PC-Engine is awesome. SSDS3, not so much.

So I never owned a PC-Engine/TurboGrafx 16 back in the day. It wasn't a system that was mainstream enough for me to have access to back then, but I always admired the games library because it was a really good system for solid Arcade ports and wonderful exclusives from Sega and Hudson Soft.

So I decided to dive into the PCE and get myself a cute little Coregrafx.

I ended up purchasing a SSDS3 from TerraOnion, which attaches to my PCE Coregrafx and outputs RGB and also acts as a flashcart for not only the PCE/TG16 library, but also the CD games too!  In theory this is great!

The only problem is, the creators messed up with the video and sound circuitry, causing your image to have colour noise, and the CD audio has a lot of hissing when the system is accessing the MicroSD card.  It's been reported everywhere from multiple customers about these problems, which makes this unit less desirable to a majority of people. Unfortunately TerraOnion have blind and deaf QA people working on their products, because they deny all claims that there are issue with the output. Claiming that the unit works as intended on their set-ups. Yeah right!

Enter the FU-RGB and FirebrandX Audio bypass boards.

These 2 boards make up for the engineering shortcomings and upgrades the video and audio circuitry (bypassing it the SSDS3 altogether) to output clean video and non-hissing audio!  Shouts-out to Voultar and FirebrandX for the creation of these boards, as well as MobiusStripTechnologies for the distribution.

Installation was a bit more advanced, since you have to remove a bunch of SMD's cleanly, so that the solder pads are accessible, but with a trusty heat tool and de-soldering wick you can get it done effectively. FU-RGB on one side, Audio Bypass board on the other:

The final result?  Immaculate!

You can really see the differences when you get up close to the pixels. A lot cleaner, better colour output, no noise:

As you can see, the original output of the SSDS3 that TO claims to have no problems look way worse than the fixed output. It's really a shame that their attitude around this device is that it's working perfectly and the customers that are complaining about it are made out to be in the wrong.  Clearly there is a problem with this device.

Anyway, I don't have a sample of the audio uploaded, outlining the fixed noise issues, but here's a bunch of pics (some with scanlines, some not) from my set-up using an OSSC into a Benq Zowie 1080p monitor:

I would recommend to anyone buying TerraOnion products to do so with caution. Be careful if you're an early adopter, TerraOnion will not help you if you find an issue with their products. Unfortunately they will just deny it and move on with your money.