New LCD for the Dreamcast...

Found this monitor for $19.99 whilst digging around at Goodwill.

It's a Dell 17" monitor. The main reason for getting it, other than it was cheap, was that the screen also rotates to vertical. I wanted that feature to play some Dreamcast shooting games that had the option to rotate the screen to vertical (Ikaruga, Triggerheart). Alas, the screen rotates clockwise; vertical mode in shooting games rotate the screen counter-clockwise.

...

I could mod the stand/screen lock thing, but I just took it as a loss. Eff it. Games look better on this LCD than they do on the old one I had.

As it goes for modding of any sort...I have to put it on the back burner yet again. My tendinitis flared up again, so it hurts to grip things for more than 5 seconds. I'm hoping that this episode doesn't last as long as it did the first time. I took a day from work today to let it rest. I didn't do much typing (until now) or writing or any grip activity. Meh.

I'm gonna nurse this until I'm decent again. Until then, I'll still have to plan the mods on the PC Engine, the SCART to Component converter, and the RGB to VGA converter...as well as the sync stripper AND getting my Famicom fixed up. Ugh.

A "Sh*t Brix" moment...

As a favor to an Everdrive forum member, I was testing a game that they were having trouble with with the Twin Fami and my Fami.

Game worked fine when I tested it with the Twin Fami. When I went to test it with the Fami, no video came up. I thought I was using the wrong adapter, but even after swapping that out, it didn't work.

... This was all on my LCD...

I opened it up real quick to see if there was any broken connections from moving it; I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

I took it out to the Wega to test it and it worked fine out there. Since I had it all hooked up, I tested the game out there and had no glitches whatsoever.

Wow...dafuq happened there?

I recently went and looked at the guide I initially used to A/V mod the Fami a while back and it looks like they added more information and a different method to mod. I may just go ahead and update the mod. It involves socketing the PPU, so I'm gonna get to practice my desoldering skills.

If I can offer any advice....

Don't start a mod if you haven't eaten anything. If you're hypoglycemic, eat something before you even think of holding that soldering iron.

That was my case this evening. I'm at the point that I don't care if the "mod" (just a special cable for the RGB PCE to go from a 8 pin mini DIN for a cleaner look on the PCE to a 9 pin D-sub) works or not. I already screwed up the alignment of the sheath of the 8 pin mini DIN...wasn't even thinking. If it doesn't work, then I'll just remake it...this time getting food in me.

Figured out the switch...

The little switch (really a relay) that I wondered about working or not in the Twin Fami does work. I took the top off after I posted to check if I had it connected, which it was. Since I had it open, I turned it on in disk mode and put a disk in.

Seems like the relay engages only during disk access. It's really not a strong switch of sorts, but it works nonetheless.

So, yay for learning.

Twin Fami de-funking complete!

Wow and wow. That was a trial to get back together. There's a hefty amount of wiring in there, but all has been done. It's at the point where it'n not reeking as bad as when I first got it, but the smell isn't all over the board anymore. The mainboard (the cassette part) cleaned up real well; no cigarette smell there. There wasn't much on the power supply board, but the disk assembly still had a bit of smoke smell in it. I'm OK with it, to be honest. There's still some smell coming from the back vents, but that's tolerable.

Now, with the pics.

Partway through the reassembly, I remembered to start taking pics. Here it is mostly put back together. 

LED swap out. I can get them out, no problem, but the cathode solder point just didn't want to cooperate. I just took a wire from there and lead it to the solder point on the bottom. 

I think this is some sort of stopper that engages when the Twin Fami is in Disk mode. Seeing that I don't have many disk games yet, I'm not gonna worry about this now. It wasn't engaging when I hooked everything back up. Maybe I left the connector to the board off. I'll check later, but it's not bugging me now.

...Yeah, I dunno what these are for. It's some kind of loop back for the Disk system and the Fami maniboard. I messed up the reassembly, but I figured what I did wrong.

*insert "So Fresh So Clean" - Outkast here*

This switch right here is notorious for getting really dirty. I took it apart (see the stopper pic) and scrubbed it like heck. I am pleased with this. 

The Disk System. If I could, I would so change the disk eject button. It doesn't show it, but the button is yellow...just destroys the theme...or complements it (Go Ducks!).

This is another thing I want to change out; the D-pads and the Start/Select buttons. I may just get a green that complements it or just raid a NES controller and swap out the buttons then. The green area where the "1" and "2" are were really dingy. Some warm water, soap, and some major scrubbing with a soft brush cleaned it right up.

And now the LED. It originally was red, which just clashed and annoyed me. I figured this looked nicer. I changed all my Nintendo consoles to a green power LED, so this fits perfectly. 

Cleaning up that cig smell...

...and I forgot to take pics. In my defense, my phone was on the verge of death when I got the wild hare to start disassembling it.

Anyway, got the Twin Fami scrubbed down so everything looks nice and neat. All the cigarette smoke laden dust and other crap has been brushed off, cart slot cleaned, and power supply checked and now airing out in my garage for another day or so.

I don't think the one pic I took of the Twin Fami showed how dusty it was, especially on the Cassette/Disk switch. After the scrubbing, everything looks pristine, especially the controllers. I may also get my soldering iron out while I have the board out and swap out the red power LED for a green one.

Pics of the cleaned Twin Fami coming up in a day or 2.

I also managed to get today a game for the 3DS: Super Street Fighter IV!

New GET!s for my collection...(I have a horribly expensive hobby)

But I guess I could've been collecting more expensive stuff like cars or something, right? That's way worse, right?

Anyway, here's my latest GET!s for my collection.

It's been something I've been always wanting to add. That's a Twin Famicom (AN-505). This one has the turbo controllers. 

That's Fighting Street, AKA Street Fighter for PC Engine CD. And the Famicom disk is a random billiards game that I got sent with the Twin Famicom to test the disk system. 

All of these courtesy of WINDY GAMING and Chris D. Seriously, I think I'm gonna get all my retro stuff from him from now on. 

So far, the only thing that's bugging me is that the Twin Famicom just REEKED of cigarette smoke. I don't think Chris smokes since the other consoles I got from him never smelled like this, so this might have been the previous owner of it. Right now, I have the Twin Famicom and the adapter in a plastic bin with an old sock filled with activated carbon. If you're wondering, I use activated carbon in my fridge and freezer instead of baking soda as it gets rid of any smells completely. I'm hoping the same would be for the cigarette smell. 

I still need to disassemble it to clean it (it's just been tested by Chris), so that would be another project for tomorrow. Pics (possibly) to follow. 

Made a little scanline generator...

It took some time, but I finally finished up a scanline generator that I've been tempted to make time and time again. Took way longer than I wanted to, but that's what happens with my projects.

Close up of the internals. That's a 74HC74 and 74HC125. 

More internals. The 2 switches control Even/Odd number scanlines and Thin/Thick scanlines.

Closed up. The project box I'm using I got from work. It used to house upgrade parts for hearing aids. They apparently get a ton of these and they just throw them away.

And now, for comparison shots. These are all from the Dreamcast that I VGA modded a while ago on a LCD monitor. Using Street Fighter Alpha 3 for the following pics.

This is straight VGA.

Scanline generator in. I didn't bother doing Even/Odd comparisons since it's hard to tell, but this one is with Thin width (or height) scanlines. Little better definition on Ryu's arms as well as his gi. 

With Thick scanlines. I've added this on because the guide I was following mentioned that for larger resolution monitors, sitting father away made it look a little better. I've yet to try it on my bigger TV.

Well, 3 hrs later, and this happened. It was a fun little project, but since I did it so late, it was also a little annoying. 

Thanks to Mmmonkey for the guide. I may or may not make another one just because I have 2 more sets of those ICs ready (I had to buy them in a set of 3 online).