Bacteria's project: "Project Unity"

[bacteria]

Ok, tested about 65 games; every one of them worked fine, that's my few NTSC games and also my unboxed PAL games too. I also have 18 boxed games too, which I didn't test but no reason they won't be fine too. 2 carts need the game traces cleaned with a pencil eraser (had to do that with 1/3 of the games tested today, then they worked fine); meaning I have a total of 85 SNES games; thought it around that mark. The board worked with the Super Gameboy too; all games in 60Mhz mode too, from boot-up.

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Spent about 3.5 hours tonight, removed the ports on the SNES board, changed the large capacitor for a smaller one, relocated the SNES game port - which is a bit harder than normal game carts as the pin contacts are internal in the cart, you need to use a fair bit of flux to tin the contacts first, then it's fiddly wiring up the wires inside. Got it working first time though, just tested on two game carts.

Two things to do before SNES board is ready now to go into the Unity system - wire up RGB wiring to the SNES in preparation, and also the controller board needs the ports removing and wiring/gluing to the motherboard. Made good progress today though!

[bacteria]

Bit of a sneak peak, as not wired it in yet. The SNES board is on top of a piece of cardboard, and resting on the N64 board. The cart slot isn't secured in place yet, will be later. Ignore the SCART plug on the switch bank, that's just resting out of the way.

Space is quite snug; i've only got just over the width of the SNES board to play with for other boards and I know the likes of Jaguar and Megadrive are liable to be getting close to that. Can make the space a bit wider though if need to for more boards.

The old NES console case I offered to basically give away before for the cost of postage, well, the black parts that connect to the controller ports, and the cart pop-up from the NES Toaster unit, are strong right-angled plastic pieces, so i'm going to use those for the next layer of console boards in the system.

Anyway, so far:

[bacteria]

Spent an hour tonight, got the SNES cart completed.

Tried originally to use one of those 3rd party ones with the switches for the rather useless "auto fire" features, as didn't want to use an official SNES controller; turned out the X and Y didn't use common ground, so ditched the board.

Had one of those Chinese crap copy SNES controllers (the ones you get on ebay claiming to be "new" and proper controllers, but are fake?) anyway, nice simple board, easy dots to solder connections to, only had to trim a little off the sides so the board would fit into the NES controller cartridge. Wired up, job done. Only have to wire up 5 wires from the SNES motherboard for the controller output to the Unity switches for the controller and then test - that should be it for the SNES part of the project. Will do that tomorrow.

Also put across a different resistor on the N64 from composite>ground, used two 75 ohm resistors before in parallel (giving 37.5 ohm output), image was nice but a bit dark, so this time using two 47 ohm resistors in parallel, for 23.5 ohms, that should be about right, will also test that tomorrow evening.

[bacteria]

Aiming to do video update at weekend.

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Next system, Jaguar.

Had a problem with the Jaguar. Couldn't desolder that darn cart port off, the solder didn't want to play ball, and the connections were close together. Tried to use my heatgun however didn't melt the solder but a couple of ceramic capacitors "popped" on the back of the board, so immediately stopped the heatgun. Resoldered the few pins I had managed to desolder ok previously, and tested the console, still worked fine.

There was no way I could cut off the cart port without having no pin metal left to solder to without having weak connections, and also in doing so would have Dremelled through some traces on the motherboard if I tried.

Had no option but the "brutal" approach.

I see another guide coming up! ....

Managed to pry a couple of millimeters upwards the cart plastic holder with a screwdriver, and then used a thinner one to push between the pins pushing up the plastic holder leaving the pins in place.





Holding one pin at a time, applied soldering iron to the pin on the board, to release the whole pin.

Very hard to get the pins into place, ages to even do one, so thinking around the problem, figured i'd put the plastic port in a game cart, and then insert a pin at a time; and it works, quickly! In the last pic in this post you can see the metal tips where they should be! Removing the pins from the board means the pin "grips" are intact, and there is plenty of pin to solder wires too for the relocation process.







Should hopefully get the cart finished tomorrow, for cart relocation.

[bacteria]

Well, this cart relocation wasn't straightforward at all. The pins are brittle, there are 104 of them too. There are quite a few pins not used by the game carts so I used a couple as spares for ones that didn't connect properly.

This is the final cart relocation. Also removed the RF port.



I have two game carts, here are photos to show they work ok:





Here are pics of opened game cart. Only issue with doing this with Jaguar carts is you have to put your screwdriver through the game decal to remove the two screws and then open the casing.





Next job will be to relocate some capacitors, connect wires for RGB output and also connect to the Unity system.

[bacteria]

Jaguar is installed in the system, cart slot secured in place. Installed the cart vertically under the SNES cart, and the motherboard is positioned a few millimetres from the various regulators. Reason the board is there is its quite a large board but also the system has the cart secured to the system casing not the shelving. Not done the controller yet, or wired the A/V to the switching unit or voltage lines; the A/V and voltage is about 20 mins work, will do that tomorrow. Would be nice to show that system too in the next video, may as well. Will mean 12 systems installed so far into Unity system, as of tomorrow.

[bacteria]

Update - new video on the project:



(would be nice if this forum used BBcode for YouTube videos BTW)!

[bacteria]

Ok, next system will be Colecovision. I had a stab at it a couple of years ago, swapped the graphics chip from a Telegames Colecovision which fried, and connected to composite video from that method, as the normal Colecovision console was RF only. Got the board to hand to test to see if it still works ok, and what the video quality is like (there were rainbow effects around the graphics as I recall as the video output from Colecovisions sucked). If the system works fine i'll probably put it into my Unity Jnr system or sell the board if someone wants it; a year or two I bought a French Colecovision console and also Atari 7800 console; "Peritan" types, which means SCART output; as gives native RGB. I'll be using these RGB models in the Unity system; the consoles cost around £25 each as I recall, and I only have one of each. Modding an Atari 7800 is far from straightforward after all, and RGB is far better on both systems. Basically, there are extra circuits on these console boards for this, which are missing on other models.

[bacteria]

Well, a bit behind on updating here as usual!

One update - i've been invited to be a speaker/presenter at the Revival retro event in May 2013, in Wolverhampton; i'll bring along my Unity system for the event (on the 1st day); hopefully i'll meet UK Racketboy members there! I'll post more on that when i've got concrete details next month. I'm looking forward to it.

http://www.revivalretroevents.com/

Look under "Exhibitors" - see "John Grayson" - yes, that's me! Yay!


On the project, a bit of an update:


Nice update time!

My French Colecovision's player 2 port was working fine, player 1 however decided to only let some of the keypad buttons work and always seemed to want to activate "down" even when not pressed. Given the fact the console board uses IC chips for logic and also a stack of diodes, it seemed the right thing to do was to change an IC chip. I didn't work that out myself, I did my usual and spent a while doing Google research, and found that clue, and the chip concerned, on the Atariage forum (thanks to them in other words!). Linky : http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/16 ... ecovision/

So, took the view of "it works or it busts" as is my usual method - the Colecovision wasn't much use in the state it was in, I could access the keypad for player 2 to select 1 player mode, but the IC chip on player 1 decided to make it 2 player anyway, so wasn't good. Had a look on ebay for a replacement French Colecovision (they are RGB) and couldn't find one, so the prospects didn't look good. RGB on Colecovision is worth it - on a composite modded Colecovision you get rainbow effects and colour bleeding, RGB is crisp; and RGB is only on French Colecovisions.

Fortunately, still had my old UK Colecovision board that died, the chip was the right chip as the French one, but a slightly different revision, but hey - death or glory, right? Couldn't desolder the chip pins as the solder resists melting easily, and also given i've read these IC chips can fail from static, bad luck or other reasons, figured a hot soldering iron trying to desolder was asking for trouble; so, used my Dremel with metal cutter disc and cut through the chip pins carefully from the French console, careful not to damage the traces on the board, and the same on the dead UK board. Would have been prettier to make short legs and put the replacement chip into place, etc, but instead went for the practical approach - cut some small wire lengths and applied flux to the chip pin legs (what was left of them) and the board, and did it that way. Not pretty, but easy to replace in the future if needed.

Donor:



French board:



This fixed the problem - works fine. Tested, it's good!

Removed the keypad from the controller board and removed enough of the excess board to fit into a NES game cart - tested with that too, and works fine.



One more thing - I made the master controller work a while back with different groundings for the d-pad, action buttons + digital analogues, and also shoulder buttons (digital tacts to work analogue shoulder replication); used the one spare connection on the bank of switches to have all but one of the console systems to have an extra wire (the cable to the master controller has some spare wires) to be ground for the keypad; but "green" for Colecovision - that means I can have the keypad working fine on that. The Colecovision only uses the keypad for some games (but always to select initial game options), the rest of the game only uses 2 shoulder buttons and d-pad.

This means now i've got separate grounds for keypad, 2 of the shoulder buttons, action buttons and d-pad. That is taking the master controller to the max; but necessary to get the Colecovision working (when i've rigged it up). Remember our friend the Jaguar? That needed a different ground for the d-pad + A, B and C buttons, and also three for the keypad. I can use two more wires in the master controller exclusively for the keypad, I would have to have all the action buttons (ABXY) as "A" and shoulder buttons as "B", and if I can find a keypad button that isn't needed, like "0" and can use that for "C" button, it wouldn't be perfect but would allow playing my two Jaguar games. In other words, the Jaguar might not be dead as thought, worth another try!

One thing for sure, the space in the Unity system isn't much, i've still got a few systems to get in there after all.

[bacteria]

Finished the Colecovision system now. Wired up the controller to the NES cart host cart, tested with Donkey Kong and also Gorf games, works great. The IC chip fix works great, the controls work great. The Colecovision is a basic console game system however the games are fun to play, and worth playing.

Opened up the Master Controller earlier as needed to make adjustment, the common ground to the keypad is now system independent (auto) from the bank of switches, so the Colecovision could work.



I figure i'll leave the Jaguar until last, there is a good chance i'll not incorporate it after all, the A, B, C buttons will be a lot of hassle as they use different groundings.

The Colecovision console board is mounted in the Unity system, vertically as per photo below. I did that to keep two systems, or three if lucky, off the inside of the main compartment to make it easier to get to other boards. The plan is to have the Intellivision boards above the Colecovision ones.



So, next system is Intellivision. I got it working fine ages ago, although i've forgotten what wire goes where on the controller I can read my old notes and work it out no problem. Assuming the board still works fine, I should be able to complete the Intellivision quite quickly. That will just leave a few systems remaining then!