SEGA NEPTUNE REPLICA FINISHED

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for coming back and checking on my blog. Some of you guys might have been following / found my blog because of my EPIC Neptune project I set myself a few years ago after seeing the awesome Longhorn Engineer's tutorial on creating a Neptune using a 32x and a Genesis / MD2.

My idea was to learn soldering by making one of my spare Megadrive 2's into a working Neptune. But rather than leave it there I was going to use the skills I'd picked up making designer toys to make a replica outer shell for the mod and create an actual Neptune.

Well my project started with the hunting out on ebay of a 32x and then getting as many Neptune Prototype shell photos as I could and comparing them with my MD2. I'm pretty much 100% convinced that the Neptune prototype shell is a modified Genesis 2 shell. The bottom certainly makes me thing this as the lower square pan is exactly the same as a Gen 2 shell.

I documented the process of making my Neptune replica shell at most stages of sculpting. I thought I would make a slideshow so you guys can see what the steps are to make a Megadrive/Genesis 2 shell into a Neptune shell.

To finish it off I back painted the perspex LED 'window', glossed the buttons and applied the waterslip decals for the logos so that it looks like the prototype photo's I've seen on the web.

I've placed a few photos on the page as well as making a gallery for you guys to look through.

As you can see from the above photo I've finished the internal modular setup of the Neptune for when I eventually get a 32x. I really wanted to make sure that I would not need to destroy the 32x to make the Neptune. I will simply just have to take the 32x apart, fold it under itself and plug it in. Well I'll actually have to desolder the choke and resolder it on its side to lower the profile of the edge of the 32x so it will fit in the Replica case.

Again I made a slideshow of the progress I made with the mod and if you've followed my blog you will have seen all or most of them.



And to finish this post off which is a little shorter than I thought it would be. Its more photo heavy as I've basically posted most of my progress as I've gone along. I also made a Youtube video showing the shell and the internal mod.



Hopefully you guys like my replica Neptune shell. I'm so happy that its all finished off, and when I get a 32x I'll make it even more finished off. :-)

Catch you guys later on.

Porl''

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.

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.

After some trimming and testing and trimming I got the case to close. :-D

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’’

LITTLE BIT OF AN UPDATE

Hi Peeps,

I've just sat down at my desktop computer and realised I hadn't made any blog updates in a while. Man it's been a hectic past month and a bit and all I've been able to do geek-wise is plan things to do.

The Naomi is up and running and worked like a dream on my stag night were a group of us had a gaming night where I put out a load of my consoles with some tv's and my two arcade machines. Everything ran like a dream which was a real relief especially seen's its all old tech really. We got a real good game of Super Mario Bros going on the Mario Allstars cart on the SNES with about 4 of us taking turns trying to beat world 5. Damn Hammer Bros!!! haha. And I also got inspired to play more Sonic Spin Ball on the megadrive where my mate how's really good at it played through the first level while giving me tips. One tip was don't play it overclocked haha as it runs a lot faster and can make a tricky game even trickier! :-P



I've had a few emails about the Sega Neptune replica I've been working on for the past two years and it's progress. Well the progress of it is the outer casing is finished. But the project has stalled because of not having a working 32x to check that it will all work within the case. So I've been checking ebay every now and again but it seems the prices are going up all the time. I've not wanted to put the case out there as finished until I know that the whole kit and caboodle works.

I did a little work on it this morning, well it's not really work but I added in a brighter red LED to the motherboard so that it shines out of the new power light area how I'd like. I've been drawing plans and steps I want to do next to make it so I can get the megadrive 2 ready for a 32x to be put into it but it will still work as a megadrive while I wait on getting one. Make it kind of modular by basically repositioning the cartridge slot so that I won't be soldering to the 32x itself. I think it will work so I'll be doing some capacitor and resistor moving to make space.

Right, well none of this is going to happen until the end of next month now as we're ramping up to the wedding and honeymoon. So it's all hands to the pumps. I best get back to it.

Catch you all soon

Porl''

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''

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''

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.

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''

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''

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''

SEGA NEPTUNE DESOLDERED and REWIRED

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

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

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

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

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

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

More updates to follow :)

Porl''