Hi All,
A bit of a late Happy New Year! but there you go. :-)
I've been quiet again on the old blog front, the time keeps flying by which is a little worrying when you think about it. Over christmas I don't get much time to do many geeky projects as we're out busking with the kids Brass band that me and my wife volunteer for. Always good fun getting out there and playing the classic christmas tunes!
Well its a new year and I want to get cracking with a couple of Sega based projects and 1 arcade game project.
Currently the 2 Sega projects are on the go which I will no doubt make a post about when they are all done and finished. I'm just waiting on an ebay purchase to finish the larger of the two projects wiring then I will be onto the final touches for it. I'm really pleased with it so far, mysterious huh? :-P
I also have an arcade game project which I made a quick video intro for which is at the bottom of this post.
While I was working on one of the Sega projects I was watching some of the arcade and retro console repair videos that I subscribe to on YouTube and I started getting the urge to have another go at repairing an arcade game.
So off I trotted to one of the arcade forums I go on and snagged myself a board with some issues. Mainly this games problems are in the sound department. The game is WF SuperStars :-D I used to play this loads at Mr Man's video shop on Rosliston Road when I was a teen so its got a great nostalgic feeling for me.
Its going to be fun to tackle issues in the sound area of a Jamma board as I've not poked around those areas yet.
BUT, I need to get some of these other projects finished first before tackling WF. :-P
So catch you guys on the next post which will hopefully be a nice completed projects post.
Porl''
Showing posts with label Genisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genisis. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Monday, 19 May 2014
ARCADE MACHINE REFURBISHMENT - RESURRECTION PART 6. FINISHED!
Hi all,
It's been a couple of weeks since my last update so I thought I would post up a quick update on the Jamma arcade machine resurrection.
ITS FINISHED!!! :-D
Yep indeedy. I've been over to the machine over the last weekend and finished up the last little touches I wanted to do to it so I can call it done. And its a pretty great feeling to know that I've taken a machine that was basically sitting and rotting broken and unusable and its now a tidied up and rejuvenated arcade machine that can be used to run both Jamma and MVS games.
The main finishing touch I wanted to do was re-fit the blackout card around the monitor so that you couldn't see into the machine while playing it and it just makes you focus on the game your playing. When I was removing the card to do the cleaning a part of it got torn so I had to tape it back together.
You can see the join if your looking but Im pretty sure if you didn't know it was torn and repaired you wouldn't spot it. It needed a little trimming and adjusting to get it to fit the new monitor shape nicely but in the end (with some stapling and then re-stapling) I got it to fit how I wanted and closed up the front of the machine and clamped the latches down so its all secure at the front.
On the left you can now only see me and the wall behind me reflecting in the glass rather than seeing straight into the cabinet.
Below you can see a kind of POV of how it looks when your playing. You really just see the game now.
The next step was to tidy up the dangling wires inside the coin door area so I got some of my cable tie bases stuck to the inside of the wood and cable tie'd the wires out of sight. Nice and easy.
I also wanted to mount the Test Switch within the coin mech area on the back of the coin door but the wires weren't long enough so I got a pair of off cuts from the jamma harness and extended them so that I could neatly route the wires along the inside of the cabinet and out to the coin mech nicely. So now when you open the coin door to get to the remote to set the TV to AV so that the picture is perfect the Test switch cabling is no longer pulling on the harness wiring and the door swings freely. :-)
And that's it! :-D I wanted to make a new marquess sign for the machine which I might still do at some point but It all still works and fits and is how the machine was last set up so I think its good for now.
The machine now needs some games played on it so it can be used again. At the minute I've gotten my Jammadrive 2 in permanent residence so that I can get blasting some of the amazing Megadrive arcade conversions I have. Golden Axe really plays nicely in the stand up cab set up even though its still the megadrive version.
Here is the arcade machine in its new location for a while. As you can see I had my trusty assistant with me helping me out. Unfortunately he's too short to reach the Player 2 controls. haha :-P
As I said numerous times Im really stoked out with this project and how I've managed to bring an actual arcade machine back to life from the dead! Its been a project where I've learnt a lot and gained a lot of confidence in this area of retro games electronics / wiring etc.
I have another arcade machine project on the go at the minute, yes I know! Another! But this project is very different to this machine so again its a neat learning experience.
So expect another post up here soon. Hopefully I get a major component for it back tomorrow (fingers crossed) so I can really get to work on it.
Porl''
It's been a couple of weeks since my last update so I thought I would post up a quick update on the Jamma arcade machine resurrection.
ITS FINISHED!!! :-D
Yep indeedy. I've been over to the machine over the last weekend and finished up the last little touches I wanted to do to it so I can call it done. And its a pretty great feeling to know that I've taken a machine that was basically sitting and rotting broken and unusable and its now a tidied up and rejuvenated arcade machine that can be used to run both Jamma and MVS games.
You can see the join if your looking but Im pretty sure if you didn't know it was torn and repaired you wouldn't spot it. It needed a little trimming and adjusting to get it to fit the new monitor shape nicely but in the end (with some stapling and then re-stapling) I got it to fit how I wanted and closed up the front of the machine and clamped the latches down so its all secure at the front.
On the left you can now only see me and the wall behind me reflecting in the glass rather than seeing straight into the cabinet.
Below you can see a kind of POV of how it looks when your playing. You really just see the game now.
The next step was to tidy up the dangling wires inside the coin door area so I got some of my cable tie bases stuck to the inside of the wood and cable tie'd the wires out of sight. Nice and easy.
I also wanted to mount the Test Switch within the coin mech area on the back of the coin door but the wires weren't long enough so I got a pair of off cuts from the jamma harness and extended them so that I could neatly route the wires along the inside of the cabinet and out to the coin mech nicely. So now when you open the coin door to get to the remote to set the TV to AV so that the picture is perfect the Test switch cabling is no longer pulling on the harness wiring and the door swings freely. :-)
And that's it! :-D I wanted to make a new marquess sign for the machine which I might still do at some point but It all still works and fits and is how the machine was last set up so I think its good for now.
The machine now needs some games played on it so it can be used again. At the minute I've gotten my Jammadrive 2 in permanent residence so that I can get blasting some of the amazing Megadrive arcade conversions I have. Golden Axe really plays nicely in the stand up cab set up even though its still the megadrive version.
Here is the arcade machine in its new location for a while. As you can see I had my trusty assistant with me helping me out. Unfortunately he's too short to reach the Player 2 controls. haha :-P
I have another arcade machine project on the go at the minute, yes I know! Another! But this project is very different to this machine so again its a neat learning experience.
So expect another post up here soon. Hopefully I get a major component for it back tomorrow (fingers crossed) so I can really get to work on it.
Porl''
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
ARCADE MACHINE REFURBISHMENT - RESURRECTION PART 5. MARQUEE AND JAMMADRIVE 2
Hi All,
Well, the weekend has passed and I managed to get a little bit of work done on the arcade machine while my fiance was planting trees with her mom in one of the fields. Shirking a little bit of manual labour I slinked off to my arcade machine to continue work.
My main aim for the weekends work was to try and figure out the marquee light and try to get that hooked up and working. I must admit though I hadn't got a clue how the thing hooked up to the power supply as it was just 2 wires and they weren't standard colourings to the wires. Hmm, surely one has to be ground and one live? There's a sticker on what looks like the ignitor? power block for the light that says 240v so I thought 'brilliant! I'll hook it up to a mains plug and see what happens'. Well, what happened was the bulb got really bright then a burning spot appeared at a part of the bulb and it switched off. Doh!! Burnt it out and my confidence with getting that thing working dropped through the floor.
I could try to get another bulb to fit but I might struggle and then it could just burn out like this one did because its not wired correctly, so I decided to head down to my local B&Q diy store and pick up some tree ties for Roz and her mom and picked up a small strip light while I was at it. While I was there I checked over all the lights and checked that the one I got was mains powered so I could just hook it up and I'd be away.
I had a good long piece of mains cabling and scrounged a plug and hooked up the light to check that it fired up and worked okay. And, bingo! It worked! Next step is to get it mounted to the marquee board and check again. Here you can see it mounted to the board before I routed the wiring down the back trunking of the machine and down to the power strip thats sitting in the base.
After I got it all cable tied to place and hidden in the trunking I go it switched on in its new home. :D
Check that glow! haha. Another tick on my list of things to do there. Marquee light, done!
Here's how the machine looks at the minute with the glass and marquee sign all back in place.
Looking pretty snazzy I think. I don't know what it is but when the light turned on it just clicked to me. This is finally an arcade machine, it just feels more right.
During the week I'd received some new Neo Geo MVS games so I thought I'd bring one of the cartridges with me to 'test' out in the cabinet. Metal Slug 2! :D
Its crazy how different the game looks compared to my little LCD TV I've got at home. Standing up close to the CRT monitor with the scan lines etc makes it feel a lot more proper.
I got a nice little stash of games and I'm really itching to complete them all but the one thing I'm making sure I don't do is credit my way through them. I.e. just pressing the credit button continuously to force my way through the games. One thing I've been doing with Metal Slug 2 is giving myself 3 credits and 3 credits only. Trying to recreate only having so much change in my pocket like when I was a kid. Man, is Metal Slug 2 a hard game though!! I can only get to the end of level 3 so far with my 3 credits. Its crazy tough even on level 4 difficulty settings. I'll get there though.
The Games I got (as I got side-tracked there) are : Metal Slug 2 (loose cart), Metal Slug 4 (full kit), King of Fighters 2001 (loose cart), Puzzle Bobble (loose cart) and Tecmo Soccer '96 (loose cart). I'll probably be selling on Tecmo Soccer as Im not that into football games but the others are definate keepers.
So that was Saturday's work and I thought I would be all done for the weekend but we headed back on the Sunday so Roz could help her mom out with some more tree's so I had an idea of what I could leave in the machine semi-perminantly as I don't want to be leaving my 'real' arcade boards in the machine when it's not at my house yet.
So I used the time in the morning at home to source out an old Megadrive / Mega CD base plate from my wardrobe to see if I could modify it into a PCB stand for my Sega Jammadrive 2 :-)
I found the base plate out but quickly found out that its not going to fit the Jammadrive 2 unless I take the rubber feet off the bottom of the casing (not gonna happen as I want it to look stock :P ) or modify the plate. So I got my metal saw out and started hacking away at the base. I got a little way but needed some proper equipment so I took it to the farm and used the saws there.
Here you can see the Jammadrive 2 next to where I was working so I could keep offering up the plate to it to see how it was fitting.
Right, a little disclaimer...I'm not going to show the finished off plate because its VERY embarrassing and looks like a torture device from Vlad the Impaler (and it actually did impale me at one point and cut my hand doh!) but it does fit nicely and work very well. I drilled out some holes and mounted PCB feet that I had spare so that I could then screw that into the internal wooden wall of the arcade machine.
And here is the Jammadrive 2 sitting in place on the wooden wall. The way I positioned it is so the weight of the console pushes downwards onto the mounts of the base plate so it will keep in place and it also has the Jamma edge at a nice easy to access position. I've also mounted it quite high on the board so that I can still fit other arcade games in there past it so I don't have to take it out all the time to put other game boards in.
Im really pleased with how it sits in the cabinet I must admit and really happy that the baseplate worked after all my hacking of it (and my hand).
And here you can see the machine running Streets of Rage from the Sega Mega Games 6 cartridge. A neat little fact about this cart is that it has the full version of Streets of Rage on it so much that if you flick it over to Japanese language you get the game Bare Knuckle instead of Streets of Rage :D A good cart to test your language switch mods on ;-)
I thought I could leave this cart in the machine and there are a few games to have a blast on when there aren't any arcade boards plugged in.
Also its inspired me to dig some of my megadrive arcade converstions out of my shelves such as golden axe and I know its not technically an arcade game but its pretty close to the original, Splatterhouse 2.
Oh, I also painted up the old coin door that I mentioned in one or two of the video progress reports. Well it turns out after I painted it up that it didn't fit and wasn't the correct door!! Double dang it!
But I scratted around and found the proper one which is chrome and only needed a quick brush down to look half decent again. I mounted it into place and quickly tie-wrapped my Test Button to it but I'm going to extend the wiring on that so that its neater when you open the door.
And that's the progress so far. I'll leave you until the next post.
Catch you later
Porl''
Well, the weekend has passed and I managed to get a little bit of work done on the arcade machine while my fiance was planting trees with her mom in one of the fields. Shirking a little bit of manual labour I slinked off to my arcade machine to continue work.
My main aim for the weekends work was to try and figure out the marquee light and try to get that hooked up and working. I must admit though I hadn't got a clue how the thing hooked up to the power supply as it was just 2 wires and they weren't standard colourings to the wires. Hmm, surely one has to be ground and one live? There's a sticker on what looks like the ignitor? power block for the light that says 240v so I thought 'brilliant! I'll hook it up to a mains plug and see what happens'. Well, what happened was the bulb got really bright then a burning spot appeared at a part of the bulb and it switched off. Doh!! Burnt it out and my confidence with getting that thing working dropped through the floor.
I could try to get another bulb to fit but I might struggle and then it could just burn out like this one did because its not wired correctly, so I decided to head down to my local B&Q diy store and pick up some tree ties for Roz and her mom and picked up a small strip light while I was at it. While I was there I checked over all the lights and checked that the one I got was mains powered so I could just hook it up and I'd be away.
I had a good long piece of mains cabling and scrounged a plug and hooked up the light to check that it fired up and worked okay. And, bingo! It worked! Next step is to get it mounted to the marquee board and check again. Here you can see it mounted to the board before I routed the wiring down the back trunking of the machine and down to the power strip thats sitting in the base.
After I got it all cable tied to place and hidden in the trunking I go it switched on in its new home. :D
Check that glow! haha. Another tick on my list of things to do there. Marquee light, done!
Here's how the machine looks at the minute with the glass and marquee sign all back in place.
During the week I'd received some new Neo Geo MVS games so I thought I'd bring one of the cartridges with me to 'test' out in the cabinet. Metal Slug 2! :D
Its crazy how different the game looks compared to my little LCD TV I've got at home. Standing up close to the CRT monitor with the scan lines etc makes it feel a lot more proper.
I got a nice little stash of games and I'm really itching to complete them all but the one thing I'm making sure I don't do is credit my way through them. I.e. just pressing the credit button continuously to force my way through the games. One thing I've been doing with Metal Slug 2 is giving myself 3 credits and 3 credits only. Trying to recreate only having so much change in my pocket like when I was a kid. Man, is Metal Slug 2 a hard game though!! I can only get to the end of level 3 so far with my 3 credits. Its crazy tough even on level 4 difficulty settings. I'll get there though.
The Games I got (as I got side-tracked there) are : Metal Slug 2 (loose cart), Metal Slug 4 (full kit), King of Fighters 2001 (loose cart), Puzzle Bobble (loose cart) and Tecmo Soccer '96 (loose cart). I'll probably be selling on Tecmo Soccer as Im not that into football games but the others are definate keepers.
So I used the time in the morning at home to source out an old Megadrive / Mega CD base plate from my wardrobe to see if I could modify it into a PCB stand for my Sega Jammadrive 2 :-)
I found the base plate out but quickly found out that its not going to fit the Jammadrive 2 unless I take the rubber feet off the bottom of the casing (not gonna happen as I want it to look stock :P ) or modify the plate. So I got my metal saw out and started hacking away at the base. I got a little way but needed some proper equipment so I took it to the farm and used the saws there.
Here you can see the Jammadrive 2 next to where I was working so I could keep offering up the plate to it to see how it was fitting.
Right, a little disclaimer...I'm not going to show the finished off plate because its VERY embarrassing and looks like a torture device from Vlad the Impaler (and it actually did impale me at one point and cut my hand doh!) but it does fit nicely and work very well. I drilled out some holes and mounted PCB feet that I had spare so that I could then screw that into the internal wooden wall of the arcade machine.
And here is the Jammadrive 2 sitting in place on the wooden wall. The way I positioned it is so the weight of the console pushes downwards onto the mounts of the base plate so it will keep in place and it also has the Jamma edge at a nice easy to access position. I've also mounted it quite high on the board so that I can still fit other arcade games in there past it so I don't have to take it out all the time to put other game boards in.
Im really pleased with how it sits in the cabinet I must admit and really happy that the baseplate worked after all my hacking of it (and my hand).
I thought I could leave this cart in the machine and there are a few games to have a blast on when there aren't any arcade boards plugged in.
Also its inspired me to dig some of my megadrive arcade converstions out of my shelves such as golden axe and I know its not technically an arcade game but its pretty close to the original, Splatterhouse 2.
Oh, I also painted up the old coin door that I mentioned in one or two of the video progress reports. Well it turns out after I painted it up that it didn't fit and wasn't the correct door!! Double dang it!
But I scratted around and found the proper one which is chrome and only needed a quick brush down to look half decent again. I mounted it into place and quickly tie-wrapped my Test Button to it but I'm going to extend the wiring on that so that its neater when you open the door.
And that's the progress so far. I'll leave you until the next post.
Catch you later
Porl''
Thursday, 20 December 2012
JAMMA SEGA MEGADRIVE 2 : PART TWO
Howdy pardnurs,
Well now that the Jamma fingerboard is securely attached to the Megadrive 2's PCB and it fits into the case with its new expansion port we'll move onto the wiring. Through the whole process I will keep dibbing away at finishing up the expansion port as I'm using milliput and it takes over night to cure really. So I add little bits here and there and allow them to cure without the chance of me poking them...cus I'll be asleep :-P
To start with I found a few guides on how to make Sega Megadrives into Jamma-drives and all had a similar starting process:
1) Tap the RGB, sync and ground from either the RGB encoder chip or the additional solder pads on the A/V connector under the PCB.
2) Tap the audio from the solder pad under the A/V connector.
3) Plug the Megadrive into the arcade machine / or Supergun's jamma harness with the normal Megadrive PSU and check that video and audio are working okay.
This allows you to problem solve any issues as you haven't made that many connections so far.
Seem's easy enough right. A few wires and your away. Well, thats kind of right.
I decided to solder directly to the RGB encoder chip as some people said that this may provide a stronger RGB signal. I googled the chip in my V01 megadrive 2 and found the pin-out and started trimming and tinning wires and soldering the sucker up.
Well what do you know?! I get picture!! But, the image seems to move, kind of clicks from one point to another and back again. Like its switching between either PAL / NTSC or aspect ratio. Also the biggest problem, there is horizontal bluring through the colours. Really distracting and causing weird colour clashes. Bugger!
The wiring is so simple where could the problem be?! I assumed that my soldering wasn't neat enough and i'd either bridged two of the suface mount points of the chip so I checked them out and they seemed fine. Hmmm. I unsoldered the wires and then looked up the A/V pinout for the port and wired to the solder pads underneath it. Maybe you can't wire to the chip?
I go upstairs and test and darn it! The same problem! This is frustrating!
I got a few more pinouts and did some google searches and couldn't find anything on the problem. Then it occured to me that its essentially the same as doing an RGB cable so maybe I need to add the 75ohm resistors and the 220uf capacitors?
I made up a little Vero board with the resistors and capacitors and wired it up to check. Same problem only this time its a little darker now as the resistors are lowering some of the signal strength. Stupid horizontal RGB blur!! Its a little harder to see in the Zombies photo but that mottling on the circles is caused by the blur and shouldn't be there.
Thinking that maybe the RGB encoder chip might be at fault I decided to make up an RGB Cable for the Megadrive 2. I'd been planning on doing one anyway and had the parts so I got soldering. Using the great guide from mmmonkey.co.uk.
Another test but with the Megadrive 2 hooked up as normal (no jamma) and the new RGB cable and BING, picture is perfect. Nice and sharp with bright colours. Awesome for the cable as that will be used on my other Megadrive 2 and Neptune but bugger because it shows that something is still up with the Jamma wiring.
Looking over the wiring guide for the RGB cable I noticed that its got Composite Video hooked up via the scart but no Sync. Comparing that with the Supergun wiring guide I noticed that the sync pin on the jamma board is hooked up via the Composite Video pin on the Superguns Scart port. Could it be that?!
I found the composite video solder pad on the A/V port area of the Megadrive 2 and moved my sync wire over to there. A quick test and WOOP! The video is perfect!! No horizontal blurring and everything looking like its using the RGB scart cable!
I know, it seems like such a simple and stupid problem to have with the A/V but when everyone says follow the Encoder pin-out and hook up the RGB Sync and Video ground as is rather than using Composite Video out for sync then your going to run into problems. This took me a week and a half of headscratching and fruitless searching to figure out haha. Yes Im that tentative with hooking wires up incase I blow something.
Now that the Video is sorted I hooked up the Mono Audio out from the A/V port area to the Jamma finger board and hooked the Audio ground up to the Jamma fingerboards ground. Thankfully this worked straight away and is super loud through my arcade speaker, so loud i might have to put a volume switch on haha.
Here you can see my testing setup with Zombies (ate my neighbours) running on the Jamma-drive 2 with the audio hooked up. Thank goodness that stage one is figured out!
The next step is to hook up two switches, one for the 50/60mhz PAL/NTSC mod and the other for the English / Japanese language mod. I followed the guide from mmmonkey.co.uk again as I've used this mod on my other Megadrive 2 and it worked a treat!
My aim for doing this project was to try and keep my wiring as neat as I could. This is a problem though when your trouble shooting and having to hack up wires for testing. Its still fairly neat and easy to follow though.
Here you can see the points I soldered the wires too for the language and PAL/NTSC mods.
Pretty neat wire routing for me I think :-) and with this mod the hot glue is definetly needed as the points your soldering too are very small and you don't get much solder on there and its very easy to pull and break traces if the wires get snagged or pulled.
And here is my wiring up for the A/V parts of this project. I used some ribbon cable from an old DVD player to try and keep them more neat but the problem solving caused me to seperate the wires out doh. Still, its not too un-tidy I don't think.
Here is the view of the top of the Jamma fingerboard with the Red, Blue, Video ground and Mono Audio wired up. Actually looking again it looks pretty neat still. Once I've completed it the wires will be hot glued into place on the PCB and hopefully routed away from the voltage regulators heatsink as I think that might start to melt the wire casings if used for a long time.
And here you can see the underside of the Jamma-drive 2 with the wiring going to the solder points of the A/V port. Still not too messy and once I'm properly happy they will be hot glued into place to make sure they don't come pulled or anything. :-)
The orange wires are the power lines to the underside of the voltage regulator which are supplying the Megadrive 2 with +5v from the Supergun's arcade power supply so I no longer need to hook it up using the Sega power supply. The Jamma-drive 2 is now A/V and PSU cable free! :-D
Next up is hooking up the first joypad so that I can use my arcade sticks via the Supergun rather than a pad out of the front of the Megadrive.
Catch you later
Porl''
Well now that the Jamma fingerboard is securely attached to the Megadrive 2's PCB and it fits into the case with its new expansion port we'll move onto the wiring. Through the whole process I will keep dibbing away at finishing up the expansion port as I'm using milliput and it takes over night to cure really. So I add little bits here and there and allow them to cure without the chance of me poking them...cus I'll be asleep :-P
To start with I found a few guides on how to make Sega Megadrives into Jamma-drives and all had a similar starting process:
1) Tap the RGB, sync and ground from either the RGB encoder chip or the additional solder pads on the A/V connector under the PCB.
2) Tap the audio from the solder pad under the A/V connector.
3) Plug the Megadrive into the arcade machine / or Supergun's jamma harness with the normal Megadrive PSU and check that video and audio are working okay.
This allows you to problem solve any issues as you haven't made that many connections so far.
Seem's easy enough right. A few wires and your away. Well, thats kind of right.
I decided to solder directly to the RGB encoder chip as some people said that this may provide a stronger RGB signal. I googled the chip in my V01 megadrive 2 and found the pin-out and started trimming and tinning wires and soldering the sucker up.
Well what do you know?! I get picture!! But, the image seems to move, kind of clicks from one point to another and back again. Like its switching between either PAL / NTSC or aspect ratio. Also the biggest problem, there is horizontal bluring through the colours. Really distracting and causing weird colour clashes. Bugger!
The wiring is so simple where could the problem be?! I assumed that my soldering wasn't neat enough and i'd either bridged two of the suface mount points of the chip so I checked them out and they seemed fine. Hmmm. I unsoldered the wires and then looked up the A/V pinout for the port and wired to the solder pads underneath it. Maybe you can't wire to the chip?
I go upstairs and test and darn it! The same problem! This is frustrating!
I got a few more pinouts and did some google searches and couldn't find anything on the problem. Then it occured to me that its essentially the same as doing an RGB cable so maybe I need to add the 75ohm resistors and the 220uf capacitors?
I made up a little Vero board with the resistors and capacitors and wired it up to check. Same problem only this time its a little darker now as the resistors are lowering some of the signal strength. Stupid horizontal RGB blur!! Its a little harder to see in the Zombies photo but that mottling on the circles is caused by the blur and shouldn't be there.
Thinking that maybe the RGB encoder chip might be at fault I decided to make up an RGB Cable for the Megadrive 2. I'd been planning on doing one anyway and had the parts so I got soldering. Using the great guide from mmmonkey.co.uk.
Another test but with the Megadrive 2 hooked up as normal (no jamma) and the new RGB cable and BING, picture is perfect. Nice and sharp with bright colours. Awesome for the cable as that will be used on my other Megadrive 2 and Neptune but bugger because it shows that something is still up with the Jamma wiring.
Looking over the wiring guide for the RGB cable I noticed that its got Composite Video hooked up via the scart but no Sync. Comparing that with the Supergun wiring guide I noticed that the sync pin on the jamma board is hooked up via the Composite Video pin on the Superguns Scart port. Could it be that?!
I found the composite video solder pad on the A/V port area of the Megadrive 2 and moved my sync wire over to there. A quick test and WOOP! The video is perfect!! No horizontal blurring and everything looking like its using the RGB scart cable!
I know, it seems like such a simple and stupid problem to have with the A/V but when everyone says follow the Encoder pin-out and hook up the RGB Sync and Video ground as is rather than using Composite Video out for sync then your going to run into problems. This took me a week and a half of headscratching and fruitless searching to figure out haha. Yes Im that tentative with hooking wires up incase I blow something.
Here you can see my testing setup with Zombies (ate my neighbours) running on the Jamma-drive 2 with the audio hooked up. Thank goodness that stage one is figured out!
The next step is to hook up two switches, one for the 50/60mhz PAL/NTSC mod and the other for the English / Japanese language mod. I followed the guide from mmmonkey.co.uk again as I've used this mod on my other Megadrive 2 and it worked a treat!
My aim for doing this project was to try and keep my wiring as neat as I could. This is a problem though when your trouble shooting and having to hack up wires for testing. Its still fairly neat and easy to follow though.
Here you can see the points I soldered the wires too for the language and PAL/NTSC mods.
Pretty neat wire routing for me I think :-) and with this mod the hot glue is definetly needed as the points your soldering too are very small and you don't get much solder on there and its very easy to pull and break traces if the wires get snagged or pulled.
And here is my wiring up for the A/V parts of this project. I used some ribbon cable from an old DVD player to try and keep them more neat but the problem solving caused me to seperate the wires out doh. Still, its not too un-tidy I don't think.
Here is the view of the top of the Jamma fingerboard with the Red, Blue, Video ground and Mono Audio wired up. Actually looking again it looks pretty neat still. Once I've completed it the wires will be hot glued into place on the PCB and hopefully routed away from the voltage regulators heatsink as I think that might start to melt the wire casings if used for a long time.
And here you can see the underside of the Jamma-drive 2 with the wiring going to the solder points of the A/V port. Still not too messy and once I'm properly happy they will be hot glued into place to make sure they don't come pulled or anything. :-)
The orange wires are the power lines to the underside of the voltage regulator which are supplying the Megadrive 2 with +5v from the Supergun's arcade power supply so I no longer need to hook it up using the Sega power supply. The Jamma-drive 2 is now A/V and PSU cable free! :-D
Next up is hooking up the first joypad so that I can use my arcade sticks via the Supergun rather than a pad out of the front of the Megadrive.
Catch you later
Porl''
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
SOME NEW PROJECTS - SEGA, NINTENDO, NEC
Hi all,
While waiting on getting hold of a resonably priced 32x for the Neptune ( Im not after a collectors condition but thats all that seem to be around at the minute...doh) I've got started on a few consoles all at the same time.
I've have one spare Megadrive 2 left thats not been tinkered with. I have one put a-side for the Neptune so that is all safe. This spare that is gathering dust is now going to be modified up to a Jamma-drive! That's right, a megadrive that can be hooked up to an arcade cabinet so that you can play the great arcade conversions on the 'big screen'. Alas I don't own a cabinet, just a Supergun so its a little redundant for me but the making of one seems like a fun little project to me.
I'm planning on making the Jamma-drive 2 a bit more stealth looking than the normal Jamma-drives though. These generally have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out the side of the case or hang out of the CD-rom drive area and look good for putting inside an arcade cab'. But for me I want it to still look good on the shelf and look stock but have hidden uses. mwuhahaha. Also its going to have the 50/60mhz mod, the Language mod and the Overclock done to it.
Im also going to keep it so you can use the normal pads and PSU for playing it as a normal Megadrive on the TV but if you want to chuck it in the cabinet you open the new Jamma edge cover and hook the harness up to it. :D
So I've hacked the case up (as well as a spare case for its expansion cover) and I've started to join the new expansion cover to the left side of case. Thats right, this megadrive is going to have 2 expansion ports!!
I now have the expansion cover and clasp all milliputted into the case so it's getting there. I'll be doing a write up on it once the project is all finished. I have the Jamma fingerboards now so soldering is about to begin this week. Woop!
While I have the milliput out I have taken my old SNES off the shelf and decided to restore it back to its former grey glory. Rather than the nicotene yellow that is now become. I have looked up the retr0brite recipes but with the weather as it is there isn't really enough sunlight for me to get a nice clean to it I don't think and I don't want to have a UV bulb on for 2 days solid.
So i'm going to be mixing a paint to match the original case covers and paint it. While I do that Im fixing a crack along the side from the plastic getting old and also doing the lock-out and 50/60Hz mods.
Going to be ace to play my Japanese version of Turtle in Time!!!!
And the last project I've got is a console I've wanted for the longest time! A NEC PC Engine!!! Oh yes!! I did some scouring of ebay last week and found a Japanese white PC Engine going cheap as it was listed as faulty. So I snapped it up to see if I can repair it and finally have the little console that could.
Im hoping that its fully working and the only problem is that its outputting video in japanese RF so the person testing it couldn't get it to tune in. For a start Im going to be doing the RGB port mod to it so that it runs off scart and will look super nice and sharp. I have Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition on its way so that I can test it all as there isn't a power light or anything on the unit to see if its working.
It looks pretty big in that photo but the base size of it is the same as a CD case. Its tiny!!
I'm really excited about all 3 of my projects! Going to be great to get some of these consoles up and running.
Update again soon
Porl''
While waiting on getting hold of a resonably priced 32x for the Neptune ( Im not after a collectors condition but thats all that seem to be around at the minute...doh) I've got started on a few consoles all at the same time.
I've have one spare Megadrive 2 left thats not been tinkered with. I have one put a-side for the Neptune so that is all safe. This spare that is gathering dust is now going to be modified up to a Jamma-drive! That's right, a megadrive that can be hooked up to an arcade cabinet so that you can play the great arcade conversions on the 'big screen'. Alas I don't own a cabinet, just a Supergun so its a little redundant for me but the making of one seems like a fun little project to me.
I'm planning on making the Jamma-drive 2 a bit more stealth looking than the normal Jamma-drives though. These generally have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out the side of the case or hang out of the CD-rom drive area and look good for putting inside an arcade cab'. But for me I want it to still look good on the shelf and look stock but have hidden uses. mwuhahaha. Also its going to have the 50/60mhz mod, the Language mod and the Overclock done to it.
Im also going to keep it so you can use the normal pads and PSU for playing it as a normal Megadrive on the TV but if you want to chuck it in the cabinet you open the new Jamma edge cover and hook the harness up to it. :D
So I've hacked the case up (as well as a spare case for its expansion cover) and I've started to join the new expansion cover to the left side of case. Thats right, this megadrive is going to have 2 expansion ports!!
I now have the expansion cover and clasp all milliputted into the case so it's getting there. I'll be doing a write up on it once the project is all finished. I have the Jamma fingerboards now so soldering is about to begin this week. Woop!
While I have the milliput out I have taken my old SNES off the shelf and decided to restore it back to its former grey glory. Rather than the nicotene yellow that is now become. I have looked up the retr0brite recipes but with the weather as it is there isn't really enough sunlight for me to get a nice clean to it I don't think and I don't want to have a UV bulb on for 2 days solid.
So i'm going to be mixing a paint to match the original case covers and paint it. While I do that Im fixing a crack along the side from the plastic getting old and also doing the lock-out and 50/60Hz mods.
Going to be ace to play my Japanese version of Turtle in Time!!!!
And the last project I've got is a console I've wanted for the longest time! A NEC PC Engine!!! Oh yes!! I did some scouring of ebay last week and found a Japanese white PC Engine going cheap as it was listed as faulty. So I snapped it up to see if I can repair it and finally have the little console that could.
Im hoping that its fully working and the only problem is that its outputting video in japanese RF so the person testing it couldn't get it to tune in. For a start Im going to be doing the RGB port mod to it so that it runs off scart and will look super nice and sharp. I have Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition on its way so that I can test it all as there isn't a power light or anything on the unit to see if its working.
It looks pretty big in that photo but the base size of it is the same as a CD case. Its tiny!!
I'm really excited about all 3 of my projects! Going to be great to get some of these consoles up and running.
Update again soon
Porl''
Monday, 19 November 2012
FINISHING UP SOME PROJECTS - SEGA
Hi all,
After having a really relaxing weeks holiday in Barmouth, Wales with my girlfriend and our new pup, Hugo. He's only 15 weeks old and was his first trip to the beach. Absolutely loved it!
Well now we're home its time to get finishing up some of my projects that have been lieing around in their 99% completed stages. The first quick finishing projects to do were my Overclocked Megadrive 1 and Megadrive 2. They were awaiting some new SPST switches to be fixed into the casing so they can be all screwed together and popped on my shelf.
I started about the overclocked Sega Megadrive 2. I needed to change the switches I'd put on it to test it all out with my new switches from Rapid Online. I couldn't get hold of any SPST (Single Pole single throw) switches so got hold of 10x Double Pole Double Throw switches as they can be used for a little more in the case of modding.
First things first was extending the language and 50/60mhz mod wires to give them some slack and allow the case to be fully opened. And again I needed to add 2cm into the overclock wires so the switch can be mounted in the case.
a tip : when hot glueing switches into cases make sure you don't get any on your fingertips! I got a small blob on the end of my right index finger and it latched on there and really burned me. Got a nice painful blister right on the end of my finger now haha.
A added some more hot glue to hold the mod wires into place to limit the amount of pull damaged that can happen sometimes if the wires get accidentally tugged.
To mount the 2 colour LED in place you will need to cut down the light block that inside the case. I used a grinding wheel on my rotary tool to get the right shape so that the LED would fit under the clear plastic and the case would close.
I added in the same DPDT switches into the Megadrive 1 and finished that up too.
Next will be either finishing up the latest smoothing on the Neptune case (I'm trying to get hold of a 32x at the minute), starting to make a Jamma Drive from a spare Megadrive or carrying on with my second Supergun.
If I can find the right DIN plug I will make an RGB scart cable to HD the Model 2's video signal :-P
I've also been wanting to change my logo on the website so created a new one and uploaded it. The landscape logo fits the page a lot nicer so I'm happy about that.
Hope to update with some more project work soon.
Porl''
After having a really relaxing weeks holiday in Barmouth, Wales with my girlfriend and our new pup, Hugo. He's only 15 weeks old and was his first trip to the beach. Absolutely loved it!
Well now we're home its time to get finishing up some of my projects that have been lieing around in their 99% completed stages. The first quick finishing projects to do were my Overclocked Megadrive 1 and Megadrive 2. They were awaiting some new SPST switches to be fixed into the casing so they can be all screwed together and popped on my shelf.
I started about the overclocked Sega Megadrive 2. I needed to change the switches I'd put on it to test it all out with my new switches from Rapid Online. I couldn't get hold of any SPST (Single Pole single throw) switches so got hold of 10x Double Pole Double Throw switches as they can be used for a little more in the case of modding.
First things first was extending the language and 50/60mhz mod wires to give them some slack and allow the case to be fully opened. And again I needed to add 2cm into the overclock wires so the switch can be mounted in the case.
a tip : when hot glueing switches into cases make sure you don't get any on your fingertips! I got a small blob on the end of my right index finger and it latched on there and really burned me. Got a nice painful blister right on the end of my finger now haha.
A added some more hot glue to hold the mod wires into place to limit the amount of pull damaged that can happen sometimes if the wires get accidentally tugged.
To mount the 2 colour LED in place you will need to cut down the light block that inside the case. I used a grinding wheel on my rotary tool to get the right shape so that the LED would fit under the clear plastic and the case would close.
I added in the same DPDT switches into the Megadrive 1 and finished that up too.
Next will be either finishing up the latest smoothing on the Neptune case (I'm trying to get hold of a 32x at the minute), starting to make a Jamma Drive from a spare Megadrive or carrying on with my second Supergun.
If I can find the right DIN plug I will make an RGB scart cable to HD the Model 2's video signal :-P
I've also been wanting to change my logo on the website so created a new one and uploaded it. The landscape logo fits the page a lot nicer so I'm happy about that.
Hope to update with some more project work soon.
Porl''
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
SEGA NEPTUNE - CASE CONTINUED...
Howdy pardnurs,
A quick Neptune update for ya'll...
Well I'm back of my holiday to sunny bournemouth and got a bit more inspired to try and finish off my Neptune case. Before we went on hols I'd sprayed up the case as it was in matt black to get an idea of how it will look in Sega Black plastic and when I looked at it earlier I thought "dang! it looks pretty cool!".
So I've got my pen and paper out and carried on trying to figure out how to sort the buttons out as they are relocated further up the case now. Once they are working and clicking away it will be in its final stages I'm sure. :-)
Here are a few photos of the Sega Holy Trinity I took earlier in the garden. I've got some more filling and sanding to do on the case too. That seems to be a bit of a never ending job with this case. The end is hopefully in sight though.
Catch you later
Porl''
Monday, 16 April 2012
QUICK NEPTUNE CASE UPDATE
Howdy Y'all,
I thought I'd post a little update on the Neptune case. I've been doing a little bit of work on it over the weekend. Getting the buttons mounted into the case as they have obviously been relocated further up the body compared to there original positions on the Megadrive 2. I still need to make the little extension parts to make the buttons meet the switches that are on the 'Drives PCB.
I also noticed that the groove around the cartridge slot wasn't quite right. I don't really know why I made it a smoother / curvier shape rather than the more angular one on the original prototype case. I milliputted in the old groove I made and carved a newer, more true groove around the cartridge slot area. I also carved and sanded a bit of a slope into the lower area of the groove. Again to match the prototype more.
I'm a lot happier with the look of the case now. The buttons still need work to make them fill the holes better which I will be sorting out next along with some sanding around the new groove area. I gave the whole case another blast of grey primer to see how its all looking in a more flat overall colour. Looking good I think :)
I'll be updating again soon, hopefully this week with another little project when I get a little components delivery I placed this morning. Woop!
See you soon
Porl''
I thought I'd post a little update on the Neptune case. I've been doing a little bit of work on it over the weekend. Getting the buttons mounted into the case as they have obviously been relocated further up the body compared to there original positions on the Megadrive 2. I still need to make the little extension parts to make the buttons meet the switches that are on the 'Drives PCB.
I also noticed that the groove around the cartridge slot wasn't quite right. I don't really know why I made it a smoother / curvier shape rather than the more angular one on the original prototype case. I milliputted in the old groove I made and carved a newer, more true groove around the cartridge slot area. I also carved and sanded a bit of a slope into the lower area of the groove. Again to match the prototype more.
I'm a lot happier with the look of the case now. The buttons still need work to make them fill the holes better which I will be sorting out next along with some sanding around the new groove area. I gave the whole case another blast of grey primer to see how its all looking in a more flat overall colour. Looking good I think :)
I'll be updating again soon, hopefully this week with another little project when I get a little components delivery I placed this morning. Woop!
See you soon
Porl''
Sunday, 1 April 2012
MY WORKBENCH THIS WEEK
Hi all,
Throughout March I've had to take 9 1/2 days off to use up my statutory holidays and I've been hoping to get a load of work done on my geeky Megadrive projects. Well with the weather being so hot and sunny nearly everyday I've been off work I did a bit more work outside. Helping in the garden, sorting out the patio we're going to be making at home and helping a mate out digging and laying a new path at his house I didn't get as much done as I was hoping.
What you can see on my work area is the Neptune case in the centre with yet more filler on it awaiting a coating of grey primer. A "lost cause" Megadrive 2 awaiting some resurrection on the right. On the left is the starts of a Jamma SuperGun. This arrangement shows the comparison of the new Neptune case next to the original MD2 case which is where it started from. :-)
Last sunday I picked up 2 Megadrive's and 15 games. The night before I got a message from the guy saying that one of the 'drives had stopped working so I got the lot at a more reduced price. I thought I'd give it a go at fixing the 1 megadrive as a learning exercise.
I opened up the case and low and behold its a VA0 board which is the first edition of the Megadrive 2. The first thing I noticed after that was man it was grotty in there! and also that the LED looked like it had exploded! That appeared to be the main contributing factor that the thing wouldn't turn on. I also noticed that the solder around the power socket had come away and the main pin was partially exposed. I changed out the LED and resoldered the power socket and the thing fired up!! HOT DOG!
I went up to our hobby room and plugged it in and got no picture. A little wiggle of the A/V cable and the TMSS screen (trademark security screen) buzzed into view then went again. It also had a damaged A/V port. This thing was really used to death it seems and not very well looked after. I just so happened to have a spare port from my 32x so I desoldered the damaged port and replaced it. Went back upstairs and a stable TMSS screen but then Sonic 2 wouldn't boot. :-( Poo sticks!
I then set about cleaning the cartridge slot as this is a well known problem with them not booting up. There was a heck of a lot of fluff coming out of there. Gave it a sand and then a clean with some cleaning alcohol. Still no boot! Dang it! The next step was me tickling around the underside of the board checking continuaity of all the capacitors and found 2 that didn't show a circuit on my multi-meter. I desoldered the 2 offending cap's and resoldered them to the board. The multimeter showed a circuit for both of them. Woop! This could be it!
A quick check and still no boot but still showing the TMSS screen! I was ready to give up on the thing and call it quits.
This morning I remembered that I had a spare Megadrive 2 cartridge edge connector from the Neptune and set about desoldering the old slot from the "lost cause" and replacing it with the VA2 one. It being a newer version slot would have a better chance of working as It worked on the Neptune Megadrive before it was removed. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing of the desoldering and replacement it still didn't boot. Game Over!
I can pretty much conclude now that the thing must have been surged somehow which blew the LED and probably blew one of the more delicate components of the board. Oh well, my "restoration" of the "lost cause" didn't work. But, Man! I gave it a blumin good go. Check it out with its VA2 cartridge slot, 32x A/V port and Pimped yellow LED. I got it back from the dead so much that it would turn on and show TMSS but couldn't get it that little extra step to boot.
I gave it a real good college try but it wasn't to be. I was kinda hoping that I would get it up and running and have a machine to experiment with. Oh well. I still have the other MD2 as my next Neptune candidate though. :-)
As this is a long post I'll post up a progress report on my Neptune case which is in its final stages I think. :-)
Porl''
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
SEGA MEGADRIVE 1 OVERCLOCKED!
Hi Everyone,
I've been a little quiet over the last week with posts. Basically I've not had that much to post about until today really. I've been working away on the Neptune case, adding in more milliput where it still needed smoothing as well as apply layer after layer of primer. I've been working on the buttons which are getting their shapes now as well as the new centre clear light. Its starting to come to shape and again looks pretty kickass in white!
So my new post is about my spare Megadrive 1 and me overclocking the heck out of it :-P
I've been watching a few tutorials on Youtube and came across DamoMonsters video's. Very cool and easy to follow. Check him out : http://www.damomonster.com
I happened to have all the components and a bit of salvaged Vero board that was just big enough to make the overclock circuit so last night I decided to give it a go.
It was really fun and interesting to do as I've not done anything on Vero board or used a crystal. I got it all wired up roughly last night with a large Red/Green LED. This morning I fired the Megadrive up and checked that it loaded up with Sonic both overclocked as well as stock speed.
The trick with the mod I did is that its switchable. If you overclock the Megadrive from its standard speed the Mega CD and 32x won't work, so if you do the overclock mod without a switch you are stuck with the overclocked Megadrive and thats all you can do with it. With the switch you can have the cake AND eat it! Woop!
This morning after checking the Megadrive worked both standard and overclocked I drove over to the nearest Maplins and bought some more Vero board and a 3mm Red/Green LED that will fit in the Megadrive case.
This afternoon I wired up the new LED and got it mounted to the case. I checked the improvement of the overclock on 2 player Sonic 2. When you get hit with more than 40 coins with the standard speed you get some serious slow-down, when switched to 10MHz you get no slow-down what so ever. Pretty nifty!
When you have the 'Drive running in standard clock speed the power LED is Red which is the standard colour for the LED. When its switched over to 10MHz overclock the LED glow's Green.
Im really pleased with the mod as its the first 'Finished' Mod i've done as the Neptune technically isn't finished as it doesn't work yet :-P
So yeah, check the pics out below and catch you soon.
Porl''
I've been a little quiet over the last week with posts. Basically I've not had that much to post about until today really. I've been working away on the Neptune case, adding in more milliput where it still needed smoothing as well as apply layer after layer of primer. I've been working on the buttons which are getting their shapes now as well as the new centre clear light. Its starting to come to shape and again looks pretty kickass in white!
So my new post is about my spare Megadrive 1 and me overclocking the heck out of it :-P
I've been watching a few tutorials on Youtube and came across DamoMonsters video's. Very cool and easy to follow. Check him out : http://www.damomonster.com
I happened to have all the components and a bit of salvaged Vero board that was just big enough to make the overclock circuit so last night I decided to give it a go.
It was really fun and interesting to do as I've not done anything on Vero board or used a crystal. I got it all wired up roughly last night with a large Red/Green LED. This morning I fired the Megadrive up and checked that it loaded up with Sonic both overclocked as well as stock speed.
The trick with the mod I did is that its switchable. If you overclock the Megadrive from its standard speed the Mega CD and 32x won't work, so if you do the overclock mod without a switch you are stuck with the overclocked Megadrive and thats all you can do with it. With the switch you can have the cake AND eat it! Woop!
This morning after checking the Megadrive worked both standard and overclocked I drove over to the nearest Maplins and bought some more Vero board and a 3mm Red/Green LED that will fit in the Megadrive case.
This afternoon I wired up the new LED and got it mounted to the case. I checked the improvement of the overclock on 2 player Sonic 2. When you get hit with more than 40 coins with the standard speed you get some serious slow-down, when switched to 10MHz you get no slow-down what so ever. Pretty nifty!
When you have the 'Drive running in standard clock speed the power LED is Red which is the standard colour for the LED. When its switched over to 10MHz overclock the LED glow's Green.
Im really pleased with the mod as its the first 'Finished' Mod i've done as the Neptune technically isn't finished as it doesn't work yet :-P
So yeah, check the pics out below and catch you soon.
Porl''
 |
| The start of the Overclock circuit |
 |
| The new 10MHz crystal mounted to the Vera Board |
 |
| The new 'Beast' taped up |
 |
| The new 'Power Pack' mounted on top of the CPU |
 |
| The LED showing overclocked speed (10MHz) |
 |
| The Mod all wired into the Megadrive |
 |
| LED showing standard clock speed (7MHz) |
Sunday, 11 March 2012
SUNDAY SCAVENGING AND SANDING
Hi everyone,
Today has been our first free sunday in a long time and we put it to good use. A pretty full day involving putting our guinea pigs out in a new outdoor run to munch on some grass and doing the first load of gardening in our new house. It was great fun being out in the sun.
I've recently been given the chance to rummage around an old barn in a farm I know and have some stuff and low and behold there is an old arcade machine in the back against the wall. The guy said I could have what ever I wanted from in there because it would all be going to the bin. So where did I ferret first?! The arcade machine!
Turning the machine round I saw that the back board was off it and I could see into it. The description of an arcade machine being a wooden box with wires in really does it justice! They are a bit of a surprise thats for sure from what I imagined. There is the Arcade game PCB screwed to the back of a centre piece of wood with the harness leading off it that splits and goes to the power, monitor, speakers, control panel, marquee lighting and power switch. It really is just a bunch of wires!
Looking at the marquee at the top of the arcade cab' it says "World Cup '90" which was a Jamma game from Taito. Jamma is a good sign cus it means that it will run on a SuperGun. When I checked the board it has Toaplan Co Ltd. written on it which doesn't match the marquee. A mystery! I like it!
I got the machine fired up with a little hooking of wires up (and a mystery pcb that I found in the cash tray area) I got the game to fire up with sound but the monitor seems to be dead. And from what I've read on the 'net about them really needing to be discharged before they discharge all their stored voltage through you and getting really hurt. I'm not messing with that!
I did a quick google search on my phone and it said that Toaplan made side-scrolling shooting games. WOOP! I really got my hopes up that it might be Zero Wing which is a game I loved on the Megadrive.
I unscrewed the board and got it home and compared some photos of boards on the internet and it looks like its a game called Teki Paki. A tetris style puzzle game. A bit of a shame cus it's not Zero Wing but still pretty cool. And it was neat sticking my head around an actual arcade cabinet.
I was really tempted to take the harness out and cutting all the connections so I could turn it into a SuperGun but I don't think its worth the hassle, especially as the board has a Jamma converter on it to attach it to the game board.
When we got home I started sanding the Neptune case to see how smooth I could get it. It ended up looking a lot like a charcoal rubbing!! When I showed my girlfriend she said it didn't look like I'd made the case and shape, more like I was sanding a proper one down to paint it. I was well chuffed with that cus Its hard to see how a project is going sometimes because your too close to it.
Here is the 'charcoal rubbing' Neptune case on my work area with the Teki Paki (? ) arcade board next to it.
I'm going to see if I can finish soldering up the A/V out wires on the Neptune and fix my fixed trace on the bottom of the Megadrive 2 board to see if it will actually work. I'm not holding much hope but I'm going to be finishing it off and bolting it down so that I know that it will all fit in properly into my case. This is quite important to me incase I wanted to make some casts of it and offer it to other Neptune owners.
It's been a great day with adventuring around a barn of goodies, doing some gardening work, Neptune case work and getting some telescope time in. Looking at Venus, Jupiter and Mars along with the Beehive Cluster and The Orion Nebula and Running man Nebula.
Hope your's was a good one too!
Porl''
Saturday, 10 March 2012
NEPTUNE CASE PROGRESS
Hi Everyone,
I've been a little slow on updating about the Neptune I know. I've been trying to get some more work done on the case but its mainly just been along the lines of : tickling it with sandpaper, noticing that more needs filling, waiting for that to dry over night then sanding again. But in little bits when I wander past the case on the side in the kitchen.
Well today I got my dremel set up and got some cutting done to the lower half of the case ready to start adding milliput to it and get it into a more curved shape. I also did some of the top cases ' holes ' with the small etching drill bit which need a bit of smoooothing out. We nipped out into the local town and I plopped down some cash for a can of Matt Black paint for when the case will be finished. When we got home I went outside and sprayed a couple of layers of white primer all over the case which showed up a lot more work to be done smoothing and sanding and shaping. Its a lot harder to see areas for correction when it is a mixed mess of white and green milliput and black original plastic.
After I sprayed it white and admired it for a while. It really does look nice in white!! If I make a few casts of the case one will definetly be finished in white!
Yes, so after it went white I couldn't resist giving it some coats of black paint to get an idea of how it will look in the end. It looks pretty tasty in black and sitting next to a Megadrive 2 it looks really different and very cool! You have to look past the work thats still needed and pop some imagination on there but I'm pleased with it so far.
Oh and the second shot of it in black on the picture is the Neptune case sitting on the MegaCD 2. This is one of the main reasons I decided to modify a Megadrive 2 case, so It would still be compatible with the MegaCD 2 as the Neptune mod still works with the CD's. :)
So there you go, the Neptune case is still rumbling along. I'll be continuing to sand the sucker to oblivion and try to get it as good as I can, I'll also carry on working on the buttons and try to get them in a presentable state.
Have a good weekend y'all
Porl''
P.S. Both of the paintings I posted about below have now sold. Very happy about that! :D
I'll be putting up some more paintings to my store in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
I've been a little slow on updating about the Neptune I know. I've been trying to get some more work done on the case but its mainly just been along the lines of : tickling it with sandpaper, noticing that more needs filling, waiting for that to dry over night then sanding again. But in little bits when I wander past the case on the side in the kitchen.
Well today I got my dremel set up and got some cutting done to the lower half of the case ready to start adding milliput to it and get it into a more curved shape. I also did some of the top cases ' holes ' with the small etching drill bit which need a bit of smoooothing out. We nipped out into the local town and I plopped down some cash for a can of Matt Black paint for when the case will be finished. When we got home I went outside and sprayed a couple of layers of white primer all over the case which showed up a lot more work to be done smoothing and sanding and shaping. Its a lot harder to see areas for correction when it is a mixed mess of white and green milliput and black original plastic.
After I sprayed it white and admired it for a while. It really does look nice in white!! If I make a few casts of the case one will definetly be finished in white!
Yes, so after it went white I couldn't resist giving it some coats of black paint to get an idea of how it will look in the end. It looks pretty tasty in black and sitting next to a Megadrive 2 it looks really different and very cool! You have to look past the work thats still needed and pop some imagination on there but I'm pleased with it so far.
Oh and the second shot of it in black on the picture is the Neptune case sitting on the MegaCD 2. This is one of the main reasons I decided to modify a Megadrive 2 case, so It would still be compatible with the MegaCD 2 as the Neptune mod still works with the CD's. :)
So there you go, the Neptune case is still rumbling along. I'll be continuing to sand the sucker to oblivion and try to get it as good as I can, I'll also carry on working on the buttons and try to get them in a presentable state.
Have a good weekend y'all
Porl''
P.S. Both of the paintings I posted about below have now sold. Very happy about that! :D
I'll be putting up some more paintings to my store in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
NEPTUNE DESOLDERED -AGAIN!
As I think I mentioned in my last post, I was super pumped to get de-soldering and re-wiring the Neptune with the Gigibit Ethernet wiring.
During last week I had a bit of a cold and managed to trap a nerve in my back and bottom of my neck by sneezing. Sneezing! It always happens doing something stupid hey! haha. Well come friday night my neck felt like it was pretty much back to normal and all was super good. On track for the Saturday Soldering.
Come 4am Saturday morning and I wake up in excruciating pain!! Somehow I must have moved or rolled in my sleep and completely tweaked out my back/neck. Its the region pretty much in-between my shoulder blades. I couldn't hardly get out of bed, move my head at all or pretty much move without it sending shooting pains all over the place. Not the nicest thing to happen at all to say the least.
So not being able to move my head left, right, up or down pretty much put play to me hunching over a soldering iron working on the Neptune cus it would have completely killed me off.
So I ended up spending the weekend pretty much chilling out with my girlfriend watching films and Big Bang Theory. One really cool thing about being forced to just chill out was my girlfriend who doesn't like consoles and games asked me if I wanted to carry on our Co-Op mission on Castle Crashers. Hell Yeah!!! :-D We haven't played it for about a year I think.
We started at 8:30pm and didn't turn it off till 2am saturday night. It was great fun!
Roll on Sunday and I'm still walking around like Robo-cop, stiff as a board! No soldering for me but I managed to get a little bit of filling done on the case and then got the first couple of layers of primer on so I can start sanding and filling properly.
Last night my neck eased off quite a lot so I hit my Neptune case with a load of large grit sand paper to start smoothing the sucker out. And also got to de-soldering the crappy IDE wires from the 32x - Megadrive.
I learned something that soldering Noobies like me really should know about. Always, ALWAYS look at where your soldering iron is and never reach for it without looking!! That's an important lesson to learn ;-) otherwise you will do what I did and just reach and attempt to pick it up by the heating element right after the handle!! Hot soldering irons buuuurnn!!! doh! You will get a tingly index finger fo-sho-yo!
Anyway. I've got the 32x to Megadrive all de-soldered but have to repair the megadrive as i managed to pull a trace on it like a noob! If I can get this thing working its going to be a real Frankenstein!! haha.
The photo above and below show my Neptune case in a very rough form with the de-soldered 32X and the new ethernet wires cut to length. It's a bit hard to see the case shape in the photo cus its a mix of white primer and white and green Milliput. But I'm well pleased with how the shape is coming. :-) Doesn't look much like the original Megadrive 2 case anymore.
I'm sure when I post up more photos of the progress of my replica case people will wonder why I haven't tried to make a case from scratch. I would ideally make a scratch built case as from what I can see the Neptune is slightly wider than the Megadrive 2, well it looks it in some photos anyway. BUT I didn't want to have to try and line up all the pegs and holes for the mounting of the Megadrive PCB to the case. I know I would have a nightmare trying to get them all lined up.
Also I get to use all the cool embossed and stamped text that's on the Megadrive case such as "Controller 1" "Controller 2" and "Catridge Input" which will make it look more "legit" to me. Also the rear of the console will look better as the A/V and power holes are already there too. I wanted the Neptune to still be compatible with the Sega CD2 as well, and the prototype photos I've seen have a CD expansion port on the side, and If I scratch built the case I'm sure I wouldn't be able to get it all to line up properly.
Enough of this rambling post now haha.
I will be hopefully preparing all the ethernet wires next and fixing the damaged trace on the Megadrive.
Catch you later
Porl''
During last week I had a bit of a cold and managed to trap a nerve in my back and bottom of my neck by sneezing. Sneezing! It always happens doing something stupid hey! haha. Well come friday night my neck felt like it was pretty much back to normal and all was super good. On track for the Saturday Soldering.
Come 4am Saturday morning and I wake up in excruciating pain!! Somehow I must have moved or rolled in my sleep and completely tweaked out my back/neck. Its the region pretty much in-between my shoulder blades. I couldn't hardly get out of bed, move my head at all or pretty much move without it sending shooting pains all over the place. Not the nicest thing to happen at all to say the least.
So not being able to move my head left, right, up or down pretty much put play to me hunching over a soldering iron working on the Neptune cus it would have completely killed me off.
So I ended up spending the weekend pretty much chilling out with my girlfriend watching films and Big Bang Theory. One really cool thing about being forced to just chill out was my girlfriend who doesn't like consoles and games asked me if I wanted to carry on our Co-Op mission on Castle Crashers. Hell Yeah!!! :-D We haven't played it for about a year I think.
We started at 8:30pm and didn't turn it off till 2am saturday night. It was great fun!
Roll on Sunday and I'm still walking around like Robo-cop, stiff as a board! No soldering for me but I managed to get a little bit of filling done on the case and then got the first couple of layers of primer on so I can start sanding and filling properly.
Last night my neck eased off quite a lot so I hit my Neptune case with a load of large grit sand paper to start smoothing the sucker out. And also got to de-soldering the crappy IDE wires from the 32x - Megadrive.I learned something that soldering Noobies like me really should know about. Always, ALWAYS look at where your soldering iron is and never reach for it without looking!! That's an important lesson to learn ;-) otherwise you will do what I did and just reach and attempt to pick it up by the heating element right after the handle!! Hot soldering irons buuuurnn!!! doh! You will get a tingly index finger fo-sho-yo!
Anyway. I've got the 32x to Megadrive all de-soldered but have to repair the megadrive as i managed to pull a trace on it like a noob! If I can get this thing working its going to be a real Frankenstein!! haha.
The photo above and below show my Neptune case in a very rough form with the de-soldered 32X and the new ethernet wires cut to length. It's a bit hard to see the case shape in the photo cus its a mix of white primer and white and green Milliput. But I'm well pleased with how the shape is coming. :-) Doesn't look much like the original Megadrive 2 case anymore.
I'm sure when I post up more photos of the progress of my replica case people will wonder why I haven't tried to make a case from scratch. I would ideally make a scratch built case as from what I can see the Neptune is slightly wider than the Megadrive 2, well it looks it in some photos anyway. BUT I didn't want to have to try and line up all the pegs and holes for the mounting of the Megadrive PCB to the case. I know I would have a nightmare trying to get them all lined up.
Also I get to use all the cool embossed and stamped text that's on the Megadrive case such as "Controller 1" "Controller 2" and "Catridge Input" which will make it look more "legit" to me. Also the rear of the console will look better as the A/V and power holes are already there too. I wanted the Neptune to still be compatible with the Sega CD2 as well, and the prototype photos I've seen have a CD expansion port on the side, and If I scratch built the case I'm sure I wouldn't be able to get it all to line up properly.
Enough of this rambling post now haha.
I will be hopefully preparing all the ethernet wires next and fixing the damaged trace on the Megadrive.
Catch you later
Porl''
Thursday, 16 February 2012
THERE MAY BE HOPE
Last night I was doing my daily google search on Sega Neptune discussions and came across a really interesting thread on digitalpress which spoke about the Neptune mod I've been attempting.
The information in the thread caught my interest for 4 reasons :
• 1 : It had the guy who originally successfully made a Neptune and wrote the guide I've been following posting info in there. So the information had weight to it.
• 2 : A person in the thread was attempting the mod and on completetion got very very similar results to me. No games booting (megadrive or 32x) but the TV picking up a signal from the Neptune but only showing a black screen.
• 3 : The above person, the Longhorn Enginneer ( • 1) and another knowledgeable guy mentioned that standard HDD IDE ribbon cable is too thin to carry the 32x / Megadrive signals across them which could be resulting in the lack of boot and the black screen
and
• 4 : The guy who on completion of his Neptune got my problems made a 2nd Neptune using Ethernet wiring instead of IDE and got it to work perfectly.
Admittedly he used a different Megadrive 2 and 32x when making the Ethernet wiring version which cancels out the fact his 32x could be faulty. But it shows that the wiring used is better for the 32x to Megadrive 2 connection.
I've now gotten hold of some nice Gigabit speed ethernet cable and stripped the inner 8 wires out and I'm going to be de-soldering all 64 wires on my Neptune and re-soldering with the new thicker gauge wires.
I'm keeping very level headed about it that this still might not fix the Neptune but I'm excited to try it out.
I've also figured out why the power wiring has a joint soldered to a seemingly blank area of the Megadrive's main board. If anyone else is attempting to follow the walk-through and wondered why the power wiring is placed in such a way, as there is no explination. Its to move the wiring off to the side of the actual power supply input point. Otherwise the wires tend to get in the way of the port and you cant plug the power adapter in. Rather than doing the solder joint I will just hot glue gun the wire I think as this will be a bit easier to do than soldering to the board and stronger possibly.
Anyway, enough of my train of consciousness haha.
I'm going to start de-soldering this weekend and re-connection. Also I've been adding more milliput to my replica Neptune case. Its still a long way from completion but the shape is definetly there now :D
More updates soon
Porl''
The information in the thread caught my interest for 4 reasons :
• 1 : It had the guy who originally successfully made a Neptune and wrote the guide I've been following posting info in there. So the information had weight to it.
• 2 : A person in the thread was attempting the mod and on completetion got very very similar results to me. No games booting (megadrive or 32x) but the TV picking up a signal from the Neptune but only showing a black screen.
• 3 : The above person, the Longhorn Enginneer ( • 1) and another knowledgeable guy mentioned that standard HDD IDE ribbon cable is too thin to carry the 32x / Megadrive signals across them which could be resulting in the lack of boot and the black screen
and
• 4 : The guy who on completion of his Neptune got my problems made a 2nd Neptune using Ethernet wiring instead of IDE and got it to work perfectly.
Admittedly he used a different Megadrive 2 and 32x when making the Ethernet wiring version which cancels out the fact his 32x could be faulty. But it shows that the wiring used is better for the 32x to Megadrive 2 connection.
I've now gotten hold of some nice Gigabit speed ethernet cable and stripped the inner 8 wires out and I'm going to be de-soldering all 64 wires on my Neptune and re-soldering with the new thicker gauge wires.
I'm keeping very level headed about it that this still might not fix the Neptune but I'm excited to try it out.
I've also figured out why the power wiring has a joint soldered to a seemingly blank area of the Megadrive's main board. If anyone else is attempting to follow the walk-through and wondered why the power wiring is placed in such a way, as there is no explination. Its to move the wiring off to the side of the actual power supply input point. Otherwise the wires tend to get in the way of the port and you cant plug the power adapter in. Rather than doing the solder joint I will just hot glue gun the wire I think as this will be a bit easier to do than soldering to the board and stronger possibly.
Anyway, enough of my train of consciousness haha.
I'm going to start de-soldering this weekend and re-connection. Also I've been adding more milliput to my replica Neptune case. Its still a long way from completion but the shape is definetly there now :D
More updates soon
Porl''
Sunday, 12 February 2012
SEGA NEPTUNE COMPLETED
But unfortunetly It doesn't work :-(
I completed the rest of the tutorial on Saturday. Soldering in all 64 wires from the 32x cartridge points to the de-soldered cartridge area of the Megadrive 2. Its a lot more fiddly than I was expecting it to be! Using the IDE cables made it easier to keep track of which wires went where etc but it still put you in awkward positions to solder. I'm very glad I didn't go the individual wires route, that's for sure!
With all the wires soldered to their new locations it looks pretty neat and tidy and it all fits into the Megadrive 2's lower case without the wires pulling away from their joints. That's a big improvement from the original wiring attempts haha.
When you plug the power and A/V cables in and switch the sucker on though, nothing. Its pumping out a signal of sorts. The screen flicks and goes black and there is a low buzz but that seems to be all. Actually that's not completely true, there is a funny barcode looking block on the bottom of the screen with an empty area next to it. Weird.
My earlier attempts at soldering the Megadrive 2 and 32x link wires in for initial testings pulled a trace away from the 32x which I've fixed with a bridging wire so it shouldn't be that I don't think. It's only on the linking area of the PCB so shouldn't be a critical point from my research on the internet.
I have the feeling that the 32x didn't really work when I got it as it came without cables and untested from ebay. I've done the usual 'repair' technique of removing and cleaning the white ribbon cables and re-seating them but, nadda!
So the next step has me back on the hunt for a 32x to get the Neptune to live! I'm not giving up on the project that's for sure! :-D
I'm going to post up on some forums my problems I'm having with the 32x in a hope that some guru's who've successfully completed Neptune's in the past will know how to fix it or wether the 32x is dead after all.
We will see, the Neptune will live!
Check below for some of my progress photos so far. Click the thumbnail images to see the fullsize versions.
Porl''
I completed the rest of the tutorial on Saturday. Soldering in all 64 wires from the 32x cartridge points to the de-soldered cartridge area of the Megadrive 2. Its a lot more fiddly than I was expecting it to be! Using the IDE cables made it easier to keep track of which wires went where etc but it still put you in awkward positions to solder. I'm very glad I didn't go the individual wires route, that's for sure!
With all the wires soldered to their new locations it looks pretty neat and tidy and it all fits into the Megadrive 2's lower case without the wires pulling away from their joints. That's a big improvement from the original wiring attempts haha.
When you plug the power and A/V cables in and switch the sucker on though, nothing. Its pumping out a signal of sorts. The screen flicks and goes black and there is a low buzz but that seems to be all. Actually that's not completely true, there is a funny barcode looking block on the bottom of the screen with an empty area next to it. Weird.
My earlier attempts at soldering the Megadrive 2 and 32x link wires in for initial testings pulled a trace away from the 32x which I've fixed with a bridging wire so it shouldn't be that I don't think. It's only on the linking area of the PCB so shouldn't be a critical point from my research on the internet.
I have the feeling that the 32x didn't really work when I got it as it came without cables and untested from ebay. I've done the usual 'repair' technique of removing and cleaning the white ribbon cables and re-seating them but, nadda!
So the next step has me back on the hunt for a 32x to get the Neptune to live! I'm not giving up on the project that's for sure! :-D
I'm going to post up on some forums my problems I'm having with the 32x in a hope that some guru's who've successfully completed Neptune's in the past will know how to fix it or wether the 32x is dead after all.
We will see, the Neptune will live!
Check below for some of my progress photos so far. Click the thumbnail images to see the fullsize versions.
Porl''
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