TourVision HuCard adapters & BIOS 6.x
Well here it is, I’d been planning to make some of these for a long time and finally found the time and energy to do so. TourVision carts are getting expensive. I think part of this may be my fault for aggressively hunting them but I was finally prompted to get this project off the ground when a game I don’t own appeared for 900 euros.
If you’ve read my articles on the TourVision system you’ll know that the carts are just Hu Cards sealed in epoxy in a plastic box, and a slightly extended connector with 8 pins for the game ID. The game ID determines what the system will do with the game when you press start, how many players it supports and so on.
I actually picked up an adapter a while back which came with a motherboard and some games, someone had hollowed out a cart and put a piece of a cut up PC Engine inside, using a connector soldered to the edge connector. It kind of works but it’s very hand made and not something you’d want to replicate.
What I’ve created today is this:
You just insert the Hu Card in the adapter, set the dip switch for the correct game ID, put the adapter in the TourVision and you have something that works identically to the original cart. The dip switch is a representation of an 8 bit number (0 to 255), and because people don’t generally carry binary around in their heads I added a little note and some labels near the switch. Sadly the switch setting needs to be the opposite of the “ON” printed on the switch casing itself, but reversing that would have overcomplicated things and I specifically wanted to use this type of switch as they’re easy to actuate and last a long time.
The game ID for F1 Triple Battle is 100 – here’s the dip switch set accordingly to 01100100. A quick way of working it out is going from left to right adding the largest numbers required to reach the ID you want, in this case 64 + 32 + 4 = 100. If you get this wrong it will probably stop you starting the game correctly but it won’t damage anything.
Of course this also means we can play around a bit – and this bring me on to BIOS rev “6.x”. This is my own modified version, it may evolve over time but currently it contains a fix for the Afterburner config, a brand new game ID 240 for Bloody Wolf which was not released for the TourVision, and a special ID 255. ID 255 can be used with any game at all, it disables all the lockouts and gives the player full control of the menus etc after start is pressed. You’ll still have to keep the system topped up with purchased time but if all you want to to is run a game and not have the normal startup options the system forces on you, just set all the switches to the up position. Here’s F1 Triple Battle and Bloody Wolf running on adapters (BW timing not perfect yet, still tuning):
You can use the adapter with any standard TourVision BIOS, but upgrading to 6.x will give you the derestricted ID 255, without it you need to set the correct game ID to match the card and a BIOS new enough to support that game. Here is the current full list of known game IDs:
1,Formation Soccer 2,Side Arms 3,Daisempu 5,Shinobi 6,Hana Taka Daka (Super Long Nose Goblin) 7,Blodia 8,Vigilante 8,PC Genjin 9,Super Volley Ball 10,Mizubaku Daibouken Liquid Kids 10,Ninja Ryukenden 10,Tiger Road 11,The NewZealand Story 12,Drop Rock Hora Hora 13,Cyber Core 14,Psycho Chaser 16,Pac-Land 18,Paranoia 19,Jinmu Densho 20,Doreamon - Meikyuu Daisakusen 21,Winning Shot 23,Mr Heli 23,Soldier Blade 26,Operation Wolf 27,Chozetsurinjin Beraboh Man (Super Foolist Man) 27,Gomola Speed 27,Mashin Eiyuden Wataru 27,Terra Cresta II 28,W-Ring 29,Final Blaster 30,Batman 31,Tatsujin 32,Aero Blasters 33,Ankoku Densetsu 33,Rastan Saga II (maybe) 34,Thunder Blade 36,Saint Dragon 37,Chuka Taisen 38,Out Run 39,Barunba 40,Veigues 40,Legendary Axe 42,Kato & Ken 42,Super Star Solder 42,Time Cruise II 42,Tricky 43,Coryoon 43,Doreamon - Nobita's Dorabian Night 43,Down Load 44,Saiga No Nindou 45,Final Soldier 46,After Burner 47,Devil Crash 49,Burning Angels 50,Spin Pair 51,Toy Shop Boys 53,Override 54,Jackie Chan 55,Dead Moon 56,Legend Of Hero Tonma 57,Puzzle Boy 58,Special Criminal Investigation 61,R-Type II 61,Alice In Wonderland 62,Final Match Tennis 64,Adventure Island 65,1943 Kai 65,Dragon Saber 66,Sokoban World 67,Golf Boys 68,Volfied 69,Puzznic 71,Bomberman 73,Die Hard 79,Final Lap Twin 80,Son Son II 83,Money In The Sky II 83,Power Eleven 84,PC Genjin 2 89,Skweek 90,Columns 91,Racing Spirits 93,Be Ball 94,Ordyne 97,Hit The Ice 98,Dragon Egg 99,Image Fight 100,F1 Triple Battle 111,Raiden 120,Kiki KaiKai 148,Gunhed 148,Splatterhouse 183,Power Tennis 184,Salamander 185,Bull Fight 186,Ballistix 187,Gradius 192,Pro Yakyuu World Stadium '91 193,Knight Rider Special 194,Dodge Ball 195,Fighting Run 196,Toilet Kids 197,Mesopotamia 199,Power Sports 200,Power Drift 201,PC Genjin Punkic Cyborg 202,World Jockey 203,Cadash 204,Bomberman '93 206,USA Pro Basketball 209,Dungeon Explorer 240,Bloody Wolf (6.x BIOS only)
There are also a couple of suspected IDs I’ve discovered to work but have no proof for accuracy of. The Kung Fu / China Warrior works with ID 11, and Parasol Stars works with ID 94.
The design was quite easy aside from creating the CAD objects for the HuCard connector and the edge connector – fortunately I got them right first time. The HuCard mounting points could be more accurate but the way they are now makes it very hard to fit the connector badly as they click into place, so I’ll probably leave it like this.
I made a small number of these to offset the cost of producing prototypes and so on, these have now been sold and thanks to anyone who bought one. I will not be making any more as like my other projects, it’s open source.
You can order the boards from OHS Park already at the below link:
If you want to make your own boards using your own equipment or via a different provider, the Eagle files are here (including the tourvision lbr file):
The 6.x BIOS is available here:
Please let me know if there are any games unsupported by the system that you’d like me to add to future 6.x updates. Of course you can just use ID 255 to essentially disable the start automation but for example I found it quite fun to have the system starting Bloody Wolf for me.
