Arcade & Retro Repairs & Mods, all new recipe, with no added MSG...

Parcelforce seem to have an issue at the moment with their tracking info/site. I have stuff that was sent over recently that was delivered(confirmed by receiver) and had delivery details on the site that now all show as "In Progress" or just "...".

Have you confirmed with Grant that he didn't get it?

Ohh brilliant! He just got back to me and said that it actually did turn up last week and that it's on his list of stuff to repair this week.

Crisis (and anxiety) averted.

Stupid Parcelforce...

Not sure why I didn't think to just do that in the first place but thanks for the suggestion Steve!

I've been looking for a Mega Drive single rom cart for a while to use with hacks and translations and tried a few different versions of what people have. In the end I decided to make my own based on some older schematics available online so I could use any size EPROM I needed. I cleaned up the design quite a bit in Eagle and decided to go with a different PCB colour scheme than what most seem to use for these sorts of things. I really like having the option to use SMD or through-hole caps(and some small flexibility on where to position those caps is a bonus).

After 2 small batches from PCBWay to make sure all works and looks ok, I'm happy with the result. I have a few that support saves / battery sourced from etsy, but for 99.9% of what I want a standard cart like this is all I need. I might have gone a bit overboard by getting 100+ made, but the price was right so I said feck it, maybe I'll stick them on my site at some stage or give a few away.

I have Everdrives so I don't even need these. But I like the 1 game 1 cart idea and there's some cool and/or silly hacks out there I definitely want to make up a cart and box with artwork for (Fat Sonic for one 😀)

Edit:

I thought they might look cool in a white case. Nope, better in original black.

Forgive the state of my workbench / coffee table but successfully modded my PAL N64 last night for full RGB Scart output using Tim Worthington's N64RGB 3.0 mod board.

Had a few issues with it and once thinking that I had accidentally killed the DENC-NUS on board but I managed to get it going again as I had just accidentally lifted a few pins.

Bit difficult to do as you need to solder directly to the legs on the DENC-NUS chip (and it's *so easy* to bridge those legs in such a small area) but all in all worth it and the picture quality towards the end is amazing.

Didn't want to faff with the controller shortcuts for enabling / disabling deblur so I installed a physical switch for that instead and only mutilated the case for it a little bit.

Appears to work well though!

Ah cool, hard to see the bevel in the pics.

The flash is handy to have available as EEPROM are getting tougher to find - at least good ones anyway.

Nicely done! Really coming along with your modding skills.

The guy who installed that on my N64 put the deblur switch on the bottom of the case.

I didn't actually realise it was there until I tried installing my N64DD and they wouldn't fit together properly. Ended up breaking the switch off! 😂

After the chassis making 2 trips over to Grant in the UK I now have a working Egret 3 as of tonight. When I got the chassis back the first time all I was getting was a clicking sound and no picture at all. Lots of testing and trying suggestions from Grant, but no joy. Sent it back to him and all that was wrong was the horizontal output transistor was shorted for some reason. An easy fix, but expensive with shipping again to the UK. Anyway, all is well now and the picture is better than ever.

Of course all they want to play is Spyro on the PS1 emulator :0/

Has anyone here made custom video cables? Looking for good shielded cables with multiple internal wired for assorted video lines.

Got a question for folks.

Got any tips for calibrating the CRT? The picture looks great but the blacks seem to be much more... grey than they used to be. Like the screen is too bright.

I've adjusted the "screen" pot as much as I can along with the brightness pot on the remote board but I just can't seem to get the blacks to look... black. Does anyone know what I mean by this or am I being silly?

Dug out my Famicom which might have had a wrong PSU plugged into it once, casing was in good condition but mainboard was kaput.

Many weeks later, another Famicom arrived with its case in not great condition but at least its working! I ordered up a replacement power/AV board from a lad in Ukraine. I think it was less than 10euro shipped. It does require a small mod to the case but ho-hum, composite'ness and it can now take a center pin positive power adapter from 7V~17V :D should be super safe from now on.

Tbh, I didn't think it would arrive - it took a good but of backwards/forwards via Telegram, bit of an effort to send the lad funds (card2card transfers are popular there, but I think only being considered here)...and yea know, the war.

I got a later version of the board from the lad, it has an option of a second set of composite outputs rather than an option for a smaller ballel jack power connector or micro-USB power input. Maybe useful for someone who'd want to stream the horror of composite?

Also... I built an RS485 interface for OpenJVS earlier today.

This will (eventually) enable me to use AimTrak guns and my steering wheel setup natively on the Naomi so that I can play Crazy Taxi, Confidential Mission etc.

I'm using Chunskin's WiPi Netbooter Raspberry Pi image with built in OpenJVS to pull this off. Not sure if it's completely evident from the image here but I created a cable that taps 5v on the Naomi 2 board to power the Pi4 via GPIO pins, and have an RS485 module attached to the Pi that's translating inputs on the fly to the JVS interface on the Naomi 2.

Quite a handy setup really. This Pi is also connected to the same network as the NetDimm on the Naomi 2 via Wifi so that it can push game images to it over the network.

Played a bit of Crazy Taxi earlier via an Xbox 360 controller and it worked like a charm. Can't wait to get the racing sim setup hooked up so that I can play Initial D! :-)

I've found that sometimes it can get stuck and you have to push the config manually. That's probably what's happening with 18 Wheeler.

I believe 19 wheeler is fixed with the latest multibios. Old multibios was based off hotd2 beta. New multibios is based off the latest official bios.

Here is a link to the latest. It's fairly recent and resolves a lot of issues with the old multi bios such as with atomiswave conversions:

https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/naomi-multi-bios-fixed-with-proper-bootstrap.14842/

DE10 repair log for anyone who doesn't check the main page of the forum https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058276071/knock-knock-whos-there-mister-mister-who

Cheers for the link/reminder.

Cracked out the EmbeddedComputers(.net) programmer and programmed a new EPROM for the Naomi2. I didn't have any real issues with anything else NetDimm Atomiswave (though I had the relay), but sure it's updated now.

Interested what beyond what you can buy in stores below, you'd might be after;

https://sordan.ie/search/?q=Kickstart&sort=name_a_z&view=icons&count=all

Do you absolutely need to burn new roms ? Its nearly always a better option to softkick newer ROMS, 3.1.4.1 and 3.2.1 are both missing modules that cause problems with older OS versions if you're likely to be jumping between versions (they load these missing modules from disk on boot).

Also running the kickstart from RAM is alot faster so better Workbench performance. For ACA cards you can use its maprom feature or skick if you've got a TF or other type of card.

3.1 is fine for a 600, the newer releases really just bring enhancements for Workbench & productivity stuff rather than games.

have a look at the BestWB setups , they automate and preload a lot of useful stuff

ACA are the accelerators by Individual Computers, good but expensive

Cheers kerb, though @Steve X2 was able to point me in the right direction. I've since changed my mind and will go with 3.1 now too.

Been meaning to ask here actually, is a stock A600 with its 68k cpu truly sufficient for whdload games? Am I likely to run into compatibility issues on the stock cpu? If so, is the Furia 020 a good option does anyone know? I really don't want to soup up a 600 to silly levels, and just want an enjoyable but compatible whdload setup (obviously aga excluded)

Cheers Steve, that's more or less what I'm thinking. I have the 1MB trapdoor ram here and ready to go, but I was mulling over something like the 608 Mini, which is a clip on fastram upgrade to 8MB (so 8MB fast, and 2MB chip). The 608 Mini doesn't upgrade the cpu though, so what's left is still the basic 68k. I think I'll go the Furia 020 route....did you have any compatibility issues with it and your cf/sd setup?

OK, I'm sold. Cheers Steve 👍

I'd lean towards passive cooling in this case, I can't imagine switching an Amiga 600 on and hearing a fan...wouldnt be right 🙂 but as you say, the fan can be added in later if needs be.

Finally got some time to look at the Amiga 600 today. The Furia does NOT like my Sandisk Extreme 32GB sd-card at all unfortunately. Have ordered a Sandisk Evo Plus instead. So now, we wait....

I was able to boot the Amiga with the Furia installed using a workbench floppy, so I know the Furia is fine. Hopefully the change of SD card will make the difference, and it's not the ide to sd adapter...

Bought a faulty Game Gear on Adverts. Cracked it open today, the quintessential crust of leaky caps all over half of the board. Decapped the whole thing anyway, and I await arrival of this newer type ceramic cap kit - https://retrosix.co.uk/Game-Gear-Capacitor-Kit-p141462762

If I can bring it back to life, I'll prob go the whole hog on it and replace the shell, screen, etc.