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 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genisis 2. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Thursday, 23 October 2014
SLOWLY GETTING BACK INTO PROJECT STUFF
Hi Everyone,
I'm back!!! :D Well, I'm not in full on geek project mode again but it's getting there. Our wedding and Honeymoon have now passed which has gone far too quickly!! But the day was amazing and went exactly how we wanted which is all you can ask for. Perfect! Then the day after our wedding we jetted off to Singapore for 4 days then hopped onto another plane and went to Bali for 6 days. The honeymoon was so awesome and such a change of pace from here at home. It was 4 days of non-stop sight-seeing and walking about and then 6 days of non-stop chilling out and relaxing and swimming. It was absolutely brilliant!
Then the next weekend we were off to Gloucester for a Lindy Hop weekend, 3 nights of social dances and 2 full days of workshops/lessons. We love this weekend which happens every year and it was the icing on the cake of our wedding few weeks. :D
Now we're home and getting back to normal I've started finding the time to get some more work done on my Neptune. Not so much the case but the wiring for the modular idea I've had where I won't potentially be ruining an expensive 32x to make a Neptune.
So I've been doodling what I need to do.
As you can see from the picture on the right I'm going to do the Fold Under way of mounting the 32x because of the new placement of the power and reset buttons. They are moved up the board closer to the cart slot, see the photo later on, so the normal stretched out 32x layout wont work as the cartridge connecter area goes over the buttons and they wont work.
The modular idea is to desolder the megadrive's cartridge slot and rather than binning it like you would normally I'm going to solder the short wires to this so that its a repostitioned cart slot. This will mean that I wont have to solder straight to the 32x. I want to not have to do too much modding to the 32x if I can help it and if I can I don't want to put solder all over the cart pins on the 32x. Its going to be a bit tighter in there because of the cart slot but thats the plan anyway.
For doing wiring like this I highly recommend the helpful hand crocodile grip stands. They are a god send for holding parts in place while you solder them. It’s such a pain to do this sort of stuff without them.
After some trimming and testing and trimming I got the case to close. :-D
So the next steps, which I haven’t actually done yet. Make some small tin-foil shields to sit between the wires to try and limit any cross talk between the wires. Make 2 sets of A/V cables which will plug into the internally mounted 32x. And finally make a wire to hook up the 32x with power.
I'm back!!! :D Well, I'm not in full on geek project mode again but it's getting there. Our wedding and Honeymoon have now passed which has gone far too quickly!! But the day was amazing and went exactly how we wanted which is all you can ask for. Perfect! Then the day after our wedding we jetted off to Singapore for 4 days then hopped onto another plane and went to Bali for 6 days. The honeymoon was so awesome and such a change of pace from here at home. It was 4 days of non-stop sight-seeing and walking about and then 6 days of non-stop chilling out and relaxing and swimming. It was absolutely brilliant!
Then the next weekend we were off to Gloucester for a Lindy Hop weekend, 3 nights of social dances and 2 full days of workshops/lessons. We love this weekend which happens every year and it was the icing on the cake of our wedding few weeks. :D
Now we're home and getting back to normal I've started finding the time to get some more work done on my Neptune. Not so much the case but the wiring for the modular idea I've had where I won't potentially be ruining an expensive 32x to make a Neptune.
So I've been doodling what I need to do.
The modular idea is to desolder the megadrive's cartridge slot and rather than binning it like you would normally I'm going to solder the short wires to this so that its a repostitioned cart slot. This will mean that I wont have to solder straight to the 32x. I want to not have to do too much modding to the 32x if I can help it and if I can I don't want to put solder all over the cart pins on the 32x. Its going to be a bit tighter in there because of the cart slot but thats the plan anyway.
And once I’ve gotten the cartridge slot moved, which I’m not looking forward to as its a lot of wires to solder and they are the lovely little wires that love to pull away from solder or to snap if you move them even remotely quickly, I’ll then have to get onto making some wires that will hook the 32x up internally. Normally with the Neptune mod you either desolder the A/V in and out ports on the back as well as the PSU port and solder wires from them to the required places on the Megadrive’s motherboard. Obviously with this modular route I don’t want to be taking things off the 32x or soldering to it if possible, I want this expensive peripheral to still be nice, and also problem solvable. I think I have 2 Megadrive 2 A/V plugs in my tool box at home so my plan is to create 2 wires with A/V plugs on the ends that will plug into the 32x. One will go into the A/V in port which will be soldered to the underside of the Megadrive 2’s A/V out area. The other will be soldered to the original Megadrive 2’s A/V port which will be mounted upside down as of The Longhorn Engineer’s original design. Then, in theory the wiring will work exactly the same as the normal way of doing the mod but in a plug and play way. The PSU connection will be done the same way the Mega-CD tail I made for my Jammadrive 2. I will need to sacrifice a Megadrive PSU to get the port but it should also work fine having a plug inside the case.
—— FAST FORWARD Doodle-doodle-doodle-doodle ——
I’ve been writing this post over the span of 2 weeks when I’ve got snippets of time and I’ve actually done some of the modifications to the Neptune wiring already. So I thought I would show its progress so far. Bare in mind I don’t have a working 32x yet, I only have my original FUBAR’d one which I’m using for checking on spacings inside the case etc.
This weekend I started the long task of desoldering the cartridge port and wiring up all the extension wires to it. I’ve recently been getting into The Game Chasers web show on youtube and this kept me company through the slightly tedious task of stepping and repeating the wiring. Here are a few photos of the process of extending the cartridge slot so that it will sit in the position I’ve been thinking will work best. In these photos you can also see the power on / off and reset buttons that I’ve moved so that they will work with the new positioning of the buttons on the Neptune case. You can also see on the underside of the board where I’ve moved a load of capacitors to the make room for the extended cart slots wires to sit. ( Note - you can see the last cart solder point on the right has come away, this was a gutting moment I must admit, but thankfully I traced where it went off to and managed to patch in the wire when re-wiring the cart slot and it all works)
For doing wiring like this I highly recommend the helpful hand crocodile grip stands. They are a god send for holding parts in place while you solder them. It’s such a pain to do this sort of stuff without them.
And here you can see the cartridge slot in place with a copy of Sonic 2 in there from when I successfully tested the slot out. Phew that was such a relief when I switched it on and it worked. Its a little buzzy in the audio department but its not too bad and it could possibly be from interference / cross talk from the unshielded wires. I tried a couple of games but I had it twice not load a game for me and when I inspected the wires one or two had come away from the cart slot. I desoldered these little tinkers and tried a pile of my megadrive games out. Games from different producers and I even got the furthest I’ve ever gotten on Shadow Dancer. So while it was still playing I delicately ran some hot glue over the top layer or connections on the cartridge slot to help give the wiring a little bit more grip and hopefully stop any breaks.
The next step was to get my 32x slotted into place and see how it lines up with the cartridge slot on the top of the case. A little disappointingly I couldn’t get the case to close. It seemed to be held apart from the lower part of the case by nearly 5mm. So off I trotted outside with my dremel and a grinding bit and tried to shave out some of the inner plastic a bit more to give me a smidge more room for the chock to sit as this is the bit that seems to be the tallest part on the outer edges of the 32x.
Here you can see how the 32x sits in the folded under method connected via the now repositioned megadrive 2 cartridge slot. Its sitting really neatly in there I think and doesn’t look any different to the soldered in place versions other than the fact its still plug and play.
Now onto the last step of getting the 32x to stay put inside the case, other than the outer case gripping it like a vice haha. I needed to find some screws long enough to reach through the 32x, its lower board and the megadrive 2 motherboard and into the lower cases screw holes. This has been something I’ve been trying to find whenever I’ve been in a hardware store to buy different things like paint etc. But I’ve always come up with nothing as hardware screws are always too big, they won’t fit through the cartridge slot holes. It’s been a really pain in the butt.
But like an idiot I forgot that where I work, which is a radio control car manufacturer and distributor, I might actually be surrounded by screws that could work. And low and behold that seemed to be the case!!! The trick is to find screws that are the same dimensions ( M3 ), have a similar thread spacing and also long enough, which seems to be around 30mm. Asking some of the tech guys here I’ve found that these screws fit and seem to work a treat! : http://www.hpiracing.com/en/part/Z574 I originally tried a different screw which also fit but the head of the screw was quite deep and the cartridge wouldn’t sit in the slot low enough to be very stable.
Here you can see the new long screws holding everything into place. WOOP!
So the next steps, which I haven’t actually done yet. Make some small tin-foil shields to sit between the wires to try and limit any cross talk between the wires. Make 2 sets of A/V cables which will plug into the internally mounted 32x. And finally make a wire to hook up the 32x with power.
So over the next few weeks I’ll tinker away and try to make some A/V and power wires up and get them mounted into the Neptune case. It’s actually all starting to come together finally for this project.
Catch you later
Porl’’
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''
Monday, 17 December 2012
JAMMA MEGADRIVE 2 - PART 1
Hi Everyone,
Yep that title is correct! A megadrive 2 that runs in an arcade via JAMMA connection! :-D
I've been eluding to it in the last few posts and seen's I've made a breakthrough with my A/V problem this morning I thought I'd post up the 1st part of my build of this unit.
Its nothing new really building a Jamma compatible megadrive, I'm certainly not the first to do it by any means but I've found a few little things out while building it that weren't really documented when I'd been doing research on them before I started soldering. Also I'm trying to do this Jamma drive a little differently to the others I've seen on the internet. The main difference being that it will be very nearly totally stealthy!! Most jammadrives I've seen have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out of the side of the casing which doesn't look too bad, but to me it won't look just right on the shelf with all the other consoles. So I've decided to make it hidden via a second expansion slot on the megadrives casing. Also I will be over-clocking it and doing the 50/60mhz and language mod's as well as having it power the Sega CD 2 all from the Supergun's power supply. So there won't be a big ol mess of cables everywhere.
Well thats the plan so lets start the progress photos and a bit of rambling. :-)
The first thing I did was scour the internet and read as many forum posts, watch youtube videos and read web-pages about creating the Jamma drive. Trying to get as much research in as possible so that it will run as smoothly as possible. There isn't that much info on doing the mod to a megadrive2 as there is for the megadrive 1, but it shouldn't be too hard to do. . . Also I re-printed the schematics I used for making my Supergun so I had the correct Jamma connections I used.
The next thing was ordering the Jamma fingerboard from ebay. I initially wanted to get the jamma-boards.com blue fingerboard a lot of the american's use but it was a bit hard to find so I opted for a very generic looking plain fingerboard from the UK. Nice and cheap and as long as you check against a schematic you should be fine.
While the fingerboard was on order I decided to start modifying my case so that I will get the stealthy look by hacking it up and trying to add in a new expansion port. As I have some spare megadrive2's around and I had a spare case from a megadrive2 I'd scoured for parts I decided that would be sacrificed for the cause.
I got my dremel out and amputated the right-hand sega-cd expansion port from it. Then I turned to the Jammadrive's case and dremelled out the space for the expansion port to go.
Here you can see the normal expansion port on the right and the new one that will be fitted on the left. I've had to cut the slot a fair bit wider for the Jamma connecter to fit inside the casing so it will reach the fingerboard. I will have to milliput some extra sides onto the port cover to make it all fit nicely together.
With a bit of electrical tape holding it together I tested out that the Jamma connector would fit into the case. With that double checked I set about milliputting and hot glueing the new port into the case.
Yep that title is correct! A megadrive 2 that runs in an arcade via JAMMA connection! :-D
I've been eluding to it in the last few posts and seen's I've made a breakthrough with my A/V problem this morning I thought I'd post up the 1st part of my build of this unit.
Its nothing new really building a Jamma compatible megadrive, I'm certainly not the first to do it by any means but I've found a few little things out while building it that weren't really documented when I'd been doing research on them before I started soldering. Also I'm trying to do this Jamma drive a little differently to the others I've seen on the internet. The main difference being that it will be very nearly totally stealthy!! Most jammadrives I've seen have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out of the side of the casing which doesn't look too bad, but to me it won't look just right on the shelf with all the other consoles. So I've decided to make it hidden via a second expansion slot on the megadrives casing. Also I will be over-clocking it and doing the 50/60mhz and language mod's as well as having it power the Sega CD 2 all from the Supergun's power supply. So there won't be a big ol mess of cables everywhere.
Well thats the plan so lets start the progress photos and a bit of rambling. :-)
The first thing I did was scour the internet and read as many forum posts, watch youtube videos and read web-pages about creating the Jamma drive. Trying to get as much research in as possible so that it will run as smoothly as possible. There isn't that much info on doing the mod to a megadrive2 as there is for the megadrive 1, but it shouldn't be too hard to do. . . Also I re-printed the schematics I used for making my Supergun so I had the correct Jamma connections I used.
The next thing was ordering the Jamma fingerboard from ebay. I initially wanted to get the jamma-boards.com blue fingerboard a lot of the american's use but it was a bit hard to find so I opted for a very generic looking plain fingerboard from the UK. Nice and cheap and as long as you check against a schematic you should be fine.
While the fingerboard was on order I decided to start modifying my case so that I will get the stealthy look by hacking it up and trying to add in a new expansion port. As I have some spare megadrive2's around and I had a spare case from a megadrive2 I'd scoured for parts I decided that would be sacrificed for the cause.
I got my dremel out and amputated the right-hand sega-cd expansion port from it. Then I turned to the Jammadrive's case and dremelled out the space for the expansion port to go.
Here you can see the normal expansion port on the right and the new one that will be fitted on the left. I've had to cut the slot a fair bit wider for the Jamma connecter to fit inside the casing so it will reach the fingerboard. I will have to milliput some extra sides onto the port cover to make it all fit nicely together.
With a bit of electrical tape holding it together I tested out that the Jamma connector would fit into the case. With that double checked I set about milliputting and hot glueing the new port into the case.
Here you can see the port now milliputted with some hot glue 'tacking' sitting in the jammadrive2 case. Its nice and rigid and should handle the pressure you have to exert on the case to open the darn thing. Next is to extend the cover to make it meet the edges of the case so it looks all OG. ( sitting in the case in the left image is a Neptune button being re-milliputted, yep it's still going on haha)
While I'd been working on the casing the fingerboard turned up from ebay so I set about lining it up with the new expansion port and hot gluing and milliputting it into place so that it should stand up to the connecter being put on it. You don't want it pulling away from the motherboard when your trying to connect up the Supergun to it!! haha.
Here you can see I tried to place it inward enough so that the motherboard will take some of the load of the connector but not interfer with areas I will need to solder too. Once the milliput cured it really was stuck on there like rock! Brilliant!
And here's how the Jammadrive sits in its case. Pretty nicely I think!! :-D The fingerboard fits nicely in the gap down the left-hand side and seems to balance the megadrive out a bit now. Also I've extended the sides of the port cover so there are no gaps down the side now. There is some finishing up to do to the case but as I'm an eager beaver I will jump onto the soldering to make sure it is starting to work.
Next part : " The woe's of using multiple guides and information from the interwebs to do simple wiring. " haha
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''
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
HOW TO OVERCLOCK SEGA MEGA DRIVE 2 / GENESIS 2
Hi Everyone,
I thought I'd make a post on something that had been playing on my mind for a couple of months. And the thing that had me thinking and questioning was "why does no-body overclock the model 2??". Sure I've seen the Screen Savers video on youtube where they describe how to do it by pinching the clock speeds from the cartridge slot. But I was never convinced with this way of doing it and the guy in the video doesn't get it to work that way. And the way they show the overclock is on his model 1, which is what you find all the overclock info on. Overclocking the model 1.
Well, the way described in the video involves using quite long wires to do the overclock which from my understanding would cause problems because of the length of them. In the model 1 overclock video I've followed Damomonster explains that wires longer than 3 inches will cause problems with the overclock.
Last week I managed to find a very rare video on youtube of someone claiming to have overclocked their Genesis 2, and the way they did it was the same way I'd overclocked the model 1. Using a 10mhz crystal on some vero board mounted on top of the processor. But since then they have taken the video down, so now there are none. Except mine now I think :-P
I've been thinking that if you know which pin to lift on the model 2 processor then in theory you can do the overclock the same way as the model 1. You'd just have to know where to tap your +5v from and where a nice close point would be to get Ground.
Well its pin 15 that you want to lift on the processor, just like on the model 1. The processor is the same as the model 1 but in a smaller form factor. Now we know which leg to use we can begin ;-P
Right, I think I'll write this point for point.
THE GUIDE :
(1) -- first thing to do is to make the 10mhz overclock 'package' described in Damomonster's great step-by-step guide :
A thing to remember is keep your wires nice and long to begin with so you can trim them down to size when you come to mount it and hook it up to the processor.
(2) -- now you've got the 'overclock package' made and insulated up with electrical tape and some nice long trim-able wires we can go to the Mega Drive 2 (Genesis 2). Open the sucker up by removing the 4 screws underneath, then remove the inner metal shielding. For me I find it easier to take the whole motherboard out of the case so you can rotate and investigate it easier.
(3) -- Now the board is out of the case you need to find the processor, which is the square chip in the back right hand side of the board behind the cartridge slot.
The next step is to find Pin 15. I've marked this on the photo in pencil. Sega have been nice to us and have numbered the pins on each corner of the chip. You can see Pin 10 on the bottom left of the chip, so we count across to the right and find Pin 15.
(4) -- The next step is to get the soldering iron out and get it warmed up. I don't know how much heat the legs can take on the processor as they are very small and fiddly to get to so I would recommend a lowish wattage soldering iron with a thin tip on it just in case. I used a 15w Antex for doing this with a small wedge shaped tip. A pencil shaped tip would be even better I think.
(5) -- Now the soldering iron is warmed up and we have Pin 15's location we need to warm the pin. I did this by pressing onto the side of the chip and the soldering pad area and got a thin Pick tool behind the leg. You need to be very careful here as the legs are deceiving! They aren't sticking out from the chip, thats the soldering pad that gives it that look. The leg is actually wrapped back and under the chip to raise it from the PCB. To give some ventilation I assume.
While heating the leg gently wiggle and bend it outwards. Remember, take your time so you don't pull the solder pad up at the same time!
You should end up with the chip looking like this :
You can see Pin 15 now lifted free from the board and the solder pad is still underneath.
(6) -- Well done!! That's the scariest part done! The next steps are delicate still but that was the hardest bit.
Now we need to cut 2 wires, strip the ends and tin them. The wires want to be just long enough to reach the back of the case.
This is the most direct and shortest route for the wires to go. We need to keep the wires as short as possible but still able to reach our Double Pole / Double Throw switch so that we can still switch between the stock speed of 7.6mhz and 10mhz. This way we can still use the Mega CD and 32x because we can revert back to stock speeds.
(7) -- Now we carefully solder 1 wire to the solder pad under Pin 15. Be very careful not to tug this wire too much or too hard. You could still pull the solder point up and that would be a pain.
(8) -- Next we solder the other wire to the leg of Pin 15. Add a little solder to the leg first so that all you need to do is gently press the wire against the leg using your soldering iron to get them to melt together.
(9) -- Now we are at a stage where we can follow the rest of Damomonster's overclocking video BUT FIRST we need to know where to tap the +5v and the Ground from as these are going to be different to the ones in the video as that is a Model 1.
In the above photo you can see 3 capacitors. There are 2 to the side of the processor, 1 to the left and 1 to the right. These 2 are the ones we will use to get our +5v and Ground from. They are really close which keeps our wires short and very convenient.
Again Sega have made it easy for use because they have marked the + side of the capacitor so we know which side to get +5V from (the + side) and the none marked side is Ground.
Here is the second part of Damo's overclock video to follow :
The main thing to follow from this video is the Double Pole / Double Throw (DP/DT) switch set up and the LED wiring.
(10) -- Now you've followed his video you should end up with a switch looking like this :
In this photo its the overclock wiring you can see on the top. Blue = 10Mhz, Orange = Pin 15 and Green = 7.6Mhz Stock speed. The row of pins below are Orange = Red LED colour, White / Blue = +5v from the Overclock package, White / Orange = Green LED colour.
(11) -- In the photos you can see that I've just electrical taped everything in place to test it out. You should now have something that looks like this :
(Ignore the mass of wires on the left, that is from my A/V port retro-fit)
Now we can go and test that the overclock works. :-D
Below is a video of my Mega Drive 2 showing the overclock mod and it working on Sonic 2. It was tough to film as I used my phone and I couldn't mount the phone so you can see me playing Sonic 2 (which might be a good thing haha) and excuse the sniffing and coughing as I have a cold ;-)
(12) -- Now you've tested its worked you can squeeze some hot glue over the Pin 15 area. This will make sure that the wires will not get tugged and pull the leg off the processor or pull the soldering pad up. You do this stage once you've tested it as this is a perminant step. Also squeeze some hot glue onto the top of the processor and stick the overclock package on-top. this will stop it ever moving around.
AND WE'RE DONE! :-D Your Sega Mega Drive 2 / Genesis 2 is now overclocked! You can enjoy Sonic 2 in all its none slow down glory as well as a whole host of games that push the stock clock speed a bit too much passed its limit of 7Mhz.
So there you go. I haven't been able to find any real guides on how to do this to a Mega Drive 2 especially one with photos and video of it working. So I decided to make one if this mod worked out, which it did, so I did. :-)
I hope you get it to work out if you give it a try. Just take your time lifting that leg up and you'll be fine. If you have any problems leave me a comment and I'll try to help you out.
Cheers
Porl''
I thought I'd make a post on something that had been playing on my mind for a couple of months. And the thing that had me thinking and questioning was "why does no-body overclock the model 2??". Sure I've seen the Screen Savers video on youtube where they describe how to do it by pinching the clock speeds from the cartridge slot. But I was never convinced with this way of doing it and the guy in the video doesn't get it to work that way. And the way they show the overclock is on his model 1, which is what you find all the overclock info on. Overclocking the model 1.
Well, the way described in the video involves using quite long wires to do the overclock which from my understanding would cause problems because of the length of them. In the model 1 overclock video I've followed Damomonster explains that wires longer than 3 inches will cause problems with the overclock.
Last week I managed to find a very rare video on youtube of someone claiming to have overclocked their Genesis 2, and the way they did it was the same way I'd overclocked the model 1. Using a 10mhz crystal on some vero board mounted on top of the processor. But since then they have taken the video down, so now there are none. Except mine now I think :-P
I've been thinking that if you know which pin to lift on the model 2 processor then in theory you can do the overclock the same way as the model 1. You'd just have to know where to tap your +5v from and where a nice close point would be to get Ground.
Well its pin 15 that you want to lift on the processor, just like on the model 1. The processor is the same as the model 1 but in a smaller form factor. Now we know which leg to use we can begin ;-P
Right, I think I'll write this point for point.
THE GUIDE :
(1) -- first thing to do is to make the 10mhz overclock 'package' described in Damomonster's great step-by-step guide :
A thing to remember is keep your wires nice and long to begin with so you can trim them down to size when you come to mount it and hook it up to the processor.
(2) -- now you've got the 'overclock package' made and insulated up with electrical tape and some nice long trim-able wires we can go to the Mega Drive 2 (Genesis 2). Open the sucker up by removing the 4 screws underneath, then remove the inner metal shielding. For me I find it easier to take the whole motherboard out of the case so you can rotate and investigate it easier.
(3) -- Now the board is out of the case you need to find the processor, which is the square chip in the back right hand side of the board behind the cartridge slot.
(4) -- The next step is to get the soldering iron out and get it warmed up. I don't know how much heat the legs can take on the processor as they are very small and fiddly to get to so I would recommend a lowish wattage soldering iron with a thin tip on it just in case. I used a 15w Antex for doing this with a small wedge shaped tip. A pencil shaped tip would be even better I think.
(5) -- Now the soldering iron is warmed up and we have Pin 15's location we need to warm the pin. I did this by pressing onto the side of the chip and the soldering pad area and got a thin Pick tool behind the leg. You need to be very careful here as the legs are deceiving! They aren't sticking out from the chip, thats the soldering pad that gives it that look. The leg is actually wrapped back and under the chip to raise it from the PCB. To give some ventilation I assume.
While heating the leg gently wiggle and bend it outwards. Remember, take your time so you don't pull the solder pad up at the same time!
You should end up with the chip looking like this :
(6) -- Well done!! That's the scariest part done! The next steps are delicate still but that was the hardest bit.
Now we need to cut 2 wires, strip the ends and tin them. The wires want to be just long enough to reach the back of the case.
This is the most direct and shortest route for the wires to go. We need to keep the wires as short as possible but still able to reach our Double Pole / Double Throw switch so that we can still switch between the stock speed of 7.6mhz and 10mhz. This way we can still use the Mega CD and 32x because we can revert back to stock speeds.
(7) -- Now we carefully solder 1 wire to the solder pad under Pin 15. Be very careful not to tug this wire too much or too hard. You could still pull the solder point up and that would be a pain.
(8) -- Next we solder the other wire to the leg of Pin 15. Add a little solder to the leg first so that all you need to do is gently press the wire against the leg using your soldering iron to get them to melt together.
(9) -- Now we are at a stage where we can follow the rest of Damomonster's overclocking video BUT FIRST we need to know where to tap the +5v and the Ground from as these are going to be different to the ones in the video as that is a Model 1.
In the above photo you can see 3 capacitors. There are 2 to the side of the processor, 1 to the left and 1 to the right. These 2 are the ones we will use to get our +5v and Ground from. They are really close which keeps our wires short and very convenient.
Again Sega have made it easy for use because they have marked the + side of the capacitor so we know which side to get +5V from (the + side) and the none marked side is Ground.
Here is the second part of Damo's overclock video to follow :
The main thing to follow from this video is the Double Pole / Double Throw (DP/DT) switch set up and the LED wiring.
(10) -- Now you've followed his video you should end up with a switch looking like this :
(11) -- In the photos you can see that I've just electrical taped everything in place to test it out. You should now have something that looks like this :
Now we can go and test that the overclock works. :-D
Below is a video of my Mega Drive 2 showing the overclock mod and it working on Sonic 2. It was tough to film as I used my phone and I couldn't mount the phone so you can see me playing Sonic 2 (which might be a good thing haha) and excuse the sniffing and coughing as I have a cold ;-)
(12) -- Now you've tested its worked you can squeeze some hot glue over the Pin 15 area. This will make sure that the wires will not get tugged and pull the leg off the processor or pull the soldering pad up. You do this stage once you've tested it as this is a perminant step. Also squeeze some hot glue onto the top of the processor and stick the overclock package on-top. this will stop it ever moving around.
AND WE'RE DONE! :-D Your Sega Mega Drive 2 / Genesis 2 is now overclocked! You can enjoy Sonic 2 in all its none slow down glory as well as a whole host of games that push the stock clock speed a bit too much passed its limit of 7Mhz.
So there you go. I haven't been able to find any real guides on how to do this to a Mega Drive 2 especially one with photos and video of it working. So I decided to make one if this mod worked out, which it did, so I did. :-)
I hope you get it to work out if you give it a try. Just take your time lifting that leg up and you'll be fine. If you have any problems leave me a comment and I'll try to help you out.
Cheers
Porl''
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