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

I sold my broadband adapter years ago.

You're much better off with a DreamPi setup these days.

Yeah pretty much the only games you can play nowadays with the BBA are Quake 3 and Phantasy Star Online.

LOTS of work has been done to reverse engineer the netcode for a bunch of dial up games so a DreamPi setup is definitely worth it. There are kits out there that you can get that are preconfigured or you could try creating one yourself, it's handy enough. All you need is a Pi, a winmodem (most if not all USB 56k modems will be these) and a voltage line inducer.

I had a cable made up a few years ago that injects line voltage via a usb port. 5v comes in from USB VCC into a buck converter to bring it up to 18vDC so that the modem in the Dreamcast will pick up the line properly and see it as active.

Handy enough to do for a few bucks.

Added DB9 joystick ports to the Philips Videopac G7000 which I already completed a composite mod on, as the hardwired late 70s joystick bricks are somehow even worse than the Atari 2600 sticks! The few games I have are actually good craic now that the system responds to the joystick input :)

The breakout type clone is still impossible, no idea how get beyond 4 or so bats of the ball.

I seem to go through phases like that, where it seems everything goes wrong. I cannot wait to work on something other than a Game Gear at the moment! I've @Quigs Snr's Virtual Boy here to do, with the Virtual Ribbon kit....so that's something to look forward to. Won't get to it for another two weeks or so though.

... I can keep you busy indefinitely with game gears since I buy every one I see. I dont know why.

Can't wait for the Virtual Boy (assuming it is repairable). Actually that's a lie, I have waited about 30 years to see if it really will make me throw up playing it, another few weeks is nothing.

Finally got this one figured out. Been wrecking my head the past week as the wiring scheme for this wasn't very well documented so had to try to figure it out from the Arduino scratch code but finally got it all wired up correctly!

I'll make note of where everything goes then probably just hard solder everything as I won't be using this Arduino for another other than this... Plus it'll mean that all of the wiring will fit inside the case nicely.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058343850/handheld-hijinx-vol-8-the-saga-game-gear

^^ It's a long one...

This info may be of use for anyone repairing a GameCube.

I have a nice fancy Duo R here from a fellow user to have a look at. Seemingly it powers up to a garbled screen. Let's check it out...

^^ They're a very pretty console to be fair. I had one years back and sold it, but it always strikes me as a looker.

^^ Sure enough, it powers on to a garbled screen. I've no idea at this stage what it could be, the image rolls and flickers. This Duo R has been RGB modified by Doujindance previously, so I suppose that's the first place to look.

^^ Pleasantly surprised under the hood, no breadboard in plastic bags. In fact, this RGB mod is quite tidily done. It's also been region modded, you can see the pcb on the hucard reader....which goes to a switch for flipping hucard regions.

^^ Nice work here on the RGB lines. A continuity check shows everything is where it's supposed to be, and there's no bridges etc.

^^ Same on this end, nice job Doujindance (he often gets flak for the standard of work in the past, but hats off here this is obviously more recent and properly done. Those were different times (I shudder thinking of some of my own 'mods' from yonder.)

^^ There's a solder blob on these two pins, but given this was working before, and now isn't, I suspect this is a factory blob. I'll leave it be and come back to it if I don't find the issue elsewhere.

^^ The caps all look perfect. They're thru-hole caps, and not the leaky SMD type used in the standard Duo.

^^ Next port of call is the picture processing chip, and whaddya know....two traces corroded. The pinout tells me one of these pins is a sync signal, so I think we found our issue.

^^ I scrape the corrosion away, and sure enough, the traces are gone.

^^ I use a fibre glass pencil to expose the eylet for the upper most bad pin, and the lower of the two goes to an existing solder join which is handy.

^^ Both traces bypassed here. I originally wanted to use two strands of enamel wire, but the shielding for the Hucard slot made it too difficult so I resorted to some 30g kynar instead which was easier to work with in such confined space. Another check of the multimeter to ensure continuity is restored, and that there's no bridges, shows we're ready to test again.

^^ Bingo.

^^ The picture is REALLY nice, it's obviously a well designed RGB board/mod.

^^ I put some silicone grease on the CD drive gears as they were bone dry. After a few spins they seem much happier.

^^ Same on the CD tray lid, it was really reluctant to close. A small dab of silicone grease on the latch, and it's much much nicer to use now.

Job done!

Can confirm no cap kit needed on the duo-r. I bought the cap kit thinking it was going to be another laborious mega-cd horror show but was pleasantly surprised to find all pristine caps. Did it anyway as I had the kit but it 100% wasn't needed.

Did the rgb mod and I think there was a jailbar mod too.

Nicely done on the repair!

Quick fix time!

I noticed the Dreamcast I picked up with GDemu already installed was starting to suffer from the random reset problem. It was actually so bad the console wasn't booting half the time. There was also weird rolling interference.

I remember the success I had with the cleaning/bending the PSU pins back trick with my old Dreamcast. Gave it a go with this one too and it's worked perfectly. All issues resolved.

Its just these pins on the bottom right under the PSU beside the power button. Bit of a clean, bend them back a bit and sorted. Effort versus results is crazy.

As an aside, it really does look empty in here with no disc drive :eek:

I think the edit time is down from 48 hours under vBulletin, to 24 hours under Vanilla.

He hasn't posted to the R6 YouTube channel in a while actually

Bit of alcohol and it will be grand..... Or maybe not.

I've a few sealed limited edition games with controllers that have AA batteries in the packaging. Like skyward sword with gold wiimote. Imagine the state inside.

Also I noticed an old blackberry and iPhone 3 in a drawer have bulging backs from bad swollen batteries. game boy advance, ds, 3ds, psp, vita, Wii u controllers are all going to turn bad eventually. Do disassemble and take the batteries out? Maybe even a fire hazard if you store them in the attic.

Duracell are to be avoided at all costs. The amount of leaky Duracell batteries I've seen posted on various Electronics groups on facebook is unreal! I'm quite fond of the 1.5V rechargeable batteries from AliExpress, the only con is that they show full at 1.5V and drop to low voltage just before they need recharging so battery level indicators stay full until they're almost gone. They're a bit pricey too but great for electronics that are picky about voltage when 1.2V NIMH batteries won't cut the mustard.