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

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123382115#Comment_123382115

Yeah I've put some time into it, made decent progress, but I'm not there yet (missing audio.) Not sure if it's IC related, or board related (all caps replaced.) Have gone over it with a microscope and multimeter, everything I can see checks out, so waiting on a bypass board to see if I can restore the audio or not.

MrVestek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123382115#Comment_123382115

Hopefully it's something as simple as replacing a variable resistor pot or a transistor. We'll see.

The second Grant repair is already going to set me back about 170Gbp so I honestly don't want to be sending him ANOTHER chassis to fix up.

@dav09 kindly offered to replace this screen if I couldn't get it going so I'm going to hold him to that. :-P

KeRbDoG

Picked up a 'flex cable' for the Gamecube picoboot mod from AliExpress, made the install neater - that flex cable I linked to is the older wiring method, the newer one includes a diode and uses a different power input on the pico (5V new Vs. 3.3V old) so you aren't supplying the GC with power if ever updating the Pi Pico with a new release of the Picoboot software. The saving grace with that flex cable is that you can disconnect the power line with a solder blob on the back of the flex cable at the back of the pico. 3D printed a bracket to hold the pico - all very neat.

Also picked up a ETH2GC (info) network adapter for the GC which uses the memory card slot - I don't beileve you can stream games over the network with that version so I'd need to dig a little further. There is also one that uses Serial Port 2 but that is also used by the SD2SP adapter, a whole lot more useful at this stage :D

bugs

The Pico board technical docs recommend 5v for power. I seem to remember webhdx was aware of this but wanted to make the install as simple and risk free as possible.

It works fine at 3.3 but I have had a few Pico boards that flashed green on installation and refused to boot but have worked fine at 5 in later installs.

o1s1n

Not so much a fix but a 'huh! I didn't know that' moment.

I've had a PAL Virtua Racing cart for years (probably two decades at this point!) that doesn't work. Thought it was the SVP chip that went bad. Tried it last night in my Megadrive setup, still nothing. I don't think I've really bothered with it much as I picked up the 32x version around the same time.

Decided to try it in the Nomad but with the PAL mod button held down - It works! Looks absolutely ridiculous but it works.

It's PAL optimised so there are glitches but it's the first time I've actually seen the game working in twenty years of owning it.

Turns out, it's the only Megadrive game that doesn't actually work in the 32X!

Back in the day I must have lashed it into the 32X when it arrived, nothing happened, gave it a clean, still nothing happened so just put it aside as broken.

Also actually found the Japanese version of the game too. Must pick up the NTSC US one now to complete the set.

KeRbDoG

Wasn't the story around the 32X basically they dev'd the 3D chip/ablity and to produce the game cart with it in (like VR) make them expensive so just further develop them and put them into an addon like the 32X

o1s1n

That's 100% it alright, they were originally going to go down the Snes Super FX chip route like Starfox but it was just way too expensive per cart. I remember VR racing being 85 pounds, which is about €187 in today's money with inflation!

I wonder is that the reason it doesn't actually work? some kind of conflict between the SVP chip and what's going on inside the 32X?

KeRbDoG

Could well be, from a search it looks like one of the only (if not few) games that isn't passthrough compatable with the 32X. Seems that VR doesn't work with the "Majesco Entertainment's re-released Genesis 3" either.

Never had a 32X, what are the limited number of 32X CD games actually like?

o1s1n

It's known as home to piles of dog shite but some of the arcade ports like VR Racing, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade, and Mortal Kombat II are genuinely very good.

I haven't spent much time with After Burner but I believe it's known as the first good home port of that too.

When it fails though it's spectacularly bad. I was playing T Mek last night. Jesus Christ. Oh to be a poor child who got that for Christmas. Same for things like Cosmic Carnage. They feel like early tech demos, should never have been released.

The Doom port is also shockingly bad. Even more so after the Doom Resurrection 32X homebrew was released which is unbelievably amazing. Even has split screen deathmatch. If Doom had been released like that back in the day on the 32X it would have been a system seller and I'd say we'd have seen a very different outcome for Sega.

Edit - Ah I see you said 32X CD! I've never actually played any of them. Funnily enough, Doom Resurrection just had a 32X CD release too. Rather than just streaming the music I believe it actually uses the Mega CD's processing power too, so it's the first game to actually use all three consoles to run.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123454090#Comment_123454090

I think you can restore support in the Genesis 3 for Virtual Racing. From memory, it's just two unconnected spots on the board

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123454363#Comment_123454363

Ah cool - 100% correct, there are ways to mod the consoles by running the missing traces

Doge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123453568#Comment_123453568

I've mentioned it before, but at the very end of Cidermans beers long long ago, I asked if we could put Virtua Racing into the Nomad and connect a mega drive controller for player 2.

Can't remember who was player 2 and we only had enough time to drive past the starting line as the beers was over but it's a cool novelty I'll always remember.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123454909#Comment_123454909

That second controller port really is deadly isnt it?

At the very first beers we ever had, I brought my Nomad, Micro Machines with the J cart which had two controller ports built in, two controllers and an arcade stick.

There was a moment in time where four lads stood around a Nomad in a bar in Dublin city centre playing four player Micro Machines. 😁

I think that was peak gaming, never been matched.

o1s1n

N64 DD is back on the operating table this evening. Took probably more photos than needed - just thought it might be nice given there's not really a lot of documentation on these online.

Last we left off almost two months ago, the ribbon cable that supplies power to the disk drive had delaminated pins and was fooked due to me disassembling the unit a good 4-5 times over the years in an attempt to fix it.

The DD now just has an error the moment it turns on, you cant access any of the menus, and there's no life in the disk drive.

Managed to find a replacement 11 pin ribbon cable in China and have been waiting for it to arrive.

It's a good deal longer than the original - which to be honest, should have been like this in the first place. Too much tension with the original cable. It looks to be a perfect match.

Back in we go, first you've to separate the top shell from the bottom. Two ribbon cables connect each half, you can see the gold one still here in this photo (it's permanently attached to the read head, so if the pins go on that, you're really goosed)

The main issue here is, the connection circled in red that the new ribbon cable needs to get to on the disk drive is impossible to access without disassembling the drive. So I was going to have to go a bit further than the usual 'clean the read heads with isopropyl alcohol' this time. Bit nerve wracking wondering willy you bork a 1000+ euro console even more but sure feck it, not working now anyway, so nothing to lose!

Not the best photo but here we go, most of the drive broken down. Read head removed, all the front of the console removed. Once the screws were out it wasn't too bad, few clip in components. Can see into the drive itself now.

Finally now able to lift the top housing of the disk drive to access the finnicky little connector for my new cable.

First you need to feed the cable under the bottom housing and get it to pop out a tiny slit in front of the connector.

Then with a bit of wiggling, cable is in!

Now with the cable back in I could start rebuilding the disk drive. There's a metal bar along the top that has a magnet which sits under the read head. You need to take this out first to disassemble the rest of the drive, so need to remember to put this in first for reassembly.

Reassembled with the two ribbon cables ready to go. The original grey one that broke was shorter than the gold one here:

Shielding back on, with my nice big new wormlike (!) ribbing cable showing off.

Connecting the new ribbon cable up to the top half of the console. Should fingers crossed now be supplying the disk drive with power once again!

Second gold ribbon reconnected to the top half of the console. You can really see here how there's literally no slack at all. Can only imagine how tricky the original shorter grey cable was (I'd say that's what lead to the pins delaminating to be honest!)

All reassembled and - no error on boot! The new cable works and is supplying the disk drive with power. You can now access all the console menus once again and see Mario running around on the screen without an error message in the way.

Unfortunately, that's where the good luck ends. I popped a disk in, there was life in the drive once again and it fired up, however it then throws an error, there's still something preventing it from reading the disk.

Still, a step in the right direction. We now have a unit that's powering on correctly and a disk drive that's operating. If if would only actually read a disk..!

Inviere

Nice write up! At least it's powering back on and semi functional again, and the new ribbon looks a lot more comfortable than the original one. Anything to be said for checking voltages at the drive, maybe the old caps are past their sell by dates..

o1s1n

Thanks! Yeah I'm delighted to get it back to this point - particularly given I was the one to make it worse, feels like I've recounted for my sins 😂

I think what I'll do next is look up some Zip Disk failures and fixes. There might be some sort of shared solution for all drives like this. For now, it really does seem like more of a mechanical issue rather than an electrical one. The disk read head goes forward to read the disk three times but can't find anything. Something might still be dirty or out of alignment.

It's incredibly frustrating the media is so expensive though. Rule 1 of troubleshooting tends to be 'try another game'.

The Mario Artist Communication Kit disk looks to be the cheapest at aroud 50-60 quid so I think the next logical step might actually be to pick one of them up and see what happens.

The guy I bought it from did sell it as non working. However when I originally got it, the disk read head was indeed stuck and not operating at all - I freed it up and it then started making this noise. So we might have now moved on to my Doshin the Giant disk actually being bad, which would be great.

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123353382#Comment_123353382

Eventually got around to trying out USB4MAPLE, a project to use a Raspberry Pico to allow the use of some (not all) USB controllers, keyboard, mice etc. with the Sega Dreamcast.

Image dropped on a Waveshare RP2040-Zero (I had tested this first with an orignial RP2040, worked great) and wired up

…and installed in a 3D printed case (combo of this top case and this remix bottom case

Finally I can play Quake3 on the Dreamcast like it was meant to be played, with a keyboard and mouse! I feel like there might be a little lag, more testing needed.

KeRbDoG

Another one :) I was given a 'Densha de Go! Plug & Play' Japanese traim sim all in one controller a few years back by Cider…but (and rightly so!) its all in Japanese. There had been some people working on audio mods for this version and translation mods for other releases of it so I asked at the time if they planned to do the same translation for the plug & play and the answer was, yes - eventually. I totally forgot to check up on this but…last year they released the translation as a patch!

A usb-micro hub and a usb stick later…boom! My kids didn't think much of it

o1s1n

I decided to go the whole hog and just smash my AGS 101 apart with a hammer.

Luckily it reassembled! Matcha green. Decided to keep the old darker buttons.