Background

The De-Bee Card is a brand new physical release medium for TurboGrafx-16 / PC-Engine games. If you're a developer who's interested in having a few (or many) copies of your homebrew software in physical form then this is the product for you!

Form Factor

The De-Bee is mechanically identical to a standard HuCard. Well, in fact it's "almost" identical. I purposely made my plastic design with an open-lip as opposed to the closed-lip of the original in order to prevent any De-Bee Cards from being passed off as original (i.e. 90's era) releases. A De-Bee card will include the Plastic Holder and De-Bee Card PCB. Label printing will be your responsibility.

 Plastic Holder Mechanical Design

 HuCard, Plastic Holder with Flash IC, and dbCard PCB

 All Assembled - Looking Good!



Specifications

The De-Bee Card can support game ROMs up to 8Mbits; official sizes will be: 2Mbit, 4Mbit and 8Mbit. The Flash IC used runs off of 5V unlike other retro products out there which use 3.3V Flash ICs outside of their specifications. 

Compatibility

The De-Bee has been tested on:
  • TurboGrafx-16
  • PC-Engine
  • Core Grafx
There is no reason why it wouldn't work with all TurboGrafx-16 / PC-Engine variants.

How Do I Release a Game on De-Bee Card?

Well first and foremost, you need to prove to yourself that your game is functional on real hardware. You can achieve this by testing with a Turbo Everdrive or other similar dev platform. Once you have a ROM you are satisfied with, contact me at rene@db-elec.com and we can begin discussing pricing and lead-time depending on the quantities you are looking to get produced.

Generally speaking, the production process can take one of two approaches:
  1. Low quantities - db Electronics will burn your De-Bee Cards and ship them to you (I will absolutely NOT burn any repros!)
  2. High quantities - db Electronics will provide blank De-Bee Cards and means to burn them on your own