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

Update on these SNES region adapters, perhaps give them a miss.

I was trying out my new modded 1chip SNES and the pico fuse in it blew. Not something I've ever seen a SNES do.

I did have the region adapter running fine with my Super Famicom so it's not necessarily the cause, however it would be a massive coincidence if it wasn't. (games were running fine, I put the region adapter in as a physical bypass for a US game and then the console wouldn't switch on)

All sorted now but I think I might be finding an alternative solution for my US SNES games. Might finally cave and buy a US SNES.

OR….give that badly yellowed SFC a new home inside this…

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005007212175033.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2vnm4itemAdapt

^^ Replacement shell for SFC with universal Snes cart slot

Full 3D scan of the separate parts. Would need some editing to do the job though.

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/super-famicom-pal-snes-console-scan.5499/

Dug out the Sega Dreamcast over the weekend to try the translation of 'Rent a Hero' (o1s1n mentioned it on here) to find my clone GDEmu was giving me problems. So it isn't the clone device, but rather the SD card extender so it can be mounted/presented nicely.

Seemily the C2 capactor on the sd card extender board can give issues, vague info here, so I replaced that. Unsure if that improved anything but found the issue is more how the extender sd card sits in the GDEmu - it is very hit/miss. You can install the SD card direct in the GDEmu with no issues. I'm sure after the console gets a bump it will act up again. Might get/print another mount and buy a new extender card in the future to replace as I don't really fancy hacking up the board.

tbh, keeping it barebones might make a whole lot more sense. Could print this 'barebone' tray which means you still use the GDEmu SD card slot, keep the airflow around the machine/psu and not risk the chance of an SD card falling into the console when inserting or removing it :D

Update - works great!

On the game, yup - it kicked into the opening song. Games need to not take themselves seriously more often!

Where is everyone getting their 3d prints like this dreamcast tray? I've around 20 things to get printed. I hear "jlcpcb" are good but it might be cheaper to buy a printer myself in the long run. Just nowhere to keep it.

The absolute gent that is Kerbdog printed out one of those Dreamcast trays for me, it indeed works a charm and is super easy to install. Thanks dude!

First piece screws down under the GDEMU.

Second piece clicks into the lid to form this shape

No more gaping hole in the console.

This should redirect that much needed cool air from the fan back to the PSU

Haha! I was thinking exactly the same thing. Can't help but think of mint when you see blue specks in white like that.

Have any of you guys ever tried Novus acrylic and plastic scratch remover? It's fantastic stuff.

I've had an old marquee that came with one of my cabinets aeons ago and it's always been scratched to bits. It's ancient so to be expected.

The scratches were actually making the light refract and really impact the clarity.

Bought myself one of these kits:

Novus Scratch Removal Kit

It's a three stage kit. First you apply the deep scratch remover, than a fine scratch remover and finally a buff/sealing coat at the end.

There are still some deep scratches but it's dramatically improved the clarity.

You can really see the light spreading out through the whole marquee rather than getting trapped in all those scratches under the artwork in the first photo.

Been looking around the house now to see if there's anything else I can use it on 😁

Oh nice one! VuPlex was one of the other products that came up when I was searching for something to use, will check it out 👍️

Some new updates to the Sega Club Kart Prize thread:

Took on a challenging mod over the summer just gone (challenging in the sense of it being microscope level soldering), and it beat me….I black screened the console. Not giving up, I bought another one…and done the exact same thing. Frustrating, as my soldering was apparently very good (as mentioned by me giving pics of the installation to the designer of the mod), so I never knew if it was my error, or an error in the software part of the mod etc. Really annoyed me, it's one thing failing, but turning working machines into non working machines really pisses me off. I didn't pick a soldering up for a good few weeks after that.

Fast forward to today, and I see the mod creator giving another user some advice on trouble shooting. He mentioned a particular trace to check, and for me, that was a kick start to revisit the mod and check that trace on mine. What do you know, no continuity. My soldering looked ok under the microscope, and these points being tiny (as in not do-able without a scope of some kind) I never wanted to put too much heat through the tiny points. So I reflowed the connection there under the scope, and it took me a few goes even with ample flux, but it eventually appeared to flow correctly. Continuity now showing on the meter, I power the machine up, and what do you know, the damn thing works now.

Chuffed is an understatement. This one sat on my mind for literally weeks, wondering what the heck I'd done wrong, was it hardware, was it software, was it a bridge somewhere, etc. I'll go back to it soon enough now and finish it off properly!

Yep, Tomlov was a godsend for this one. Fantastic piece of kit, chuffed with it.

Hot air definitely not, the moving air mass would blow these parts away like dust. Some of the mod components are so so small, literally like a granules of sugar (resistors and capacitors.) Solder paste possibly, but again with the tiny size here, it'd get messy. What worked was surface tension of liquid flux, a well cleaned and tinned needle tip on the iron, and the magnification.

I'll finish it off at some stage and throw a thread up. It really wasn't a difficult job with the right gear, but when you're not sure where you went wrong amid notable hardware and software modifications, and all you have is a black screen, it can seem more difficult than it actually is. This one's on me though, I should have traced out the connections really, but got too deep in and got flustered with the whole thing.

Have you tried removing all your Frankenstein (!) setup and just plugging a regular jamma board into the jamma harness to see if anything appears on the Blast monitor?

Oh no way? I didn't realise blasts weren't Jamma compatible - I see they're either JVS or VGA only. That's annoying.

I wonder did something on your blast chassis short due to having the second monitor connect via VGA. Might be worth having a look at the chassis for any scorch marks or popped components.

Might also be worth turning the lights off and seeing if you can see visible arcing.

If it was just the anode coming lose that would be visible straight away.

Another worry is the tube being cracked, hopefully that's not it!

Ohh and regarding the blast. You can get a jamma loom for it and I do have one, you just need an adapter to adapt the db-16 adapter into jamma.

You don't need a complicated device to do this either as the video signals are pretty much the same as VGA. 31khz jamma is just 480p at 60 FPS. The video signal is the same you just need to change the clock source with an adapter and use something like a pass through adapter to inject it into the jamma loom, basically.