did, or find someone to repair it.
I'm currently in the process of repairing two PCE Turbo Duos... and I can tell you, some caps didn't look like they were leaking, but i could smell it while removing the caps and cleaning up the pads... that nasty fishy smell... so it may be better to replace them all even if they don't look bad. they will eventually leak or dry out.
Whilst in general you are right - on this system they don't! I've taken a few off and they aren't leaking - they don't smell when heated, and they measure correctly!!! I will check back on them in another 6 / 12 months but right now they are fine. They certainly won't last forever though! Storage and humidity affect these caps too. I've got no doubt that at some point in future I will need to swap them all out.
Most CD based systems work using protocols based on (in some systems almost identical to) the ATA standard, but their wiring is different and theres sometimes other differences which could be a problem (cache, timing specific issues etc). If its using an ATA standard way of communicating then it might be possible to use any standard CD / DVD drive, but that ATA bus has to connect to the PC Engine somehow, in a way that is identical to how NEC did it. That's likely where most of the problem would be - trying to reverse engineer the bus interface hardware so you can connect a PC Engine up to your new 'interface' and an standard CD / DVD ROM drive to the other end of the interface. I think that interface provides some RAM as well probably. The best place to start on something like that is with the original CD-ROM2 (the square one).
Thanks! Please do. I often am reluctant to buying CD based consoles since they need a lot of repair and refurbishment. This is an expensive one also and since I'm not able to repair them, I don't risk buying broken ones from eBay. If you see one you could repair, please let me know and maybe we can work something out.
Unfortunately the system cards are more than just the ROM BIOS - They have additional RAM on the cart too! So you could boot an Arcade card from Everdrive, but the additional RAM won't be there.
o did not no that thanks man and i think its its time you get a better solding iron i bort the hakko fx-951 with a tip for £241 from www.dancap.co.uk/ there is there is nothing I can't fix with that I hope you consider it
Yes, that's something I wondered about before, but not sure where the RAM would fit. Ideally a pass through of the expansion connector would make that easily possible. It might also be possible to piggy back a RAM chip somewhere and run a few wires, perhaps add some logic for chip select.
Wow, one of them leaky caps was a "Matsushita (M) Panasonic" brand, their good quality caps. It probably leaked because some bright purchase department "higher-up" decided to overrule the design engineers and buy the cheaper stranded rated caps instead of the more expensive 105 deg rated that were specified in the draw up plans. You just know the design engineers were pulling their hair out over this. Oh well, at least they shaved of a few pence on the final product.
Hehe, yes - I am sure you're right and that's a good point I forgot to mention, I did fit all 105 degrees caps (I think!) but that is something to think about. I think though even Panasonic fell into the 'bad cap' scenario at one point. I had a Canon camcorder that failed with bad caps and they were all panasonic SMD caps I think. Every single one had leaked =/ At the time it was easier to get it refurbished from Canon - It was like £100 fixed charge, and there were like 70+ caps on it and it was mega complex to take appart and reassemble etc.
"Super CD-ROM^2" It's on the Wikipedia page. Pronounced like we would say it, it's "Super CD-ROM ROM." They don't say two, squared, square, power two, or anything like that. It is because they pair a consonant and vowel sound with every character in their literature, so even the same English words are pronounced a little funny. Depending on the familiarity the speaker has with the English version, they may leave off some of the extraneous sounds ("rum rum" instead of "rumoo rumoo"). I just watched a Japanese commercial where they pronounced Hudson "Hudahson." That's because the characters used to pronounce it are "Hu" "Du" "Su" and "Nu" and the speaker was familiar enough to leave off the last vowel sound.
![History of the Amazing PC ENGINE! [Book I]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PFlMZiCZwVc/mqdefault.jpg)
Just want to say thanks for this video. I've been restoring my Super CD2 for a few months now. This is one of the few, if only repair videos on this model.
I did power and audio re-cap, super capacitor and new laser unit.
I discovered a much better audio output on the 14T board. It's a little via under a resistor in the middle. Gives a clearer, louder and better balance between PC engine and CD audio.
Thanks 🙂
Great to hear! =D
Definitely one of the best retro gear repair video channels around. Always trying to spread the word to local retro computing group Im part of down here in South Australia.
Thanks, you making me blush lol =D I am glad that people get something positive out of my ramblings.
Hahaha, I find your videos are great for showing repairs on the old retro gear. Ive been doing repair work for years and always find something new in your videos. Keep up the great work :)
Awesome vid once again, mate. You've got some crazy weather over there, too!
I saw the titles and new I was in for a treat. Great in site into recapping the CDROM2, thanks for sharing.
Your videos are mint fella, I'm learning tons of stuff.
Thanks =D
Brilliant Brilliant video. I always learn something new when I watch your videos. So fascinating thx for sharing. :)
Thanks and no problem =D
Good video as always. Also, 19:43 I see you have the machine that goes "Ping!"
RetroGameModz video on calibrating an Amiga CD32 CDROM:- ua-cam.com/video/lZK3Rmerg1I/v-deo.html
4hrs, damn, gonna need to reserve some time to watch this later haha
I know lol - very long video, but very well worth watching. I plan on watching it again soon and will be making notes (trust me, make notes - by the time its finished you will remember less than half of the important things he mentions).
always super cool stuff! enjoyed
Thanks =D
Nice work as usual mate.
Thanks =D
Im dreading having to recap one of these. Most of them look perfectly fine, so I think I’ll just do a partial. Mine reads discs perfectly fine but the AV port outputs no audio whatsoever (cd and card). The console video port would output the CD audio perfectly though. Also Nexzr specifically has glitched graphics. No other CD game I threw at it had issues though.
My unit has all 5 Torx screws. The mini pauses are normal and occur on various games (Gate of Thunder before each boss, for example) when the laser has to switch from the audio track to the data track on the CD. Remember, these things only have 2 megabits (256KB) of RAM or less if not System 3.0, it's a testament to the skilled programmers of the time that these games run as well as they do!
Thanks for the info =D
Many thanks for your video it is truly excellent.
Can you tell me what component is the IC302 that you see at 16:29?
I would be really grateful!
Just looking at that part of the video I would say its either a voltage regulator or transistor. More likely a transistor I think.
@@GadgetUK164 Thank you, I have a lost item as shown in the image and I don't know the initials, can you help me? drive.google.com/file/d/1SxI9rx196rMb9TxdCzMD1IxQqHvDwxl5/view?usp=sharing
Oh my god, that plastic bit drove me NUTS!! I have not looked at the SCDROM2 system I bought with a SuperGrafx a couple of years back for a while. I did take it apart but never touched the caps as I was planning on getting a desoldering station. I am planning on getting back into modding and fixing again now, so it is certainly one of the systems I want to fix. Thank god I will know where that damned plastic bit fits now! I just hope I didn't.'t toss it in frustration :D
It is always a good idea to just replace EVERYTHING on these boards and the PCE DUO as they are shoddy as shit and bound to fail. No point doing a couple and having to do more down the road. But that is just my personal opinion.
i dont get any picture or audio from the av out on super cd but i do when i plug it into the coregrafx attached.. am i missing out on any any sound, or is plugging into the coregrafx just another option ?
As far as I understand, the sound is back-fed to the PC Engine. So you shouldn't be missing anything. Just test an audio CD, if you can hear it - it's working.
Thanks for the video. Question I was trying to recap this board and noticed I was missing the sub pcb? Does this mean that I can’t use the console? Thanks
I believe the sub PCB is for audio mixing. It's possible you have a revision where its not required?!?! You would need to test to see if you can hear all the audio correctly.
@@GadgetUK164 thanks I’ll take a look and see. I did reached out to someone that does modding and he said that the pcb is needed to use the console.
@@GadgetUK164 great news, it work although no audio but I am hoping to get audio after doing a rgb mod. Also, question why is it that my pc engine duo rx displays a white screen? Now, the board had cracks and managed to join the cracks with wire any help is greatly appreciated.
Who's cooking squid? Oh wait it's just a cap replacement.
Why does it need the Arcade Card Pro when it has the same built-in RAM as the Duo? It must not be able to combine with this built in memory like it can with the Duos (conflicting memory bus?).
The Duo needs the arcade card too!
Re-reading your comment there - not sure it needs the Pro, that was a mistake I think. I needs the arcade card that the Pro uses.
GadgetUK164 - Retro Gaming Repairs & Mods
Yeah. They make an “Arcade Card Duo” for the Duo and Duo R/X specifically because they have some memory built-in from their Super CD-ROM^2 functionality. Just seems weird that this doesn’t apply to the Super CD-ROM^2 upgrade, since it has that too. NEC/Hudson sure made a mess of things, but I’m glad they did in a way. :)
The DUO card is also for the Super CD ROM2. The PRO is ONLY for the suitcase.
@@segasonic9117 Thanks. That’s what I thought.
Loading times seem normal to me, better than normal. Good tip on the media I'll try taiyo yudens one day, i have some verbatims to try. Good tip about cleaning the pads with desolder braid and flux too, I'll have to remember that.
Thanks, that's useful info! I never thought about Verbatims - I might give those a go too!
Very helpful. tks for this tutorial
hi, thanks for the vid, is that the same caps if there isn't any sound at all ? (cd reading is good but nothing on sound)
It's possible but I am not 100% sure. I never inspected what all of them did. I suspect the ones nearest the PSU won't be your problem, but maybe the 4 under the drive. If it's not those it will be the caps around that little mixing board or some of the other SMD caps.
Did you use CSync or Composite Video as Sync? What did you put on the Sync-Line?
I just used Composite Video for the sync - csync wasn't strong enough I think and needs amplifying (perhaps with a THS7374 rather than the THS7314, since the THS7374 has 4 channels). I think composite just went straight to the composite pin on the SCART connection - no resistor was required.
Awesome system. I love the expandability there. Was many games released on CD-ROM ? Oh yes. CD-Audio overlayd the game, that's the same with playstation and Amiga CD32 (and perhaps PCDOS CDROM also?) .. Great work as always !
Yeah, there are tonnnes of games for the PC Engine on CD and many make really good use of the CD when compared to other systems that followed. Thanks =D
Still quite an extensive project. Do you really think cleaning the gears on the cd unit helped getting it to work properly after heating up? I wouldn't have thought of that.
I think this unit has definitely improved with everything you did. It's a great system especially for what you paid.
Yes, it was quite a lot of work tbh - would have been way longer if I had to replace all the SMD caps as well =/ Cleaning up the mechanism did solve the problem where it stopped reading discs. The clue was going into the audio player and seeking from say track 1 to track 14, then suddenly the problem was gone. It could have been some dirt or dust in the home sensor switch - I forgot to mention I cleaned that too. It's a good idea to re-lubricate the mechanical parts though because the teeth can break on the gears etc. I love this system, I think it's one of my favourites now - so many good shmups on the PC Engine CD, and a lot of decent RPGs as well. Just trying to get into Ys Book 1 & 2.
Nice job. The PC engine's CD drives are pretty troublesome devices. Did NEC have bad luck sourcing components, or did they try to do things on the cheap?
Thanks! Yes, they do seem to suffer more than their fair share of problems - gears failing, lasers, caps etc. I think to be fair the design and parts were really good at the time but people just didn't know what would happen over the years to come. The gears break because of aging plastics, and the caps just didn't last forever either. I do really like the PC Engine CD-ROMs though, even the original model.
In fact, in Nec consoles, all the capacitors have to be replaced. They are either dead or at the end of their life.
Whilst in general you are right - on this system they don't! I've taken a few off and they aren't leaking - they don't smell when heated, and they measure correctly!!! I will check back on them in another 6 / 12 months but right now they are fine.
I just bought a "Tested" super CD Rom2 , but the motor doesnt seem to spin up, as its a sealed unit im nut sure if the whole motor needs replacing (desoldering from the board). the laser moves ok (I greased up the gears).
Did you ever find the service manual for this?
I didn't =/ But... the Turbografx schematics are pretty much the same - available on console5 website!
@@GadgetUK164 Damn you respond quick. That's a shame - was hoping to calibrate the CD unit. Thoroughly enjoy watching your videos.
I could barely understand anything you were saying during the gameplay... but was REALLY curious to hear what you were saying about soldering cus it seemed informative and important, but I STILL can't make it out... :(
Sorry, yes - sometimes I forget about the game volume being a bit loud etc. All I was saying is the difficult part imo was desoldering the shielding sections - those absorb a lot of heat and the way to solve that is to use a second soldering iron at the same time. It can be quick difficult to hold and use 2 irons and a desolder pump but that makes it much much easier.
Excellent!
Thanks =D
That crusty Metal Shield Breaks my heart....Ouch!
Yeah, that shield is pretty dull looking. When I swap out the super cap I will give it a clean up.
can ya clean up around the 244's and 245's? they looked a lil black and Dirty
Hey dude, So i purchased a supercd-rom2 from ebay lovely complete condition, but it suffers the dreaded clicking laser...the audio is completely fine, but could the caps be causing this laser issue? the seller reported having no problems with it.
It's hard to tell, it could be the laser, but bad caps can cause problems like that too. One I looked at recently struggled to read discs until the PSU section had been recapped.
@@GadgetUK164 Do you have a website for taking on jobs? Thanks for the response btw.
I cannot do customer repairs sorry!
please their is no volume/ and sound, what can be the problem. please i need your help
If you've got no sound coming out of one of these it is most likely the capacitors. You would need to replace the capacitors like I did, or find someone to repair it.
I'm currently in the process of repairing two PCE Turbo Duos... and I can tell you, some caps didn't look like they were leaking, but i could smell it while removing the caps and cleaning up the pads... that nasty fishy smell... so it may be better to replace them all even if they don't look bad. they will eventually leak or dry out.
Whilst in general you are right - on this system they don't! I've taken a few off and they aren't leaking - they don't smell when heated, and they measure correctly!!! I will check back on them in another 6 / 12 months but right now they are fine. They certainly won't last forever though! Storage and humidity affect these caps too. I've got no doubt that at some point in future I will need to swap them all out.
I wonder if anyone's ever copied the ROM image off the CD expansion.
I think they have - its just the System Card v3.0 HUCARD image.
hmmm i wonder if it would be possible then to rig up an old PC cd rom drive using the PC Engine/turbo graphix 16 expansion port to act as a CD add on
Most CD based systems work using protocols based on (in some systems almost identical to) the ATA standard, but their wiring is different and theres sometimes other differences which could be a problem (cache, timing specific issues etc). If its using an ATA standard way of communicating then it might be possible to use any standard CD / DVD drive, but that ATA bus has to connect to the PC Engine somehow, in a way that is identical to how NEC did it. That's likely where most of the problem would be - trying to reverse engineer the bus interface hardware so you can connect a PC Engine up to your new 'interface' and an standard CD / DVD ROM drive to the other end of the interface. I think that interface provides some RAM as well probably. The best place to start on something like that is with the original CD-ROM2 (the square one).
excellent job! have you considered selling this unit? I've been looking for one of these in good condition.
Thanks! This is for my own collection so I won't be selling it, but if I do decide to sell it I will let you know!
Thanks! Please do. I often am reluctant to buying CD based consoles since they need a lot of repair and refurbishment. This is an expensive one also and since I'm not able to repair them, I don't risk buying broken ones from eBay. If you see one you could repair, please let me know and maybe we can work something out.
Yeah, its called Super CD rom rom, many thing ins japanese when said twice, they just put a ². Like waku waku puyo puyo, its just Waku² Puyo²
Ah, I see! Fascinating stuff - I didn't know that!
can't you use the everdrive and load the rom
Unfortunately the system cards are more than just the ROM BIOS - They have additional RAM on the cart too! So you could boot an Arcade card from Everdrive, but the additional RAM won't be there.
o did not no that thanks man and i think its its time you get a better solding iron i bort the hakko fx-951 with a tip for £241 from www.dancap.co.uk/ there is there is nothing I can't fix with that I hope you consider it
GadgetUK164 how about engineering a new RAM expansion? I don't know how it works in this particular system yet but I might be helpful.
Yes, that's something I wondered about before, but not sure where the RAM would fit. Ideally a pass through of the expansion connector would make that easily possible. It might also be possible to piggy back a RAM chip somewhere and run a few wires, perhaps add some logic for chip select.
Wow, one of them leaky caps was a "Matsushita (M) Panasonic" brand, their good quality caps.
It probably leaked because some bright purchase department "higher-up" decided to overrule the design engineers and buy the cheaper stranded rated caps instead of the more expensive 105 deg rated that were specified in the draw up plans.
You just know the design engineers were pulling their hair out over this. Oh well, at least they shaved of a few pence on the final product.
Hehe, yes - I am sure you're right and that's a good point I forgot to mention, I did fit all 105 degrees caps (I think!) but that is something to think about. I think though even Panasonic fell into the 'bad cap' scenario at one point. I had a Canon camcorder that failed with bad caps and they were all panasonic SMD caps I think. Every single one had leaked =/ At the time it was easier to get it refurbished from Canon - It was like £100 fixed charge, and there were like 70+ caps on it and it was mega complex to take appart and reassemble etc.
Squared hehe :-)
It's pronounced "Seeyoopah Shee-Dee Rumoo Rumoo."
Seriously.
What is pronounced that way lol? You lost me! You even had me googling that!!!
"Super CD-ROM^2" It's on the Wikipedia page. Pronounced like we would say it, it's "Super CD-ROM ROM." They don't say two, squared, square, power two, or anything like that.
It is because they pair a consonant and vowel sound with every character in their literature, so even the same English words are pronounced a little funny. Depending on the familiarity the speaker has with the English version, they may leave off some of the extraneous sounds ("rum rum" instead of "rumoo rumoo"). I just watched a Japanese commercial where they pronounced Hudson "Hudahson." That's because the characters used to pronounce it are "Hu" "Du" "Su" and "Nu" and the speaker was familiar enough to leave off the last vowel sound.
Absolutely fascinating!!! I never knew this at all! Thanks for sharing that info - My wife is a linguist so I am sure she will be interested too.