JAMMA SEGA MEGADRIVE 2 : PART FOUR

Howdy y'all,

It's been a little while since I posted last about a geeky project. Basically I've been caught up over the last few months with house / garden improvements as well as doing an RGB mod to the PC Engine I purchased from ebay a while ago. I was having a really hard time for some reason with getting the mod to work and finally got it figured out. Basically the best tip I can give is draw down the wiring locations your going to use and you do use on a piece of paper as you go. I didn't and kept mixing my wiring up like a dope.

Anyway, I've been of on whats commonly called a "Stay-cation" this last week and chose to use some of my holiday at home to finish up some retro projects I had on the go as well as play some games etc. The main project I wanted to finish was the Jamma-drive 2, which is what I did.

With the controls being finished in Part Three all I needed to do was possibly overclock the processor to a switchable 10mhz and finish off the casing. Tidy it up and paint it, then using printable water-slip decal paper make a decal for the casing.

After having a good play on the Jamma-drive2 I decided I was going to have a go at overclocking the processor, shouldn't take too long seen's I've done it before. I set about making my crystal circuit and then started the process of heating pin 15 and with the pick tool, slowly pull the leg out from underneath the processor. The legs on the processors for the megadrive 2 are curled underneath it to slightly raise it from the pcb, I guess for giving it some cooling. Anyway, I dont think I had the soldering iron hot enough and pulled the solder pad up with the leg of the processor!!! The scariest possibility happened!! Man I was cross with myself. This is the reason that not main people overclock the model 2's, its way easier to just cut the leg of the model 1 and work on that rather than threading the needle of the model 2. So, with the solder pad now pulled from the board and stuck to the leg what do I do? I try to take clean the leg up and get the solder pad off it and the leg has taken too much wiggling and snapped off! PERFECT!! >:-( Screwed processor city!

I put everything away and took the pup out for a walk to try to get away from the ruin I'd just created, I'd spent all this time making a Jamma-drive and then balls-ed it up overclocking it! Gah!

After an hour we got home and I started trying to see if I could fix it. Out came the pick tool again and I scratched away some of the plastic around the broken leg to expose some of the broken leg and got a little wire soldered onto it. From a video that has been taken off youtube I remembered something about a guy soldering to a point on the board next to a printed 10. So with a "what the hell!" mentality I soldered the wire into the "10" location and went to see if it would work. And what do you know? I blumin' fixed it! :-D

So lesson learned, don't get cocky when trying to lift leg 15 when overclocking and if you do end up snapping the leg off or pulling the solder pad from the board, you can wire to location 10 that is just below the processor. This has fixed the megadrive and its clocked as standard 7mhz. I think I'll probably attempt to overclock it now I know its working but I think It's going to stay at 7mhz so I can play it for a while :-)

Here you can see location 10 that I wired too. I don't have a photo of the wire from the processor to it but you can see it in the video below. You wire from the processor leg into 10 to make the link work.

Now that the thing actually works again (Phew!!) I set about finishing the rest of the project.

I stripped the Jamma-drive 2 out of the case and started finishing up the new expansion port. Sanding it and trying to get it as flat and blended as I could.

Here you can see the milliput holding the expansion port to the case and hopefully see it smoothed into the original case so that once painted it should look pretty stock.

Next step is to masking tape the little spongey feet of the case so that they don't get caked in paint as well as the sticker telling you what serial number etc your megadrive is. Then it's off to the painting stage.

I gave the case a quick coating of grey primer over the new expansion port area and then painted the whole of it with Halfords Matt Black car paint. I've found that it gives a finish that is very close to the way the plastic looks on the original Megadrive's. So once its dried it will get a coating of a Matt Varnish so that it keeps its plasticy look rather than being all glossy. In the photos it looks glossy but that is because its still drying. You might also have spotted the Neptune case having another coating of paint. I did a bit more work on it on my holiday but that is for another post ;-)

So, The case has been painted and now is dry. So, what does it look like?!

Pretty good to me, I know it could be a little smoother but to be honest this project has been taking too long, so it gets a tick from me. And in certain lights, as you'll see in the video, you can't really see the join. :-) Overall Im really please with the look of the expansion port. Especially with how sturdy it is, It has no wobble or flimsy-ness to it.

And here is how the hot glue and milliput is covered inside the case. you can see the kind of "welding" I did with it to fix the new expansion port in place. And its solid, doesn't feel at all like it will crack or break.

Time to put it all back together again and get the switches set into place.

And here's how the case and new side expansion looks with everything all built back inside the casing.

 
Looks pretty sweet I think !!! :-D Im very happy with how it's fitted together, and when its sitting on the table you wouldn't even think there was anything going on underneath the case. A real Street-Sleeper :-D

So, for the finishing touch to this little project. I want it to look stock but I also want it to still show a little hint as to what it is. To achieve this I bought some water-slip decal paper from the internet so that I can make my own "Jamma-drive 2" logo to replace the megadrive 2 logo thats already on the case. To start I measured up the height of the existing logo and got onto illustrator, and with a Sega typeface I layed up my logo. Logo all made to size and its onto the printer to get the water-slip decal printed out. Once its printed you have to spray some Matt Varnish onto the decal to make it waterproof and then onto dunking it in warm water.

And with a little bit of wiggling here is what the finished decal looks like on the case with a megadrive 2 underneath for comparison. :-)

Im super happy with how the whole project turned out. I don't think the case could have come out any better, the waterslip decal really puts the cherry on the cake as it would make you look over the jamma-drive and think its standard but make you do a double take and go "what!?!"

And here are 2 videos I made of the Jamma-drive 2. The first video showing you the insides of the Jamma-drive2, including the overclock repair.



Here is the second part which show's the Jamma-drive 2 playing some games. :-D



Man I'm happy this project is finished now as it was meant to be a nice quick and easy one, but with the RGB problem and then having to figure out the controller pads it dragged on a bit. But the finished 'drive has come out great I think.

Catch you all later guys

Porl''

JAMMA SEGA MEGADRIVE 2 : PART THREE

Hi everyone and Happy New Year! :D

I hope you've all had a great chistmas and new year holiday.

Rightio I've just about finished my Jamma-megadrive 2 and thought I'd post up the next part of my build. This post is about the trickiest part of the build, hacking up the pad and getting it all wired up to work with the Jamma fingerboard and through that, your arcade stick.

I found that when I tried doing google searches about the pad-hacks all I could find were guides / pin-outs for the Megadrive 1 joypad. I wanted to use some Megadrive 2 pads as I had a few of those and with them being newer pads they should last longer. Should be easy enough to match up the guides with the MD2 pads, they can't be that different right?....wrong!!! They seem to have changed the PCB layouts and possibly manufacturers through the years. With the wiring switched around and not very well marked out.

Undetered I opened up one of the spare MD2 pads and got desoldering the cable from it so that I was left with just the pcb. Then comparing up the pinouts hopefully got the solder points matched and started soldering wire after wire to the megadrive pad, the fingerboard and to the joypad solder points on the Megadrive 2 pcb.

Rush off to test and hey, the controls work in a fashion! ... up is left, left is down, start works and only B does anything. Bugger! That didn't work then.

I decided to dig out my MD1 pads and check out the pcb's inside them and see if they match up with the pin-outs from google. Well, only 1 of them did. I guess that during the MD1's life they changed the pads manufacturer and/or design.

With the pad that matched up I desoldered and re-wired the pad to the Megadrives joypad solder pads and to the fingerboard points marked out on my Supergun wiring guide.

I was really hoping that I would do the wiring a lot neater than it is in the photo. The wiring is like a rats nest because of me having problems with the original pad. As you can see I wrote wiring numbers 
onto the pad so that I could easily match up the points to the solder pads on the joypad connector. You can see that I've wired from the non-ground side of the button area to the jamma edge connector. This sends the signal from your arcade joystick through the game pad which then gets transmitted to the Megadrive which then tells the games what the hecks going on :-P. To get the ground from the pad to the Jamma fingerboard you scrap away some of the green colouring to get the bare copper and solder a wire from there to a ground on the finger board. 9 wires from the fingerboard to the pad and 9 wires from the pad to the Megadrive 2.

Bingo! This pad worked straight away! Up, down, left, right all work! A,B,C, Start all work too! :-D

Onto the next pad...

I couldn't find another pad in my collection that matched the working MD1 pad so I checked my non-sega 6-button pads and found this one which had auto fire and slow-mo. I wouldn't be needed those as I wouldn't really be able to set them up easily enough on my arcade joystick. So I just soldered it as a normal sega 3-button pad. Thankfully the top left wiring points were numbered which made it easy to match up again.

And this time I routed the wiring a lot neater :-P I wish I'd done it this way with the first pad but as it works and its for me I will keep it as is for now. Again you can see the wires soldered to the input side of the button area rather than the common ground side. These are soldered to the fingerboard.

And here is the underside of the Megadrive 2 joypad socket area.

Again you can see that its routed a lot neater. Also, I found that if you soldered directly to the pins for the connector then the arcade stick completely took over the controls and you couldn't plug a standard MD pad in the port anymore and get it to work. So, to keep it so the Megadrive2 could still be used with pads you have to solder to the little solder points along the traces rather than the pins.

Bingo bango 2 working pads, and with a little wiggling the Megadrive 2 still sits in the case. Player 1's pad is underneath the main board sitting inbetween the mounting points and Player 2's pad sits on top of the Megadrive2.

Unfortunetly I didn't get a photo of the final joypad layout. I'll update the post when I get onto overclocking the Jamma-drive 2.

Which is the next step. Overclocking and finishing off the case mod. It needs a little bit more milliput to smooth the joins and then giving it a blast with some matt black spray paint.

Catch you later

Porl''

NEO-GEO MVS ARCADE GAMES

Back in the day I used to go to a local video shop to spend my pocket money on the arcades there. After a short while of them having a single Jamma arcade ( I know now that it was jamma haha) they got in a 4-slot MVS machine. It was the first time I'd seen a Neo-Geo and the fact you could choose between 4 games was amazing to me at the time! It was the first time I'd played Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, World Heroes, Alpha Mission 2, Soccer Brawl, Puzzle Bobble etc. That machine ate so much of my pocket money it was untrue!

I used to love reading through C&VG and Mean Machines magazines and checking the latest Neo-Geo games in there and then hoping they would turn up at the video shop. And more often than not they would eventually end up on the game selection and I would be one happy geeky teenager.

About 7 years ago I bought a Neo-Geo CD and finally got some Neo-Geo action at home. That was a very happy day I can tell you haha. At last I could play real Neo-Geo games at home like Fatal Fury - Real bout, Samurai Shodown Spirits ( 3 ), Viewpoint (AMAZING), Mutation Nation and Last Resort. The real deal but the loading times really took the arcade magic out of the experience :-( I love the machine but its not the experience I had when I was a kid.

Trouble is, to get the home experience of the Neo-Geo I would have to rob a bank to afford an AES. A couple of hundred for the console, which does look amazing! And then a couple of hundred pounds for each game. I really can't afford that. So it seemed I would never get to play the real Neo-Geo experience........until now!!! :-D

Because I've made my own Supergun I can now get an MVS board and play the actual arcade games on my TV.

So that's what I did!! :-P

I went onto ebay and sourced myself an MVS MV-1F 1 slot board for a steal and excitedly waited for it to turn up at work. The MV-1F is a large board compared to the later MVS boards but it has built in controller ports and also has a Stereo / Mono switch which allows you to have stereo sound if you have the right adapter. And its also Jamma compatible and the way I wired up my Supergun it should work perfectly fine.                                                                                                                             

The only shame in a way is that the game that came with it is Super Sidekicks and I'm not the biggest fan of football but at least I can try out the board and check it all works.

One of the first things I noticed is how big the cartridges are!! They are massive and they are the first cartridges I've seen with 2 boards in them. Check the following photo to see a comparison with other well known games cartridges.

Check out the size of that sucker out!!! :-O That's the difference in the real arcade games and console ports. 

And here is the screen I was hoping to get when I turned it all on. 330 Mega Pro-gear Max! Woop!!

I can now get my hands on the real MVS arcade games that I played in my youth!! And at a fraction of the price of getting an AES. Those games go for hundreds of pounds where MVS ones can go from £10 - £60 depending on how rare they are. Some are a hundred quid but those are super rare and I won't be getting any of those haha.

The first game I sort out after getting hold of the MVS board was Soccer Brawl! Yes, another Soccer game on the MVS but this one is in the future!!! You have power armour shoot lazers and have super powerful special kicks. That's more up my street and a real favourite when I was in the video shop. And to prove the price point I got it for £12.50 including postage. £12.50 for an arcade original !!!! The game on Neo-Geo CD cost's £25 - £50 and that's with looong loading times. No way hosey, original arcade games for me!

If you make your own Supergun or buy a Voltek one that's made to run Neo-Geo's then get yourself an MVS board and get hold of some absolute classics at a fraction of the AES price. It's definetly worth it :-D

I've uploaded a video of a little tour of my Supergun hooked up to the MVS running Soccer Brawl. It also show's my home-made Stereo adapter which i'll probably write a quick guide on next.

I also did a quick vid of Samurai Shodown starting up when I got it from a forum member over at arcade otaku. Another steal at £10!

Check them out and catch you guys soon. I'm off to play some arcade games woo!!

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''