Recent content by XCVG

  1. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    Alright, enough putting this off... Building this was a lot of fun. It was strange to get back into console modding after years of software and vintage PCs, but I was reminded of why I liked doing it so much back in the day. I was also reminded of some of the less than fun parts- there were...
  2. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    So I was going to do the postmortem but before I do that I think I'll rewind a bit, with a quick recap of the progress made between the last progress update and the project complete post. At that point I almost had it playable, and I think I did have it wired up enough and fired up for testing a...
  3. XCVG

    "Plywood and perfboard" Consolized MVS

    After a few months of bodging, cursing, and waiting for parts to arrive, I've finally completed my consolized MVS project. You can follow the journey up to this point on the build log thread, and I'll probably post a postmortem there soon. I thought I had a really nice capture of Metal Slug...
  4. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    It's done. It would have been done earlier, but I had the machine 90% assembled and then the NeoBiosMasta popped off. Cue some cursing and tearing down half the machine. Murphy's Law in action, I suppose... Many more pics and a full postmortem tomorrow! EDIT: "Project Complete" post...
  5. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    I was able to get the controllers wired and test the unit today, but I still need to at least mount the MVS board for it to be considered usable. I'm still waiting on a few miscellaneous odds and ends like the cooling fan and the screws to mount the USB port. It seems to work well enough to...
  6. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    So I've been too lazy busy to post, but I've actually made a lot of progress over the past week or so! I received and installed my Unibios, built the power, audio, and video boards, and assembled a few key parts of the case. The first time I installed the Unibios, it didn't work, either...
  7. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    It's late but I'm not dead. It's been a month since the last update and weeks since the last time I worked on this project. I spent most of April doing game jams (this one and this one if you're curious) and I think I managed to do the stereo mod and a little bit of cardboard prototyping for...
  8. XCVG

    Question SNES heat sinks and such

    It's probably best to switch out the 7805 for a modern switching regulator anyway. The 7805 is a linear regulator that more or less throws away extra voltage as heat, which is going to reduce battery life.
  9. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    It's alive! Well, actually, it's been alive for about a week now, but I've been too busy to post. A few things have happened on this project over the past week or so. My Puzzle Bobble cartridge finally showed up! This was a bit of a surprise since it had disappeared completely from the...
  10. XCVG

    Late night modding

    I finally did the RGB mod to my N64! All the N64s I have left are moddable, so I modded my "original" N64 (which I bought in 2010 or something). I built a THS7374 amplifier on perfboard. It worked after I added a missing jumper and reflowed the pins on the chip (hand soldering SMD sucks, I...
  11. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    So it's been a busy week, but despite that I managed to make some progress on this. I started by testing some RGB stuff. I tried my Genesis with my Startech scaler, which didn't work at all. I'm not sure if it just won't accept 15khz RGB, if it won't accept csync, or if I miswired my...
  12. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    I hacked up both of the "final" controllers over the past few days. The victim await its fate. Interestingly, the X/Y buttons are concave like a North American SNES controller. These are not as good as the premium one I bought for testing, but the difference isn't that great and they were a...
  13. XCVG

    Post your workstation!

    I don't have room for a dedicated electronics workstation. This is more or less representative of what my work table looks like when I'm working on electronics projects.
  14. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    My test controllers arrived and I gave them a shot. I bought a RETROFLAG SNES-style USB controller along with a Retro-Bit Sega-licensed Saturn USB controller. I tried playing some Neo Geo games in an emulator and quickly realized that I suck a basically every game except Metal Slug. Oh...
  15. XCVG

    Plywood and Perfboard Consolized MVS

    Very neat! The joysticks in particular look awesome. Honestly if this was a system for home I would be very tempted to build my own- I've used Seimitsu parts before and they're very nice. I actually have the parts to build an AD725-based video encoder somewhere... but what I don't have is a...
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