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

o1s1n

Decided to go on a bit of an adventure this evening to see if I could get my N64 DD to read disks. Thought an attempt at cleaning the heads with some isopropyl would be handy enough.

Took the whole thing apart, everything was going fine, cleaned the heads, put it back together - no noise from the drive at all now, it just gives a disk error the moment it turns on. So i'd made it worse!

Opened it up to see what's going on - There are two ribbon cables that connect the drive to the main PCB -



The one with the blue tip which looked far longer than it was meant to be.
Pulled it a little harder and ended up seeing the other end of it.




'Ah, that's the problem, one of the ribbon cables is just disconnected, easy fix'.

Yeah, famous last words!

Pro tip - if you're ever working on an N64DD, never, EVER! let this ribbon cable disconnect from the internal PCB.

There's literally no way of getting to it with your hands to reconnect it, unless you disassemble the whole internal zip drive. Which, with the amount of springs in it's assembly isn't going back together unless you are a mechanical engineer.

So taking the whole thing apart wasn't an option, but I was going to have to take apart what I could to try to get to the ribbon cable connector. Couldn't even see where it was meant to go at this stage.

Managed to get the zip drive out anyway, and figured out where the ribbon cable was meant to be connecting up to.

To get the cable to the connector (the cable itself is about 3-4 inches long) you've to feed it through a tiny gap between mounting plates and try to fish it onto a ramp that leads up to the connector.

Once you have it at the connector, your problems have only just started. How do you insert a ribbon cable to a connector without being able to actually press on it with your hands and only being able to maneuver it from the end of the cable four inches away?

If you move it too much, it's back off the ramp and you're back to step 1 in the process of just trying to get it to the connector again, let alone actually in.

Took me two hours to get it connected back up. Two hours! :pac::pac:

I figured out that if I bent the ribbon cable a little bit one way it was an absolute pain in the arse to get it up the ramp, but once you did, it was about 1/4 of a mm into the connector slot.

I then managed to figure out that if I held a spring back on the drive, a tiny bit more space opened up, allowing me to get a really thin scissors blade into the connector and push it in once I had it on the edge of the connector.

Tried to get a bit of a photo showing the horror that is this cable.

The red lines indicate where the cable is fed in between the mounting plates, emerging where the green arrow is at the connector.

Blue arrow shows a spring loaded part which I had to move out of the way.

You can see the ribbon cable back in the connector in this photo. I felt like god when it finally clicked in.



Reassembled the whole thing, still not working - however, I could hear it trying to read the disk again now, so managed to get it back to the same condition at the very beginning.

TLDR: Oisin attempts to fix his N64 DD, made it even worse but eventually manages to recover it back to the broken condition he started with

CiDeRmAn

Let me know when you are selling it.
You can always buy it back from me two months later!

The Last Bandit

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Let me know when you are selling it.
You can always buy it back from me two months later!

When its fixed

The Last Bandit

Lockdown has been good for my productivity (non-work stuff anyway). Got jammacon adapters for another 4 consoles done, added Xbox, PS3, Gamecube and N64 to the line up.

Also made adapter boards so all these new ones can be used with the older jammacon (v1) boards that use the smaller connector.

eddhorse

Nicely done, do these still connect to the green jammacon mobo?

The Last Bandit

eddhorse wrote: »

Nicely done, do these still connect to the green jammacon mobo?

Yep should do. I've made a small connector converter type board so these can be used on the original jammacon with the little connector.

Some Xbox stuff is nicely playable on a cab but less so for the others, maybe Smash on the N64/Gamecube ?

The Last Bandit

Now that I'm running out of easy stuff to fix, though it was time to tackle my Vectrex which has been display garbage for years now.

I came across a project on Github called Scopetrex a while ago and recently ordered some pcbs to make a few of them and finally got around to making them this week - its not a complex build, but it is very time consuming with all the thru-hole parts.



As the name suggests, its intended to be hooked up to an analog XY scope. All my scopes are digital, the Agilent has an XY mode but the blanking wasn't working right so it just looked a mess of lines.

Feck it, lets attach it to the Vectrex monitor and see how it goes... Very well actually





So now I know the power board of the Vectrex is good and have something to compare with the logic board signals to help debugging

I've got two spare sets of pcbs (scopetrex & controller) if anyone wants them. I ordered all the parts off the BOM from Mouser to build 2 units and was expensive enough, but some of the items like connectors can be got a lot cheaper elsewhere. The CPU and sound chip are not available new though, but are very common on older arcade pcbs (68A09E, AY-3-8910).

Ideally I'd like to get a XY deflection board and build a larger bartop Vectrex with a 14" tube or something along those line.

BGOllie

oh cool project. I wanted to look into it at some point. wouldn't mind one of the sets if you still have em.

The Last Bandit

BGOllie wrote: »

oh cool project. I wanted to look into it at some point. wouldn't mind one of the sets if you still have em.

Ya no problem, I'll send you a set of boards.

80s Synth Pop

How unlikely would it be to have a failed 68000 processor on an 80's era arcade PCB?

I was looking at a board last night that is stuck on a garbled screen and the 68000 is not executing any code. The vcc and gnd are fine, clk is fine as are the /halt /reset feeds.

The /dtack pin 10 is stuck high so this look like the problem. I spent a good hour back tracking the source of /dtack through probing the various ttl chips to see were any faulty. They may well be faulty but all the chip logic is correct while the board is in this frozen state.

After all the back tracking looking for the /dtack source, it turns out /dtack is ultimately fed from A20 and A21 of the other side of the cpu and these are stuck high.

Faulty cpu?

The Last Bandit

Could be dead alright.
DTACK stuck high mean its not read any valid data, check the address bus on reset should go to 0 and read back 8 bytes before jumping

The Last Bandit

Not really a mod, more of a semi-mod I guess.

I got a couple of RAD2X adapters recently, for Nintendo and Playstation. Nintendo is great as it works with my NES,SNES,N64 and Gamecube (all are RGB modded).

Playstation works well too, however the case popped open as the strain relief is a bit too big for the case. Long story short... they appear to be the same, built a few suitable cables and works great with other consoles as well - doesn't upscale as much as the OSSC but its a lot more convenient to use and doesn't drop sync...

Steve X2

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Not really a mod, more of a semi-mod I guess.

I got a couple of RAD2X adapters recently, for Nintendo and Playstation. Nintendo is great as it works with my NES,SNES,N64 and Gamecube (all are RGB modded).

Playstation works well too, however the case popped open as the strain relief is a bit too big for the case. Long story short... they appear to be the same, built a few suitable cables and works great with other consoles as well - doesn't upscale as much as the OSSC but its a lot more convenient to use and doesn't drop sync...

Those cables are a great solution for people just starting out with older consoles on modern displays. Plug in, works
I've got a couple of the newer retrotink devices (2x pro etc) and they seem to be more or less what these cables are(same guy as well).

KeRbDoG

http://unibios.free.fr - 20/03/2020 - UNIVERSE BIOS v4.0 for MVS/AES & v3.3 for CD now Free...just don't go selling it unless you are just selling the supply/flashing of a PROM
The PICKnMIX feature for the 161-in-1 multicart alone is a great reason to get a earlier version updated

Steve X2

I picked up another 3DO for myself. This one has the new Black Dog RGB mod installed. The 240p is so much better on this one when compared to the mod i got in 2013.
The install also looks a lot cleaner.


New Black Dog RGB Mod





Older RGB mod

eddhorse

Wow thats a lot of cables, i got the USB mod a few months ago, have all the games now for it.

Steve X2

eddhorse wrote: »

Wow thats a lot of cables, i got the USB mod a few months ago, have all the games now for it.

Is that the one from mnemo, the dodgy Russian?
I've a couple of those ones, as well as his Dreamcast version. I prefer not to give him any more business due to his dodgy deeds, but not many options when it comes to the 3DO.

eddhorse

Steve X2 wrote: »

Is that the one from mnemo, the dodgy Russian?
I've a couple of those ones, as well as his Dreamcast version. I prefer not to give him any more business due to his dodgy deeds, but not many options when it comes to the 3DO.

Yeah the ridiculously dodgy looking website.
http://3do-renovation.ru/

The website isnt even working for me now.
What are his dodgy deeds?

Steve X2

eddhorse wrote: »

Yeah the ridiculously dodgy looking website.
http://3do-renovation.ru/

The website isnt even working for me now.
What are his dodgy deeds?

The current site is http://3do-mnemo.com/
He's always been a bit dodgy. I got one of the first batch of 3DO devices off him a good few years ago and the payment was ridiculously dodge(pay his friend in Poland, making sure to give extra money for a tip etc). I think its a bit better these days.

As for his dodgy deeds, he was found out to be putting time bombs in the firmware on his boards(Dreamcast for sure, not sure on the 3DO). So basically after a certain amount of time or power cycles the firmware will stop working and you just get a black screen with "Firmware Obsolete" on it. Then you need to get a firmware update from him to use it again, which wasn't available when this started happening first.

Some info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/comments/bxfbhd/confirmed_usbgdrom_firmware_contains_code_that/

McDermotX

A couple Modes from Terraonion finally showed up yesterday for the Dreamcast and one of the Saturns. Despite their dual-use, I wanted separate installs just to have things squared away - though I'd never rip apart my original launch purchases.
Couple of later console pickups will be getting the works (Dreamcast is actually off getting the HDMI mod right now so that'll have to wait).

KeRbDoG

McDermotX wrote: »

A couple Modes from Terraonion finally showed up yesterday for the Dreamcast and one of the Saturns. Despite their dual-use, I wanted separate installs just to have things squared away - though I'd never rip apart my original launch purchases.
Couple of later console pickups will be getting the works (Dreamcast is actually off getting the HDMI mod right now so that'll have to wait).

Now that Terraonion sure is fancy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpnjd8QVks

McDermotX

Aye.....excellent products, but the added duty cost does take some swallowing.
Basically looking at another 60 quid on top of the retail price + shipping if importing.

McDermotX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrQnwpSsgnc

Not mad about this thing, seems overpriced somewhat for what it is, but may appeal to some aesthetically, who are also giving up their optical drive.

Personally have a couple of replacement DC shells coming over from Australia, as I feel they still retain the original charm.

o1s1n

I wouldn't be a fan of that at all now, the end result just looks like an ugly square emulation box.

It does go back to that old question 'at what point are you no longer playing on the original console anymore?'

Even though it's still a Dreamcast internally (without a GDRom Drive) the externals being so incredibly different would be a killer for me. Just wouldn't feel right.

Inviere

o1s1n wrote: »

Even though it's still a Dreamcast internally (without a GDRom Drive) the externals being so incredibly different would be a killer for me. Just wouldn't feel right.

I reckon I'd be the same. If you're going to use original hardware, then use original hardware....it's hard to describe really, but there's definitely something lost with things like this. I like the disc swap button, and the easy access sd card slot...but otherwise, it's not quite the same.

I'd rather see solutions developed for original DC shells, like 3d printed bits that extend the sd card up towards where the gdrom drive was etc.

KeRbDoG

McDermotX wrote: »

A nice non-beiged Dreamcast would be nice alright but they are a little on the high side

Inviere

KeRbDoG wrote: »

A nice non-beiged Dreamcast would be nice alright but they are a little on the high side

Christ they are pricey aren't they?

The Last Bandit

Inviere wrote: »

Christ they are pricey aren't they?

Sure are for a third party case with an iffy label. Can of plastikote might work just as well.

McDermotX

They're always probably going to be a few euros more than you'd like to pay, if only for the engineering and design of such a niche item, but user accounts of late suggest a fairly high quality finished article.
Still in the air for me, but will chime in whenever they turn up.

eddhorse

The Fenrir is a lot cheaper for the Saturn.
Works quite well for me.