Juan's adventures in retro computers/consoles - was - Anal bleaching...?

[alanp]

Question for the USAians here --

Why on earth do USAians call the Sega Megadrive the "Sega Genesis"?

It wasn't the first or even the second Sega system! The first one was the Sega Master System (a very angular red and black affair), and the second was the Sega Master System Two (curvy, all black.) Deuteronomy, maybe, but it isn't Genesis.

[somnif]

Bceause it was what was written on the console here, and we were far too hyped on sugary soft drinks and candy to care otherwise.

[juansolo]

I'd totally forgotten about this thread, I've been at bit busy on this front since the spectrum. I'll try and summarise:

Atari ST number 3... A very early STF that was a bit green but worked nice, for about an hour (which is exactly what happened to ST number 1)



Bargain though at £35 inc monitor. The PSUs in the STs really are absolute junk, this was another one that lasted for a nice long soak test then on re-powering it up the next day, went pop. So it got a brand new, MUCH better designed Exxos PSU.



Along side that the FDD was replaced by a Gotek HxC USB replacement. It's kinda bodged in there but I didn't want to cut the case up.



Finally the case got a good restoring to something like it's original colour. We should have done the keys also, they just got stripped and washed (the keyboard had been the victim of some drinks spillage in the past so needed a full strip, clean and rebuild anyhow). They'll get retrobrited next year when the sun comes back out.



That one is done for now. There's still a couple of outstanding issues on it, but it's getting there.

Sega Dreamcast This has now got a hacked region free bios. I've done this for a couple of reasons and not for the one you'd think. That's because as standard, the DC can play pirated games... What it can't do is play original games from other regions without using a boot disc. Insane I know. Now it can.

What it also does is circumvent the VGA block a lot of games have on them. Again, for pirated ones this isn't a problem as they've been hacked to work, it's originals that are the issue. But this has also meant my copy of Hydro Thunder now works in glorious high res. Yay.

A side effect of this is that for the games that don't work (Bangai-0, Last Blade II, Code Veronica, and a few others) it still sends the signal. So, if you can get your hands on a real multi-sync display, they'll all work down the same cable without any hassle. Which is awesome, if I can get one (they're stupidly rare in CRT form). But it is something I can keep my eye out for...



I've got some 3D printed bits on the way for that currently that'll allow me to swap the fan for something that doesn't sound like an industrial blender.

Atari 2600 & 7800. These have been a real challenge. They're essentially pre-standards. So they output RF only and the signal generated by the machine doesn't conform to anything useful... There's a write up on the first 2600 here: http://juansolo.co.uk/geekery/videowafflage9.html But that went all pear shaped and turned out to be faulty in the end when I tried to fit a Ultimate Atari Video board to it.

In the end Cleggy grabbed one and we made one awesome 2600 out of the pair of them. It really is perfect with the most ridiculously good picture.

So I picked up a 7800 (they're backward compatible with the 2600) that was described as 'rusty and with wear appropriate to age' for £30 (good ones tend to go for a lot more). What arrived was as expected, a rough as hell 7800 that had obviously been stored somewhere damp for many, many years.

So we popped it apart, and it was actually worse on the inside, rust EVERYWHERE. The RF shield just went straight into the bin, it wasn't salvageable. Where it touched the PCB it was covered, it'd leeched into the joystick ports and had generally made a royal mess. It took a long while to clean up the PCB... Thankfully I had a sacrificial 2600 to hand, so I got the ports and switches from that and swapped them in. Stripped the cart port off cleaned and re-fitted. Swapped some of the buttons around so they worked a bit better (select was iffy and pause was fine, I never use pause). Oh yeah and the regulator fell off as the heat sink wasn't secured to the PCB as it should have been, so a new one of those and some cap swappage for good measure.

The net result is a pretty reasonable looking (now) 7800 that appears to be running nicely and was nice and cheap too. I Dropped another UAV board into it and it's putting out a pretty decent picture now too. It's not as perfect as Cleggy's 2600, but it's pretty damned good.



I built a Neo Geo arcade joystick, because I can. I also did some fettling of the Neo Geo CDZ, re-aligning the laser, fitting a region switch and repairing the game pad.

[juansolo]

There's more...



Scarily that's an old pic and things have changed since. But:

Atari 65 XE One of the upsides of the UK 65 is that it's a stripped down 130 XE, so it'd have been rude not to put in the bank switching IC and extra memory to turn it into a 130. So I did. It also got the plastics restored. Bear in mind that before this was done, it looked way, way worse than Cleggy's 130XE that this is pictured next to:





Commodore 64 That's got a C64 saver jammed in it's side. Both the XE and the C64 are running on their originals PSUs which bothers me greatly. Sadly to build a replacement C64 PSU that's a lot better than the original would cost around £80... The problem with it being it supplies both AC and DC to the computer. When those puppies let go, which they do, they destroy the computer in the process. The C64 saver goes in between the PSU and the comp and prevents this from happening.



Worryingly there are more computers in this corner now... But this is when I added the Power Mac G4 OS/9 machine to the end as a somewhat bizarre games machine. It was just cheaper and easier than building a PC of a similar vintage and contrary to popular belief, most of the games of that era I want to play are available on it!

[alanp]

Good to see some real computer brands (Commodore, even Atari) alongside your grocery-vendor ones

I'm sure that C64 GeOS is more powerful than the Mac OS

How well does that SD card to floppy-port adaptor work on the C64? I've got a C64 in the shed (original packaging), but the floppy drive doesn't work, and I don't have all my old diskettes, anyway

[juansolo]

Good to see some real computer brands (Commodore, even Atari) alongside your grocery-vendor ones

I'm sure that C64 GeOS is more powerful than the Mac OS

How well does that SD card to floppy-port adaptor work on the C64? I've got a C64 in the shed (original packaging), but the floppy drive doesn't work, and I don't have all my old diskettes, anyway

Very well. Even works with the Fastboot cart. I highly recommend that. Same goes for the one on the XE.

No love for the Spectrum? (it's there if you look carefully).

[m-Kresol]

Damn, I loved to play FutureCop with my friend back in the day this was new! good times

[alanp]

The most geeky of retro-geek geeky things.

[juansolo]

That is pure awesomeness.