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If you are wanting to buy a TTX3, here is some information that might help you to find one and be able to identify the differences. It's fairly simple, and the below wil make it look more complex than it is, but i'll write it anyways.
There are basically 3 different hardware specs of the TTX3 system, they vary in cpu/ram/GPU types. There's a number of different model numbers, and some have the same specs, but the 3 main hardware configurations exist.
The table below was put together by twistedsymphony and shows the different model numbers and the hardware specs for each of these.
So you can really break these down to 3 different types of system. (don't start using these names for the system, i just made them up to tell them apart. system type 1/2/3 is not a good naming scheme and no one will know what you are talking about, so just don't use these names in general)
SYSTEM TYPE 1 << Try to stay clear of this model if you can, the cpu is dual core only and the video card is only a 640 which is pretty weak. That being said, this gpu will run all the TTX2/nesica games perfectly well.
CPU: I3 dual core
GPU: Nvidia 640
RAM: 4GB
SYSTEM TYPE 2 << This is the system type you really want to buy, it runs a lot of stuff and it is the most common. They are fairly cheap, there are lots around and good bang for your buck.
CPU: I5 quad core
GPU: Nvidia 660gtx
RAM: 8GB
SYSTEM TYPE 3 << This system is the most uncommon and you hardly ever see them. Not really worth the etra money they sometimes go for just to get a 760gtx over the 660gtx. I just ignore these machines anda you hardly ever see these anyways. 16GB ram is way overkill for anything you will run on this.
CPU: I7 quad core
GPU: Nvidia 760gtx
RAM: 16GB
The systems are pretty much identical except for GPU/RAM/CPU configurations.
So how do you know which system is which when you are trying to search for one of these? There are really 2 easy ways of working out which system is which. If you have a picture of the top of the case, it will tell you on a sticker what the specs of the machine are. Like this picture. You can see the lower spec machine sticker on top and then the higher spec machine sticker on the bottom. You should really try to get the bottom sticker specs. They are usually only a few 1000jpy more expensive, and sometimes the lower specs machines go for more... however that works. I think it's just buyers who don't really know because there is no reaason to buy the lower spec machine when the higher spec machines are freely available for lower prices.
You can usually tell the difference between the 2 machines by looking at the rear of the machine. The lower spec 640 video card model has MSI cut out of the back of the video card. The higher spec 660gtx doesn't have this. You can see this in a picture below.
Other than these difference, it's basically impossible to tell the 2 systems apart if you can't see the back of the GPU or the sticker on the top. So this should help you understand what model you are looking at.
Now lets talk about the IO. Every single TTX3 unit comes with the card required to run the FASTIO. Unlike the TTX2 where it was an addon, every single TTX3 from factory has the fastio card already installed. It's 2 parts. It's a DMAC pcie card that plugs into the motherboard, this holds the game security cart, and it's also a small daughter io card that is connected to this pcie card and that is where you plug your actual IO board into. This is what it looks like from the back.
Here's what the parts look like inside the unit. The red circled parts.
The great thing about this IO card is that it supports FASTIO and it also supports JVS. The JVS is only really there for the card readers, but using a tool like nikos jvs software, you can utilise this port for a JVS io board. So if you buy a TTX3 system, it has the io capability for JVS and FASTIO out of the box and every unit comes with this card. You might be surprised just how capable the 660gtx video card is when running arcade games!
SO... now you know roughly what to look for, where do you buy these units? From Yahoo Japan of course.
If you don't know how to use Yahoo Japan, you can buy from them using buyee or zen market, these guys will let you bid on the auction and then they pay for it and accept shipping and then they will ship the item to you. google it, i'm not going to write a guide on this because it's been done to death. These 2 companies you can use to do this. I use zen market, it's an easy to use site, but you can use buyee as well and i know a lot of people do.
https://zenmarket.jp/en/
https://buyee.jp/?lang=en
Here are the links that will help you find these listings on yahoo japan, these are searches with Taito added to help you find the X3 units.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search/search?p=taito&auccat=2084047781&va=taito&exflg=1&b=1&n=100 <<< Taito search term in the arcade section
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search...&ei=utf-8&aq=-1&oq=&sc_i=&exflg=1&p=x&x=0&y=0 <<< The letter x search term in the arcade section.
These links won't get you all the listings, but they will get you a good chunk of them.
Also if you are wondering what the prices are for the completed items, here is the completed items section with the word TAITO applied, so you will see all items with the word TAITO in the title that were sold in the arcade section. It's helpfull to just see what price things are ending for so you can guage what you should pay. Browse these sites with Google Chrome browser and it will translate for you. But you need to use the deputy servies like buyee or zen market to bid and buy.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closed...axprice=&slider=0&ei=UTF-8&f_adv=1&fr=auc_adv << complete items with TAITO in the title.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closed...&ei=utf-8&aq=-1&oq=&sc_i=&exflg=&p=x3&x=0&y=0 <<< completed items with X3 in the title
Taito type X3 units are fairly bulky and heavy. Shipping via airmail is around 12000-14000jpy and seamail is around 6000-8000jpy. Just keep this in mind before you decide to buy. these shipping estimates might be more to your part of the country, but you don't really know until the item arrives at the deputy service and they weigh it. Zen market is very good with shipping, you get to select a shipping method, they will quote you and then give you the option to change it to one of the other services before it ships. I often choose airmail only to find it's too expensive and just select seamail for cheaper.
Keep in mind that the machines from japan will be ex works. So they will need a clean most of the time, and try to stick to the machines that show a picture of the system running. If the listing says it's Junk.... 50/50 chance there will be a fault with it.
Common faults are dead motherboards, faulty ram and dead gpu fans/gpu's.
That's it really, hope this can help some people with their newbie questions about buying these units.... if you have any questions about buying a ttx3 post them in this thread so it can help all users, don't pm me about it.
UPDATE 26/2/2022:
TTX3 units have become a lot more scarce than they were when i wrote this guide. They do still come up for sale on YHJ, but nothing like they used to, and the prices have jumped significantly. The prices range from around 20KJPY to up to 35K JPY these days. Ones that show the systems running tend to pull higher prices because the frequency of dead units being sold seems to be going up. Local prices outside of japan are higher again if you can find them. You don't see huge amounts of them being sold on ebay...occasional listings here and there. Prices can be higher again for local units if they're teted and refurb/confirmed working. Call it the "don't gamble on non working from japan" tax.
All the other information still sticks but TTX3 prices are definitely higher than they were 8 months ago and the availability is nothing like it used to be. You used to be able to find 3-4 for sale at any one time, now there are times when there's none for sale.
There are basically 3 different hardware specs of the TTX3 system, they vary in cpu/ram/GPU types. There's a number of different model numbers, and some have the same specs, but the 3 main hardware configurations exist.
The table below was put together by twistedsymphony and shows the different model numbers and the hardware specs for each of these.
| Type X3 | 402 | CORE i5-2400 3.1GHz | 2GB x4 | ??? | V3 | only ever found 402 with upgraded gpu, unknown what origional gpu is |
| Type X3 | 402[UG] | CORE i5-2400 3.1GHz | 2GB x4 | N660GTX | V3 | [UG] = upgraded gpu noted by sticker over gpu spec |
| Type X3 | 404 | CORE i5-2400 3.1GHz | 2GB x4 | N660GTX | V3 | |
| Type X3 | 405 | CORE i3-2120 3.3GHz | 2GB x2 | N640 | V3 | note the i3 CPU and lower spec gpu |
| Type X3 | 406 | CORE i5-2400 3.1GHz | 4GB x2 | N660GTX | V3 | |
| Type X3 | 407 | CORE i5-2400 3.1GHz | 8GB x2 | GTX760 CRB | V3 |
So you can really break these down to 3 different types of system. (don't start using these names for the system, i just made them up to tell them apart. system type 1/2/3 is not a good naming scheme and no one will know what you are talking about, so just don't use these names in general)
SYSTEM TYPE 1 << Try to stay clear of this model if you can, the cpu is dual core only and the video card is only a 640 which is pretty weak. That being said, this gpu will run all the TTX2/nesica games perfectly well.
CPU: I3 dual core
GPU: Nvidia 640
RAM: 4GB
SYSTEM TYPE 2 << This is the system type you really want to buy, it runs a lot of stuff and it is the most common. They are fairly cheap, there are lots around and good bang for your buck.
CPU: I5 quad core
GPU: Nvidia 660gtx
RAM: 8GB
SYSTEM TYPE 3 << This system is the most uncommon and you hardly ever see them. Not really worth the etra money they sometimes go for just to get a 760gtx over the 660gtx. I just ignore these machines anda you hardly ever see these anyways. 16GB ram is way overkill for anything you will run on this.
CPU: I7 quad core
GPU: Nvidia 760gtx
RAM: 16GB
The systems are pretty much identical except for GPU/RAM/CPU configurations.
So how do you know which system is which when you are trying to search for one of these? There are really 2 easy ways of working out which system is which. If you have a picture of the top of the case, it will tell you on a sticker what the specs of the machine are. Like this picture. You can see the lower spec machine sticker on top and then the higher spec machine sticker on the bottom. You should really try to get the bottom sticker specs. They are usually only a few 1000jpy more expensive, and sometimes the lower specs machines go for more... however that works. I think it's just buyers who don't really know because there is no reaason to buy the lower spec machine when the higher spec machines are freely available for lower prices.
You can usually tell the difference between the 2 machines by looking at the rear of the machine. The lower spec 640 video card model has MSI cut out of the back of the video card. The higher spec 660gtx doesn't have this. You can see this in a picture below.
Other than these difference, it's basically impossible to tell the 2 systems apart if you can't see the back of the GPU or the sticker on the top. So this should help you understand what model you are looking at.
Now lets talk about the IO. Every single TTX3 unit comes with the card required to run the FASTIO. Unlike the TTX2 where it was an addon, every single TTX3 from factory has the fastio card already installed. It's 2 parts. It's a DMAC pcie card that plugs into the motherboard, this holds the game security cart, and it's also a small daughter io card that is connected to this pcie card and that is where you plug your actual IO board into. This is what it looks like from the back.
Here's what the parts look like inside the unit. The red circled parts.
The great thing about this IO card is that it supports FASTIO and it also supports JVS. The JVS is only really there for the card readers, but using a tool like nikos jvs software, you can utilise this port for a JVS io board. So if you buy a TTX3 system, it has the io capability for JVS and FASTIO out of the box and every unit comes with this card. You might be surprised just how capable the 660gtx video card is when running arcade games!
SO... now you know roughly what to look for, where do you buy these units? From Yahoo Japan of course.
If you don't know how to use Yahoo Japan, you can buy from them using buyee or zen market, these guys will let you bid on the auction and then they pay for it and accept shipping and then they will ship the item to you. google it, i'm not going to write a guide on this because it's been done to death. These 2 companies you can use to do this. I use zen market, it's an easy to use site, but you can use buyee as well and i know a lot of people do.
https://zenmarket.jp/en/
https://buyee.jp/?lang=en
Here are the links that will help you find these listings on yahoo japan, these are searches with Taito added to help you find the X3 units.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search/search?p=taito&auccat=2084047781&va=taito&exflg=1&b=1&n=100 <<< Taito search term in the arcade section
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search...&ei=utf-8&aq=-1&oq=&sc_i=&exflg=1&p=x&x=0&y=0 <<< The letter x search term in the arcade section.
These links won't get you all the listings, but they will get you a good chunk of them.
Also if you are wondering what the prices are for the completed items, here is the completed items section with the word TAITO applied, so you will see all items with the word TAITO in the title that were sold in the arcade section. It's helpfull to just see what price things are ending for so you can guage what you should pay. Browse these sites with Google Chrome browser and it will translate for you. But you need to use the deputy servies like buyee or zen market to bid and buy.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closed...axprice=&slider=0&ei=UTF-8&f_adv=1&fr=auc_adv << complete items with TAITO in the title.
https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closed...&ei=utf-8&aq=-1&oq=&sc_i=&exflg=&p=x3&x=0&y=0 <<< completed items with X3 in the title
Taito type X3 units are fairly bulky and heavy. Shipping via airmail is around 12000-14000jpy and seamail is around 6000-8000jpy. Just keep this in mind before you decide to buy. these shipping estimates might be more to your part of the country, but you don't really know until the item arrives at the deputy service and they weigh it. Zen market is very good with shipping, you get to select a shipping method, they will quote you and then give you the option to change it to one of the other services before it ships. I often choose airmail only to find it's too expensive and just select seamail for cheaper.
Keep in mind that the machines from japan will be ex works. So they will need a clean most of the time, and try to stick to the machines that show a picture of the system running. If the listing says it's Junk.... 50/50 chance there will be a fault with it.
Common faults are dead motherboards, faulty ram and dead gpu fans/gpu's.
That's it really, hope this can help some people with their newbie questions about buying these units.... if you have any questions about buying a ttx3 post them in this thread so it can help all users, don't pm me about it.
UPDATE 26/2/2022:
TTX3 units have become a lot more scarce than they were when i wrote this guide. They do still come up for sale on YHJ, but nothing like they used to, and the prices have jumped significantly. The prices range from around 20KJPY to up to 35K JPY these days. Ones that show the systems running tend to pull higher prices because the frequency of dead units being sold seems to be going up. Local prices outside of japan are higher again if you can find them. You don't see huge amounts of them being sold on ebay...occasional listings here and there. Prices can be higher again for local units if they're teted and refurb/confirmed working. Call it the "don't gamble on non working from japan" tax.
All the other information still sticks but TTX3 prices are definitely higher than they were 8 months ago and the availability is nothing like it used to be. You used to be able to find 3-4 for sale at any one time, now there are times when there's none for sale.
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