Some PlayStation things going on...

My co-worker and I have been discussing mods for PS3, PS2, and PS1. He's been thinking about modding all his old PlayStations. So I've been suggesting some YouTube videos that I have followed. He managed to get his PS3 modded and working perfectly. That made me take a look at all my old PlayStations. 

There are some new PS2 mods recently, the newest one being Multi-purpose Memory Card Emulator (MMCE). It uses either an open source PS2 memory card (SD2PSX) or the Memory Card Pro 2 from 8-bit Mods. I opted for one that I found on Aliexpress from BitfunX that is based off the SD2PSX. I followed a tutorial from Tito of Macho Nacho Productions to get my SD card set up and read for when the memory card came in. 

I got the SD card loaded with the proper files and put it in the memory card as soon as it arrived. I did all the settings that Tito mentioned in his tutorial on OPL, but it wasn't loading the games I had on the memory card properly. To make it work, I had to change the timing settings that Tito mentioned back to what the original settings were. 

I also spent some time to get my old setup on the PS2 updated. With my old Free McBoot memory card, I updated it so it would work a bit better with my 1TB hard drive and also another old SD to memory card to load games (MX4SIO). I really don't use the MX4SIO as much anymore, but it probably will come in handy if I need to test a game or something in the future. It wasn't much when I purchased it (~$20), and I did buy it from a well known creator in the retro gaming community, so the cost is justified.

I then moved on to the PS3. It's been a while since I've played with the custom firmware (CFW) that I had installed back in 2018...at least that's what the last homebrew I installed said. I first took care of updating all the apps that I needed for installing and playing backups. It took a few minutes to get that all up to date and tested. 

I went and tried to remember how to install disc images to the hard drive. I've tried both disc images and package (pkg) files. I had to check some YouTube videos on how to get the disc images on the drive, but the pkg files needed a better refresher course on getting to work. I had to install a few more apps to get the downloaded pkg files to work properly.

I spent the last few days getting games installed and tested. The main game I wanted to really play through was a game called Folklore. I remember trying the demo and thought it was a pretty neat game. I spent a few hours playing it and having fun. 

I'm planning on getting my PSP and PS Vita updated as well. It's been some time since I've messed around with them. I'm really not worried about my PSX, as I already have one modded with an XStation ODE. I have another one that needs to have an XStation installed, but I'll have to do that on another day.

2025 is a GO!

Looks like I missed a whole month of stuff to post...anyway.

 

 

I managed to finally get my hands on a Mister! This is a lower cost board that does the same things the OG DE-10 Nano does. I really can't explain fully what it does off the top of my head, but THIS WEBSITE explains it better than I probably could.

I got this since a lot of retro gaming enthusiasts highly recommend it. After playing around with it for a few days, I'll agree. It works way better than my old Raspberry Pi 3b does playing retro games. The fact that the Mister plays N64 and Saturn, often hard to emulate consoles, nearly flawlessly sold me. 

I've been working on getting my office in order. So far, I've got most of my HDMI connected consoles all on switches connected to my main HDTV. So far, I have a PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, an Amazon Fire Cube, and the Mister connected to it. I have several ports open so I can connect my RetroTINK 5x Pro, RetroTINK 2x Pro, or OSSC at any time.

Lastly, I've been 3D printing some display mounts for my completed LEGO Star Wars builds. I've had my X-Wing hidden from view for a while. It's nice to finally have it displayed on a shelf with other Star Wars builds. I also printed some stands for the Speed collection cars that display them a lot better than just laying flat on my shelf.

At this point, I really don't know how much I'll be posting in 2025. It's not that I'm not doing projects (I am, but not at a daily pace). I'm just tired. I'll post if I feel something is post-worthy. For now though, let's welcome 2025!

XYZ Davinci Mini W 3D Printer...

I got this XYZ Davinci Mini W from a family member. If I recall, they got this for free from an online group. It's a small desktop printer, having a print volume of 150mm x 150mm x150mm. It's not bad for a starter printer, to be honest. It gets those interested in 3D Printing a chance to get their curiosities sated.

A few things I'm not liking about this printer is that the print bed isn't heated. A heated bed usually helps with bed adhesion for that first print layer and helps keep the print from falling over. For this situation, it works fine with laying painter's tape on the print bed and use a glue stick to help with bed adhesion.

Another thing is that you can't use any slicer to print on this. You need to use XYZ's software in order to print on it. That means, for some printers, that the printer needs to be connected to a PC all the time. The W on this printer means that it can connect through WiFi, but it still needs to be connected to a PC to set up the WiFi. I still need to get this set up.

Lastly, the printer can only use XYZ's filament spools. It has a DRM chip that knows (through the software) if there's an official spool or not. I had a spool that's XYZ branded with the DRM chip on it, but the filament was getting bad. I searched for any updates for the printer and found one forum that had update information for the printer. I followed the instructions and updated the firmware to a more current one. With that update, it eliminates the DRM filament spools requirement and allows any filament to be used.

With the printer updated, I used some spare filament that I kept to do a calibration cube print. I got everything set up in the software on my PC. There was an option to do a bed leveling 

After having the software slice the print, I sent the commend to print to the printer.

Printer in action! The fans are a bit loud, but it worked as it should. Before I started the print, I put some painter's tape and used a glue stick to get a good first layer adhesion. It took about 10 or so minutes for the print to finish.

So. How did it do?

Honestly, the print came out pretty good. I did measure the dimensions and it did pretty well. There might be a slight elephant's foot effect, but nothing that a little slicer setting couldn't fix.

I'm planning to let my son use this to introduce him to 3d printing. He's shown some interest since I've since I've got my Ender 3 Pro and FLSun QQ-S Pro and sidelined my Anet A8. I hope that interest is still there. It'll be easier for him to learn with this super simple, all-in-one software.

Working on the cocktail table...

Well, Happy Birthday to me (10.27), first off! 😋 Nothing special today, just chilling.

I "teased" a little pic of my current project...

 It was the control panel off of a Taito cocktail table. It was working, but there was some things I felt I needed to update on it. Mainly the actual controls.

Though I don't mind the nostalgic feel of the old leaf switches, the actual directions were not triggering as quick as I'd like it to. Some directions weren't triggering at all. I had to change things up and use clicky buttons like most newer controls use. I took the control panel out and started to make a map of the wiring.

The old panel just used a piece of plywood. The holes were different sizes, the joystick wouldn't work with the joysticks that I wanted to use, and the overlay on the control panel needed a refresh. I picked up a slightly thinner plywood sheet and cut it to the same size as the old panel. Using the 1 1/8" drill bit I bought for the Atomiswave project to make the holes for the buttons and joystick. I was able to mark off where all the mounting screws go and drill them out. After everything was done, I sanded them smooth. 

 I got around to crimping wires down and verifying that all the buttons were triggering properly

I made a plug in harness for it and finished up getting the wiring cleaned up.

I chose this image for the control panel overlay. I had it printed on a plastic-like material. Holes were cut and buttons and joystick was installed. 

Next was to tackle a proper mount for the game mainboard. This is how I received it, with the board "secured" down with 2 sheetrock screws. Didn't look good.

I also wanted to tackle another issue. The 60 in 1 board needs a 3rd button to easily go through the settings menu. There was no third button on the control panel. To "fix" this, I used these metal angle brackets that I got for another project to hold additional buttons. I drilled out the holes in the bracket to fit some mini push buttons I got for the Neo Geo cab project 5 or so years ago. I also ground down the edges of the bracket because they felt very sharp. 

To mount the main board, I used some old OSB that I had from my garage shelf project 4 years ago and cut it down to fit the board. I also printed some PCB standoffs so the main board isn't sitting directly on the wood. The OSB was sanded down smooth and screwed into the cabinet with some self tapping screws.

In order to get the 2 buttons that I need for the menu installed, I soldered connections to the converter board (Konami CP to JAMMA) and made a harness for it. I installed the button panel I made near the first player control panel.

Here's the updated control panel installed. 

I had a few issues with the first test. The biggest one was that the down direction for player 2 wasn't triggering. I check for connectivity issues from switch to harness and there was no connection at all. After some troubleshooting, it turns out that the wire in my harness wasn't crimped properly. After crimping a new connector, it finally started working. 

The next issue was the joystick itself. It was hard to play most games, mainly Ms. Pac-Man. It was proving difficult to switch directions, especially when playing with the speed option on "fast". 

The culprit was the joystick restrictor. I didn't think anything of it being a round restrictor. Playing any game with 8 way movement worked really good. However, on games that use the cardinal directions (ie. Ms. Pac-Man), it didn't work as great. I printed this 4 way restrictor and installed them. I tested both orientations (square for 8 way-ish, diamond for just the cardinal directions). The diamond orientation made it much easier to play Ms. Pac-Man, but hard to play Xevious or 1942. In the square orientation, it made Ms. Pac-Man a little more tolerable to play, but not the best. I decided to leave it at the square orientation for now. I just need to install the restrictor on the second player side and we're done with controls. It's now decently playable.

The next task is to get this monitor fixed. It's tinted red a bit, and the top (really, the right) of the screen has a little collapse on it. Might be an easy fix, but I need to figure out what monitor is in there and if I'm able to pick up a capacitor kit for it.

For now, though, the cocktail table is working a lot better than when I got it. Stay tuned for more work on this cab!

Advances in 3D printing...

The look-back of my blog also brought out the first 3d print that I had commissioned a while ago. 

I had this printed a while back to fix my Virtual Boy. The original clip for the stand has the tendency of breaking. Someone in a Virtual Boy forum designed a clip that can be 3d printed. This print uses ABS plastic and a bigger nozzle. It came out pretty good for older 3d printing machines. But I wanted to see how good my printer makes it using PLA Plus.

Mind the filament. I use this filament for prototyping and for toys for my wife to sell at bazaars. With supports and a smaller diameter nozzle, I got this. I put a 25% infill and a .2mm print height, the part came out a little cleaner. I used a different orientation than the guy did with the original print. How strong this print is? I'm not sure. I'll have to dig out my Virtual Boy and install it. 

It's kinda cool to see how much 3d printing tech has come. I'm pretty sure the slicer used for the first print needed a bit of gcode knowledge to get to print. With programs like Simplify 3D and Prusa Slicer, it made it much simpler to get a nice print like the one I did. I'll have to remember to install this thing soon.

Looking back at my blog...

I just did a brief look back at my blogs here. 

Many missing pictures from older mods that I've done. The biggest one that I miss was the PC Engine Duo R mod that I did for my friend. 

...Man, that was a great mod. Flush mounted an old SNES Multi-out connector with all connections there, component and audio RCA connectors, stealth mounted region switch. One of my favorite, but daunting mods that I've done. And I think I did this before I got my current soldering station as well.

Then there was the Gameboy Macro that I made using an old Nintendo DS Lite. There's a lot I could have done to make the case fit up better, but as I do, I rushed it. Regardless, it still works and is still working.

Then there was this atrocity of a Neo Geo controller.

I thought I'd go back and update the pics on those old posts, but I'm lazy. As long as the story is there, that's good enough.

What to do with an old Asus EEE PC...

Back in...um...late 2000s-early 2010s, I bought a refurbished Asus EEE PC from Woot!, back in the early stages of that website that sold only one thing starting at 10:00p PST every night until 9:59p the following day or the item was sold out. It was cheap, it ran Windows XP fairly well, just had enough power and RAM to (at the time) read forums that I was subscribed to and blogging.

After a while, it became unbearably slow for "modern" (again, at the time) internet usage. Eventually, I would invest in a decent tablet and use it for online activities, mainly YouTube. The EEE PC ended up just sidelined indefinitely, and placed in a bin with other electronics that I would later look at and decide what to do with it.

Fast forward a few years when we moved to our current home. As I'm unpacking stuff into my office, the EEE PC was exhumed from the electronics bin. For fun, I plugged it back in and turned it on. Still slow, but still working. I thought maybe I could use it for something.

At that point, emulation was becoming more and more popular. Single board computers were the way to go, since most of them had more processing power than the EEE PC at this point. I looked at several Linux distributions that did emulation well on low powered computers. I ended up choosing Batocera Linux; a Linux distribution that focused primarily on retro console emulation.

I installed it onto the EEE PC and tinkered around with it for a while. It ran most 8-bit and 16-bit games pretty well. When it came to 32-bit consoles, it showed signs of lagging. I figured that I could look at it in the future to see if I could play with some settings to get it to work better, so again, I side lined it to the electronics bin.

Here we are, 6 years later, and now I want to tinker with it more. Instead of using it as an emulation machine, I went back to trying out different Linux distributions, also trying out Chrome OS Flex, to see if this EEE PC had the potential of being just a Chromebook.

The first OS I tried to load was Chrome Flex OS. Result: failed. The EEE PC runs the i686 architecture; Chrome Flex OS needs x86_64.

I then tried a distribution of Linux Mint aimed at older computers. I'm familiar with Mint, so this was going to be more of a familiar installation. Result: fail. It did install completely, but there was something about GRUB that I didn't understand. Even after wiping all the partitions off the drive and doing a fresh installation, it'll still not load properly.

I tried AntiX, Puppy, Debian, NixOS, and various other distributions that were built for i686 processors. Some would not load completely, some gave errors when trying to install, and others would install fine, but give me errors when it tried to boot. 

I just gave up. I'm currently trying to reinstall Batocera again. I suppose this EEE PC will end up being my portable retro gaming emulation machine for now.

[EDIT] Update. Batocera didn't want to install at all. Lakka, another gaming focused distribution, didn't want to work properly either.I ended up trying out Haiku, which is a BeOS. It worked fine, but it wasn't satisfying to use. Killed the drive and installed Bodhi Linux. So far, this distribution didn't have much hiccups and is running pretty smooth at the moment. I'll have to see if Retroarch can be installed and decently ran through the OS.