|
Model |
Country |
Format |
| # |
PC-Engine |
Japan |
Hu |
| # |
TurboGrafx16 |
US |
Hu |
| # |
CoreGrafx |
Japan |
Hu |
| # |
CoreGrafx2 |
Japan |
Hu |
| $ |
Shuttle |
Japan |
Hu |
| # ^ |
CDrom System |
Japan |
CD |
| # ^ |
TG CD System |
US |
CD |
| # ^ |
SuperCD System |
Japan |
SCD |
| # |
PCEngine DUO |
Japan |
Hu/SCD |
| # |
PCEngine DUO-r |
Japan |
Hu/SCD |
| # |
PCEngine DUO-rx |
Japan |
Hu/SCD |
| # |
Turbo DUO |
US |
Hu/SCD |
| - |
PCE-GT |
Japan |
Hu |
| - |
Turbo Express |
US |
Hu |
| # |
PCE-LT |
Japan |
Hu |
| #% |
SuperGrafx |
Japan |
Hu/SG-Hu |
|
Key |
Meaning |
|
|
#
|
Upgradeable by system cards to CD/SCD/ACD
standard. US machines can use Japanese cards by a convertor. |
|
|
^
|
These machines are stand-alone CD-drives only,
and must be used with a base unit - eg TG16, Core, or PCE. |
|
|
-
|
Non-upgradeable, portable handheld machines. |
|
|
%
|
The only machine to play SG-Hucards - enhanced
graphics capabilities. |
|
|
$
|
Non-upgradeable, "ergonomically" shaped machine. |
|
Format |
OS/Card
Needed |
|
US Hu |
All US machines |
|
Japan Hu |
All Jpn or US + convertor |
|
CD |
Jpn/US with CDrom System card or DUO |
|
CDrom2 |
Jpn/US with CDrom System2 card or DUO |
|
SuperCDrom2 |
Jpn/US with CDrom SuperSystem card or DUO |
|
Arcade CD |
Jpn CD systems with ACD card or US CD systems
+ convertor + ACD card |
|
SuperGrafx Hu (Japan) |
Jpn SuperGrafx only |
|
|
|
|
Hint: All SCD systems can play
Hu, CD, CD2, SCD games. If you have an ACD card, then you can play ALL
games. In other words, the upgrade cards are backwards compatible. |
|
The PCEngine family is based on the ancient 8-bit,
6502 processor. NEC/Hudson made a few changes to the chip, and came up
with a new model, the Hu6280. The chip has a larger instruction set than
the original; about 90 in total - quite a lot for such a basic chip. The
Hu6280 runs at a higher speed than normal - at roughly 7Mhz (I think?).
The PCEngine has a physical address range of 64Kb, and a logical address
range of 2Mb. The 16bit address bus is supplemented by 8bit registers (Memory
Region Address registors) that map a single 8Kb physical region to a 8Kb
logical one - this is how the extra memory in SuperSystem and Arcade upgrade
cards are used - a physical to logical mapping - sounds cool to me; few
address lines to keep things compact, but the ability to address a larger
amount of ram if needed :)
The SuperSystem, and Arcade upgrade cards contain this extra
ram,; 256Kb and 2Mb respectively, as well as updates to what we would call
the Bios or the operating system. These updates contain extra instructions
which allow the machine to take advantage of the extra memory and modes
which it provides.
A comparison between the latest ACD games and the original Hucard based
games is like comparing a ZX81 and an Amiga! The differences the upgrade
cards make is amazing - whereas with PC's nowadays, memory is just used
up and we may see a little speed increase, the advantages that programmers
of PCEngine games made of the extra memory is astounding - some games feature
actual FMV! Full motion video from a 8-bit mircoprocessor - wow! See my
reviews section and other peoples pages for more
info on SCD/ACD games.
The best chips in the PCEngine are the 16bit VCE (HuC6260) and VDC (HuC6270)-
the Video Colour Encoder, and the Video Display Controller. The VDC is
a powerful little thing, and works in a most different way to 'normal'
bitmapped computer displays - hence it only has 64Kb of VRAM - a display
with the same characteristics on a PC would use over 100Kb - memory being
a expensive comodity. The SuperGrafx system has a more powerful VDC which
handles twice as many sprites (128) as the PCEngine (64).
Upto 512 colours may be displayed at once, split into 256 for the background,
and 256 for the sprites; each individual sprite having a palette of 16
colours.
The VCE chip basicaly encodes the data for display into a format for
output to the TV set - in NTSC format - so if you want to use a European
TV (SCART only) then you have to get the signal before it is output by
this chip.
All PCEngine systems have 6 voice stereo sound, with each voice being able
to be programmed by a waveform means. The sound chip is included directly
in the CPU. Those of you with PC's will recognise the music from the PCEngine
as the FM-Synthesis variety, it may be outdated technology now, but in
no way does it detract from the system.
With the CD rom add-ons, the PCEngine can play Redbook audio during
gameplay - for excellent music. And some games also feature a large amount
of Redbook audio speech, although some game do use digitised speech,
the lack of a high quality codec, or PCM hardware does make it sound a
bit scratchy and grainy.
On the whole though, the sound subsystem is not too bad. |
