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:

Order from OSH Park

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):

tvadapter_cad

The 6.x BIOS is available here:

v4-6x

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.