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

I’ve never owned a PC-Engine or 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. This thing is adorable!

The PCE already has great video output especially for s-video, but I wanted clean RGB to feed to multiple upscale/capture devices. I ended up purchasing an SSDS3 from TerraOnion, which attaches to the back port of the console, outputs RGB and also acts as a flashcart. Not only for the base library, but also the CD games too! Loading games and streaming CD quality audio from an SD card.  In theory, this is great!

Unfortunately the problem is, it’s defective. Not just this unit but all of the first revision SSDS3s have major issues. The video output has a significant amount of noise, and the audio has a lot of hissing when the system is accessing the MicroSD card. Especially for CD audio playback.  For such a premium device, it’s really disappointing that it misses the whole point of how this is supposed to improve on the A/V output of the PCE. These circuit design problems have been reported from multiple customers everywhere. Unfortunately TerraOnion have stoutly claimed they have fully QA’d this product, finding no problems with the output. Whack…

Enter the Voultar FU-RGB and FirebrandX Audio bypass boards.

These 2 boards make up for the engineering shortcomings by intercepting the video and audio circuitry, bypassing the SSDS3 altogether to output clean video and audio. These things saved the SSDS3. 

Installation was a bit more advanced, since you have to cleanly remove a bunch of SMD's so that the solder pads are accessible, but with a trusty heat tool and de-soldering wick you can get it done effectively. Most of this work is to disable the onboard circuits involved with these noise issues, then tapping signals for these “parasite” boards. 

FU-RGB on left, Audio Bypass board on the right:

The final result?  Immaculate!

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

I don't have a sample of the audio uploaded, but the SD card access noise issues are fixed.  

Anyway, Pics!