Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.
Arcade & Retro Repairs & Mods, all new recipe, with no added MSG...
Comments
-
-
Is there anyone within reasonable distance of wicklow that would be able to repair an Atari 1980 Asteroids deluxe? Either call out or i bring it to them. I bought it from a props company, screen and sound was disconnected (or so I'm told... might actually be broken... i only know what I've been told!!) but used to work apparently, 5+ years ago, in storage ever since. No keys. I can see it has its electrics, board, transformer etc all still inside. Need someone that knows what they're doing, I am not that person unfortunately. Any suggestions appreciated I'd love to have it working again, but no clue where to start.
2 -
I'd be very careful about the origins of that machine! You wouldn't know what kinda thing is waiting inside...
Seriously though, probably best to drill out the locks and get a proper look inside, could be the easiest fix in the world of reconnecting a wire or two. Take a few pictures and post them up here.
Don't be tempted to just turn it on and see what happens
0 -
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
Got around to powering up the funky Pioneer PX-7, a MSX1. Good news, it seems to power on just fine with a lot of relay clicking from the video overlay board during the initial power on.
The keyboard cable was cut off at the keyboard itself with no sign of the computer connector side. A new DIN13 cable sourced, looks like it was meant to be a video cable :) there is a RGB cable set with additional shielding, makes the cable quite a bit ticker than the original.
Cable buzzed out;
Connector, looking into the male pins 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Cable colours; 1 - Purple 2 - Red Fat 3 - Blue Fat 4 - Green Fat 5 - Grey 6 - Shield Red Fat 7 - Shield Blue Fat 8 - Shield Green Fat 9 - Yellow 10- Green 11- White 12- Red 13- GND
Service manual found, page.10 - believe that is the computer connector pinout numbering. I will use a multimeter to check the location of the +5v to confirm I've got the orientation correct.
When I get a chance, I will get this soldered up to the remenantes of the old connector with a plan to have all this hidden inside the keyboard itself.
3 -
Better quality copy of the service manual here. Page 43 is the most useful. Pins of the DIN13 line up directly to the CN1 connector in the keyboard, so happy days. Tested the +5V pin location and I have the orientation correct. Also checked the two GND locations on the connector in the keyboard so I know whats pin 1 on that connector also.
So below is the Pin/CN number, what the pin is meant to be and then the colour in the DIN13 cable I picked up.
1 - KX6 - Purple 2 - KX5 - Red Fat 3 - KX2YC - Blue Fat 4 - KX1YB - Green Fat 5 - KX7. - Grey 6 - KX3. - Shield Red Fat 7 - KX4YD - Shield Blue Fat 8 - KX1YB - Shield Green Fat 9 - +5V. - Yellow 10- PCW. - Green 11- GND - White 12- CAPS - Red 13- GND. - GND of cable SHIELD-SHARED GND - all GND are connected within system also
A little bit of soldering and wire shrinkwrap...
It has Basic! Queue my 133t programming skillz
The titling cartridge- some funky key combinations needed.
Now to see about a flashcart type thing for it. Open to suggestions.
Post edited by KeRbDoG on3 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Did an IPS screen upgrade to my PSP 1003 model.
Using the solder glue to bridge two points on the board to readjust screen geometry was a little tough as it was needle point stuff.
The screen is a little off as a result but I think I can live with it.
For the sake of €30 it makes a huge difference. Screen is much brighter, colours are a lot better, the image is much sharper and there's hardly any ghosting.
Definitely recommend trying it out.
Can post videos if people want to see it in action.
edit So the screen crapped out after about an hour. Took it apart again and the solder glue crap is just that - crap.
Used alchohol and heat to clean it off of the board then just slipped off the leg of a resistor and used that to bridge the two points that are needed to do... something... to the new screen. All of the guides say that you must do it but not why.
It must have something to do with the screen's sync, I guess, as when it became disconnected from the solder glue paste stuff it would barely create an image on the screen and would just randomly flicker.
Either way all sorted now, just had a bash of Burnout and it looks beautiful.
Post edited by MrVestek on3 -
I never really had the Saturn pegged as a machine to watch for leaking caps, guess I need to update that assumption! Model 2 Japanese Saturn here, with noticeable signs of cap leakage and buildup of crust.
^^ a small vinegar bath, and a rinse with IPA and it's looking normal again (this is the before pic). Will need to buy some parts to test it, but hopefully its been saved!
Post edited by Inviere on2 -
So here are some of my recent adventures in attempting to mod my Dreamcast with the GD-IDE mod from Dragoncity.
Modding the GD-Rom controller board seemed successful at first but I couldn't for the life of me get Dreamshell to read from the drive.
Turns out this was because I was using a 40 pin IDE cable to the IDE to SATA converter and not an 80 pin cable, so got one of those ordered.
In the meantime I decided to re-flash the bios on my Dreamcast (got a lad on here to do that mod for me years ago when I had no skills whatsoever with a soldering iron) in an attempt to get Dreamshell to read from the HDD (I hadn't figured out what the problem was as of yet). So when messing around with the Dreamshell 4 RC5 disc I decided to try another firmware. Big... BIG mistake. YUGE. Turns out I wrote the damned Katana Devkit bios to the Dreamcast. Works fine until you try to boot any kind of disc and then freezes.
Balls. Absolutely no way to get back into any kind of software to reflash the chip. So... time to try something I've never done before and remove / replace a surface level component.
Followed a guide from Mark Fixes Stuff's YouTube channel and managed to successfully pull the chip cleanly without ripping any pads.
Then had to wait a week or so for my new Japanese cake bios to arrive from France.
So time to do more work on this thing than I had planned...
Managed to get it on there cleanly enough. Not the tidiest soldering job but I checked all pins with the multimeter and none of them were connected to eachother. I did also connect pin 44 to the appropriate place after taking this photo.
Gratuitous workbench / coffee table shot!
Booted her up through gritted teeth and... success! She lives! So now to finish the HDD mod... I reflowed some of the solder points on the GD-Rom controller board and tested all connections to make sure that I had continuity to the correct places on the GD-Rom connector and... well here are the results:
So now I just need to prep the HDD properly from the US Tocsec collection (with some PAL exclusives thrown in) and figure out how to route the cables and where I'm going to keep the hard drive. I'll probably 3D print something that can sit underneath the Dreamcast for that.
Still though... successful mod is successful! The beauty of the GD-IDE mod from Dragoncity too is that you can use both the hard drive and the GD-Rom drive at the same time, you don't have to sacrifice one for the other.
1 -
Dang this level of soldering was painful. Trying to get the ribbon cable to solder directly to the pads on the board was *so painful*. Three hours it took to make sure that everything had continuity and that nothing was bridged.
Of course, it took someone on the Mark Fixes Stuff board to tell me that flex cables like this can be flattened out if they're bending a bit (which it was, which is what made it so awkward) to tell me that a regular household clothes iron can flatten them out. Ohh well... it's done now with continuity and no bridging.
Also an update to the Dreamcast HDD mod, got it working perfectly!
For anyone wondering how I tried to tidy away the hard drive, I 3D printed a HDD bracket and mounted it to the underside of the table like this:
0 -
-
Advertisement
-
Always curious what a GD-ROM setip was like with the Sega Naomi system so I had a notion - why not find out!
Picked up a non-working GD-ROM drive, no idea what was wrong with it but I guessed its drive might just be worn out. Luckily I still had the removed from the Japanese Dreamcast I had picked up. At this stage I didn't have a power cable nor SCSI data cable so had to wait. Eventually picked up both of those cables and then went about doing some testing. Both the fan and indeed drive seemed very clunky/noisey when tested with a 'normal' dreamcast disc. Cleaned it out, replaced the internal fan and popped in the ex-Dreamcast drive and all seemed like it was working by just listening.
So, I guess I need a game then? Enter a long wait until I found one which wasn't a sports title - yup, all of the games can be hand for the NetDimm cart I have but, wanted something non-generic :) eventually found 'Melty Blood: Act Cadenza' pop up on eBay in an auction, and won it cheaply enough. Note the black yoke there at the top of the case. Thats the unique to game security chip that needs to be installed in the RAM 'Dimm' board.
Connect it all together (ignore the Pi, its mounted there for the NetBoot'ness)
Change the jumpers on the NetDimm from booting from NetBoot to GD-ROM boot, installed the security chip for the game and power it all on, expecting an error of some sort but...no! It started up and read the disc just fine!
Boom! Worked!
Happy days - need to get a mount bracket for the drive as the one that came with it doesn't mount on the wood plank in the cab as is. Again, yes all of these GD-ROM games are now downloadable for pushing over the network to the Naomi but wanted to see how it actually worked :)
6 -
In the process of moving house and had a disaster today. Anyone know where I could get replacement glass with a slight smoke on it (if that's what you call it) from an electrocoin xenon. Wonder if I could get perspex instead of glass or what the story is. I have a piece of metal that the glass sits into that I kept. Gutted as I've had it almost 20 years :(
0 -
-
-
-
-
Also, update on that Game Gear. Work done all in all:
Recapped all the boards. Replaced the clapped out speaker.
Replaced LCD with McWill clone from AliExpress, some shots of it here:
As you can see I had to dremel out some of the face plate to get the new LCD to actually fit. Here's some video of it in action:
Really happy with the results. I could have done a much better job with the new bezel but the new screen didn't really come with clone specific instructions. Really what I should have done was stuck the sticky stuff for the screen to the original screen's rubber to make it look a bit tidier from the front but... ahh whatever it works now.
Speaking of clones I have an Everdrive clone on the way from AliExpress now too!
1 -
-
-
Advertisement
-
