I received mine about 4 days after BT mailed it - I was so surprised!
Had meant to test fully and put this type of email out then, but got
busy with life and a sick friend, unfortunately.
Anyways... for what I did test, I had similar results. I use XP Media
Center w/ SP2 for an OS. The flash software was easy to setup once I
read through a few of the readme files - all in all about 20 minutes
on that, and after 25 minutes, I had my first two roms on there and
was trying it out on the TG16. One worked, and one didn't - though I
suspect that one of the roms was bad as it wouldn't load in Magic
Engine, either. I tried loading more roms and was disappointed that it
wanted to reinvent the wheel and copy all roms over again rather than
simply updating the list on the card - small complaint though.
What I did have happen though was that the program hung when copying
more than 2 roms at a time to the card. It crashed several times, and
would require a reset before I could get the copying process to end
(this was after manually attempting to end the process).
I haven't had the time to revisit my testing since the day that I
received the card, however, and at this point, I am assuming that some
of the roms used to test were bad (these were not pulled from my
'permanent' set, but from some quickly culled from the web).
For my part, I'm looking forward to being able to put my favorite
games all on one card, leaving my originals in their cases, while also
trying out some of the homebrew and translated games on the actual
hardware. I've been thinking about modifying my Duo-R for US
hu-card/region, as well as composite video - this might finally be the
excuse that I need to do so.
-David
Quoting Matthew Seavey <xxxxxx@boxermandy.com>:
> Hey List,
>
> I figured I'd send 2007 off and enter 2008 with some Turbo-Related posts.
> Here goes.
>
>
> I got the PCE Flash card in the mail the other day. I can't thank BT enough
> for his efforts in coordinating this effort. Almost 20 years since the PCE
> was introduced and we're still doing things like this. Amazing!!!
>
>
> Obviously this thing wasn't packaged or documented by someone who speaks
> english as a first language, but all things considered it's not bad. It's
> just a little...confusing as to what to do first. I ended up installing the
> NEO Power Kit and then the Power PCE v1.0 program, followed by the USB
> driver for a SlimLoader IV - which is apparently what we got. I'm not sure
> what NEO power kit does, as I can't get it to do anything - but the PCE
> program seems to load roms. Of note - I can't have them zip'd like
> MagicEngine supports, so I'll have to unzip all my stuff. But once I
> unzipped a few sample roms and put them in a directory, it then asked me for
> a format for the load (I picked TG16 since I have a US Duo sitting here
> hooked up), it wrote the roms, and said "done". I tried moving the Loader
> to another USB port and it asked me to find new hardware again - so I'm not
> sure what's up there.
>
> Then I took the cart to my Duo - plugged it in. Got a basic menu where I
> could pick which Rom to load. Picked Neutopia and ... BAM! "da da da
> da...." Neutopia! Flawless as best I can tell. I also tried SF2 and that
> worked flawless as well. I still say the PCE version is the best version of
> SF2:CE ever made.
>
> I then picked some more ROMs - apparently I can't get a list of what's *on*
> the card - so it can't pull anything off one as best I can tell, it just
> erases and rewrites the card every time. Good for piracy efforts, but I
> would like to know what I already have on there and be able to append vs
> overwriting - but that's not a big deal since it doesn't take long to load
> the ROMs. I had a few ROMs that wouldn't play at all - I'll need to try
> them in MagicEngine and see if they work there or not.
>
> Overall, first impressions are VERY positive. Even the artwork on the card
> is sweeet! I'd like to see some more features and "friendliness" in the
> loader frontend, but it gets the job done. And documentation could be
> better. But the product works as advertised as best I can tell. And being
> able to play all my PCE games with one HUcard vs digging them all out of the
> closet is REALLY nice. Plus I imagine anyone developing any games could
> post the ROMs for the list to beta-test...and who knows if we'd be able to
> easily load translated Japanese games. There are so many possibilities!
>
> Anyway - that's it. I just wanted to write and post my impressions. Again,
> thanks to BT for coordinating the effort and for everyone who contributed.
> Here's to another year of Turbo!
>
>
> Landis
>
>
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