SEGA NEPTUNE DESOLDERED and REWIRED

Its been about a week since I did any more work on my Sega Neptune mod. I'd become a little dishearted with my progress. I couldn't get a proper connection test done with the 32x plugged into the Megadrive 2 with the power and A/V's wired up. It seems that the wires I bought from Maplins are too stiff. Everytime I placed the Megadrive 32x combo into the lower part of the megadrive case wires kept coming away from the solder joints. Rather annoying to say the least!

So I decided to completely re-wire all the work I'd done so far. I've seen a completed Neptune project on photobucket and he'd used IDE Ribbon wire instead of the type of wire I'd bought and it looked really nice.

 Today I got on the desoldering work and have gotten a lot of practice now with my Solder Sucker. I'm getting pretty good with it now which is great as I couldn't really get it to work before. After desoldering 2 A/V outs and a Power Input I decided to tackle the desoldering of the cartridge slot on the megadrive 2. All 64 points! The board looks very clean without the cart slot on it.

I then re-wired the A/V out on the 32x with IDE cable and its a lot neater now and easier to solder up than individual wires.

After that its tinning the cartridge slot on the 32x so It can be wired to the Megadrive 2. Its a bit of a no return step when you get solder onto the cartridge points so I was a little apprehensive with attempting it but it went okay. Oh and I also noticed that the prototype name for the 32x is printed on the board, Mars. Pretty nifty in a geeky way.

So all in all I'm pretty pleased with how my soldering skills have progressed. Hopefully it will all work once its completed.

More updates to follow :)

Porl''

SEGA NEPTUNE MOD PROGRESS

Who would have thought that desoldering was so hard to get your head around? Certainly not me. But even though ive gotten the right tools now its still been a pig and i'd made no progress on the walkthrough until earlier today. I finally removed the heat sink off the md2 main board with the help of an extra pair of hands (my girlfriend) and now gotten cracking with the mod and feel like im making headway. :-)

Also my case mod has been making progress and starting to look more like the 2 prototype neptunes that can be seen on Google. Hopefully it will turn out relatively close in the end.

Photos to follow :-)

Porl"

SEGA MEGADRIVE 2 MOD

One thing I've always wanted to do is learn how to solder and have always been too scared to give it a go. Daft as it sounds. Last week a friend though my girlfriends parents who was an electrical engineer taught me how.

Having seen several pal/ntsc tutorials on the internet i got the courage to give it a go. With fresh soldering skills i tackled the pal/ntsc and language mod to a sega megadrive 2 and got it to work. :-)

I have a more ambitious sega mod to come now I've ticked that off the list.

Just need to win some stuff from ebay!!

See the pics below showing the mod as well as my Japanese Super Ghosts and Goblins used to test the pal/ntsc mod.

2012 AND NEW WEBSITE!!

I've decided to make some changes to my website for 2012. My focuses have changed and mutated over the last few years. I'm still into designer toys and have a toy on the burner that I will hopefully get to release this year. I've bought my first house at the end of 2011 and this has clamped down on my hobby money so things are moving slowly for me now.

Now I have a more stable location to work from I'm aiming to start getting projects done in 2012! :) I have another Sega Megadrive half painted, I'm really digging painting retro consoles at the minute. They have such a different feel to doing a straight canvas. I love retro consoles and they spark memories of being a geeky kid playing Sonic for hours during summer holidays, going to my mates house to play bomberman or micro machines. Drooling over consoles magazines such as Mean Machines, Mean Machines Sega, Games Master etc reading about consoles I couldnt afford but dreamed about playing.

I have a Sega Megadrive 2 case mod im working on that I'm very excited about and I'm really hoping I can pull off.

I want to re-work the game I made a 1 level demo of mid-2011, as well as make a quirky platformer using Construct 2. It looks like a great improvement on Construct and I'm hoping to find time to get working things out of my game making system!

Hopefully this new blogger format will make maintaining my site a lot easier so I will post more.

I still have my little shop open and hope to add more items in there soon. For people who are still wanting to add to their OZZEL collections there is one "End of Summer" Ozzel left. Check here to give him a look : PORLZILLA WEBSHOP

All is looking fun for 2012!! yatta!