Oh hey ..good stuff , a nice chap called stevebenway gave my youtube channel a shoutout last week , which meant lots of nice new subscribers! Which was nice. :)
lots of new vids from me
oh and I finally decided to step in front of the camera!
Monday, November 14, 2011
Mod me too!
SO...actually went back and finished the megadrive mod . I did the longer version of the mod , and lo and behold it worked ! I think that the pin numbering on the "shorter" guide was off , or maybe it was the cabling I was using , but it's all working correctly now!I nabbed a replacement RGB cable and it all looks great.I went back and hotglued (as the switch holes I made were a bit too big) the switches , and replaced the red LED with a yellow one ..just ..well , just cause I could!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Mod me do!
I've had an odd few weeks or two and no mistake.
Due to a snafu with ebay (involving a parcel making an unexpected and frankly reasonless trip to Lima) I've found myself with two megadrives.Where as previsouly I was lacking in the megadrive 1 department , I am now overflowing. Rather than doing the anything sensible like , you know , selling one and making my wife happy, or trading it, I instead decided to modify one, kepping the other one as a spare.I wanted to have an uber setup that would run any cartridge I threw at it.
Well... Sega cartridge obviously.
The first part , which involved widening the cart slot wasnt too bad .Much hacking , and scraping and cutting , and after I'd bandaged my hands and wiped up the blood, I had a machine that still looked decent enough and would take the slightly wider Japanese cartridges.
The second part , the part that would show me as the uber modder that I am involved fitting two switches to the side of the machine , one to change it from 50/60hz , the other to force it between japanese and english language .Both are essential to playing import games properly.
Making the holes for the first piart wasnt too bad, although the jerry rigged drill setup I used didnt go 100 percent correctly (I'm pretty sure the skin on my thumb will grow back , although it makes typing this a lot harder .Thank God for spellchecks , thats all I can say),and eventually I got a bit gung ho and just used the side of the soldering iron to melt the slots for the switches into the side of the unit.This worked out quite well , although the computer room still smells like of burnt plastic a week later.I'd picked up two switches in maplin , and an old keyboard cable which had the right amount of cored cables inside.After breaking the trace on two jumpers on the motherboard I was ready to go.
I 'd used a guide from mmonkey's guides , which involved a few less cables , a neater design and a bit less soldering.
It was perfect , or at least it would have if it had actually worked.
Sadly some thing had gone wrong somewhere and the machine refused to start.
Eventually I got some small cables , made mini jumpers out of them and soldered them where the cut traces had been .Success , the machine was starting now! Except its now running in 60hz mode!
It shouldnt!
But!
It!
Does!
It needs an RGB cable to work in colour though..doh!
I've decided to go back to the drawing board and restart this from scratch , with a less complicated switch design.Hopefully itll work
Oh and in other news I picked up 2 fake sega 6 button pads (they work fine but appear to be made out of the same plastic used for dog -chew-toys), and somehow got a Master system converter (the big one that sits ontop of the megadrive 1 ) for a fiver off ebay.Normally there 20-40 quid so I lucked out there .Its a good thing I have the spare meg to use them on!
Due to a snafu with ebay (involving a parcel making an unexpected and frankly reasonless trip to Lima) I've found myself with two megadrives.Where as previsouly I was lacking in the megadrive 1 department , I am now overflowing. Rather than doing the anything sensible like , you know , selling one and making my wife happy, or trading it, I instead decided to modify one, kepping the other one as a spare.I wanted to have an uber setup that would run any cartridge I threw at it.
Well... Sega cartridge obviously.
The first part , which involved widening the cart slot wasnt too bad .Much hacking , and scraping and cutting , and after I'd bandaged my hands and wiped up the blood, I had a machine that still looked decent enough and would take the slightly wider Japanese cartridges.
The second part , the part that would show me as the uber modder that I am involved fitting two switches to the side of the machine , one to change it from 50/60hz , the other to force it between japanese and english language .Both are essential to playing import games properly.
Making the holes for the first piart wasnt too bad, although the jerry rigged drill setup I used didnt go 100 percent correctly (I'm pretty sure the skin on my thumb will grow back , although it makes typing this a lot harder .Thank God for spellchecks , thats all I can say),and eventually I got a bit gung ho and just used the side of the soldering iron to melt the slots for the switches into the side of the unit.This worked out quite well , although the computer room still smells like of burnt plastic a week later.I'd picked up two switches in maplin , and an old keyboard cable which had the right amount of cored cables inside.After breaking the trace on two jumpers on the motherboard I was ready to go.
I 'd used a guide from mmonkey's guides , which involved a few less cables , a neater design and a bit less soldering.
It was perfect , or at least it would have if it had actually worked.
Sadly some thing had gone wrong somewhere and the machine refused to start.
Eventually I got some small cables , made mini jumpers out of them and soldered them where the cut traces had been .Success , the machine was starting now! Except its now running in 60hz mode!
It shouldnt!
But!
It!
Does!
It needs an RGB cable to work in colour though..doh!
I've decided to go back to the drawing board and restart this from scratch , with a less complicated switch design.Hopefully itll work
Oh and in other news I picked up 2 fake sega 6 button pads (they work fine but appear to be made out of the same plastic used for dog -chew-toys), and somehow got a Master system converter (the big one that sits ontop of the megadrive 1 ) for a fiver off ebay.Normally there 20-40 quid so I lucked out there .Its a good thing I have the spare meg to use them on!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
ahh way too long between updates.Had a ton of stuff going on , and not much spare time.
Load of new updates over on the youtube channel. Finally finshed the outrun reviews , covering the msx/dos ps2 versions and having a crack at the arcade version.Did mini reviews of robocop2 chase hq on the c64 , granada on the meg and treasure island dizzy.
The current one up at the mo is Kings field , the rock hard precursor to dark souls
I covered the first part of a batman gaming retrospective over at www.gamersireland.ie too
I've the second part finished , I just have to get a chance to get it uploaded properly!
I'd a few background problems too . I'd gotten a new video capture device, and while it works fine , conicidentally I'd noticed that all the narration I recorded since was very lispy.I couldnt work out what was wrong, I dont talk with a lisp in real life , I changed the headset/rerecored in audacity , but it was still there.EVENTUALLY I worked out what had happened .I've a little usb cam on my desk .It has a mike built in (I hadnt realised this).When I first started recording youtube vids and doing recordings , I'd been using a headset , but windows had defaulted the microphone to the usb web cam one.Ironically it seems to be much better at recording my voice than the headset! Its a happy accident as if I'd heard the lispyness on the first few vids I would have given up making them!
Anything else? oh yeah I'm now the proud owner of 2 megadrive 1's .I'd bought one from a nice guy on ebay .I'd managed to get it "as is " and "possibly working" for 99p plus a tenner postage.The chap split it up into 3 parcels when sending , 1 for pads , 1 for psu and 1 for the meg.?Two of them arrived ..one (with the meg) didnt .Time passed , and in fairness to the guy he offered a full refund.JUST as I was going to drop him a mail and look for 2-3 quid back for the meg , it arrived.With a delivery docket showing it had ended up at LIMA airport .Thats in Peru. LIMA.PERU. My irish address was correct and readable.LIMA! No idea how the hell it got diverted to there.
Of course in the meantime I'd gone out and picked up a second MD 1 (I traded one of my many c64s for it).
So now I've two .One is probably going to be modded to run every region of MD cart , the other left pristine(and yeah probably traded for another console a few months from now).
Load of new updates over on the youtube channel. Finally finshed the outrun reviews , covering the msx/dos ps2 versions and having a crack at the arcade version.Did mini reviews of robocop2 chase hq on the c64 , granada on the meg and treasure island dizzy.
The current one up at the mo is Kings field , the rock hard precursor to dark souls
I covered the first part of a batman gaming retrospective over at www.gamersireland.ie too
I've the second part finished , I just have to get a chance to get it uploaded properly!
I'd a few background problems too . I'd gotten a new video capture device, and while it works fine , conicidentally I'd noticed that all the narration I recorded since was very lispy.I couldnt work out what was wrong, I dont talk with a lisp in real life , I changed the headset/rerecored in audacity , but it was still there.EVENTUALLY I worked out what had happened .I've a little usb cam on my desk .It has a mike built in (I hadnt realised this).When I first started recording youtube vids and doing recordings , I'd been using a headset , but windows had defaulted the microphone to the usb web cam one.Ironically it seems to be much better at recording my voice than the headset! Its a happy accident as if I'd heard the lispyness on the first few vids I would have given up making them!
Anything else? oh yeah I'm now the proud owner of 2 megadrive 1's .I'd bought one from a nice guy on ebay .I'd managed to get it "as is " and "possibly working" for 99p plus a tenner postage.The chap split it up into 3 parcels when sending , 1 for pads , 1 for psu and 1 for the meg.?Two of them arrived ..one (with the meg) didnt .Time passed , and in fairness to the guy he offered a full refund.JUST as I was going to drop him a mail and look for 2-3 quid back for the meg , it arrived.With a delivery docket showing it had ended up at LIMA airport .Thats in Peru. LIMA.PERU. My irish address was correct and readable.LIMA! No idea how the hell it got diverted to there.
Of course in the meantime I'd gone out and picked up a second MD 1 (I traded one of my many c64s for it).
So now I've two .One is probably going to be modded to run every region of MD cart , the other left pristine(and yeah probably traded for another console a few months from now).
Monday, September 5, 2011
Amiga!!
Picked up a lovely A600 , monitor!! and a non working a500+ via a nice chap(cheers aidan)
so going to film me fitting a hard disk ,(hopefully) in the next day or two
so going to film me fitting a hard disk ,(hopefully) in the next day or two
Muchas update!
hello, bit of an absence in posting.I' ve been a busy bee .
I've switched to doing a few single game reviews/play's
first up I 'd a look at Xybots on the Lynx
partly as I'd wanted to have a look at it , and partly as I picked up a sealed copy in the post that day!!Very nice it was too , I included a quick look at the arcade version (I've a copy of it in the ps2 via Midway Arcade hits 2)
I dug up a copy of Starace (via a ZZapp64 cover tape)next
It was not much cop (although the Music was good)even sped up!
After that , because I wanted to try a good game I looked at an old (obscure ish) favourite
Zybex
I managed to mess up a bit and used an odd copy of the Atari version , which was missing backgrounds (which is what happens when you start using dodgy disk images.)
messed up a bit with the volume levels (I'm still using Windows Movie maker, and forgot to change the sound levels when kicking off the narration!).
I rerecorded a copy of the atari port running from tape which had all the missing bits
I 've a video capture card ordered so hopefully I get it in the next month.Once I do I can use "live" games consoles , andit'll mean ps2/n64 etc reviews (As I dont really like emulating these)
Going to be posting some content for a good website , so hopefully will have more details on that when its done!
I've switched to doing a few single game reviews/play's
first up I 'd a look at Xybots on the Lynx
partly as I'd wanted to have a look at it , and partly as I picked up a sealed copy in the post that day!!Very nice it was too , I included a quick look at the arcade version (I've a copy of it in the ps2 via Midway Arcade hits 2)
I dug up a copy of Starace (via a ZZapp64 cover tape)next
It was not much cop (although the Music was good)even sped up!
After that , because I wanted to try a good game I looked at an old (obscure ish) favourite
Zybex
I managed to mess up a bit and used an odd copy of the Atari version , which was missing backgrounds (which is what happens when you start using dodgy disk images.)
messed up a bit with the volume levels (I'm still using Windows Movie maker, and forgot to change the sound levels when kicking off the narration!).
I rerecorded a copy of the atari port running from tape which had all the missing bits
I 've a video capture card ordered so hopefully I get it in the next month.Once I do I can use "live" games consoles , andit'll mean ps2/n64 etc reviews (As I dont really like emulating these)
Going to be posting some content for a good website , so hopefully will have more details on that when its done!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
outrun , last stage : Amiga , ST (GBA)
Finally got the last few conversions that I'm covering for now up on youtube
Amiga , Meg and as a surprise last entry GBA (via a sega compilation).
The Amiga was a sub par conversion of the ST, but my GOD! the intro is unbelievably bad .Someone doing a bad impression of "80's voiceover guy" , with a crappy "art of noise" sample tune playing over it...terrible!!
the Meg was fantastic, but being a sega 16 bit conversion of a sega arcade game , it looks great and plays very smoothly.Its a pity it doesn't have the extra modes the gamegear had, and a bit easy but well worth getting.
The GBA version is a bit blocky on a big screen , but pound for pound is probably closer to the arcade than the meg! Considering its a more "modern" console , its a cheat , which is why I think the meg is probably the best 16 bit version.(its my favorite handheld version though).
In the background mysteriously kega fusion suddenly started making AVI files that I didnt need to convert! Winuae was a bit fiddly to get going but seemed ok .Visual boy was grand except when I was playing the sound kept going ..but oddly enough the recorded AVI was fine! I also have CCS64 working now ( as getting winvice to record avi is a nightmare) so I'll be putting up a quick review of the c64 emulated , to match the spectrum one.
I reckon I need to slow down the output of videos , and spend a bit more time on them , which should hopefully mean I'm ah..and uming less I guess.
Probably look at one or two standalone reviews next.I'm itching to do a few Atari ones.And then start on GAuntlet...All of em!!
I'm probably going to look at
Amiga , Meg and as a surprise last entry GBA (via a sega compilation).
The Amiga was a sub par conversion of the ST, but my GOD! the intro is unbelievably bad .Someone doing a bad impression of "80's voiceover guy" , with a crappy "art of noise" sample tune playing over it...terrible!!
the Meg was fantastic, but being a sega 16 bit conversion of a sega arcade game , it looks great and plays very smoothly.Its a pity it doesn't have the extra modes the gamegear had, and a bit easy but well worth getting.
The GBA version is a bit blocky on a big screen , but pound for pound is probably closer to the arcade than the meg! Considering its a more "modern" console , its a cheat , which is why I think the meg is probably the best 16 bit version.(its my favorite handheld version though).
In the background mysteriously kega fusion suddenly started making AVI files that I didnt need to convert! Winuae was a bit fiddly to get going but seemed ok .Visual boy was grand except when I was playing the sound kept going ..but oddly enough the recorded AVI was fine! I also have CCS64 working now ( as getting winvice to record avi is a nightmare) so I'll be putting up a quick review of the c64 emulated , to match the spectrum one.
I reckon I need to slow down the output of videos , and spend a bit more time on them , which should hopefully mean I'm ah..and uming less I guess.
Probably look at one or two standalone reviews next.I'm itching to do a few Atari ones.And then start on GAuntlet...All of em!!
I'm probably going to look at
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