Bacteria's project: "Project Unity"

[dsheinem]

Still, one of the most impressive feats I have had the pleasure of watching develop.

indeed!

Literally hundreds of wires in this unit, probably used over 200m of cable. Can't cable tie, wires are all over the system!

Do you have plans - when finished - to "tidy up" the wires in some way? Are you going to fabricate some kind of casing/shell to put over the whole thing?

[bacteria]

I can't tidy the cabling up, would have meant longer wires and more space for them to take up; yes, I will be making a nice case for the unit for sure, with decals.

[CRTGAMER]

Well, rigged up the Atari 7800 controller into a NES controller, didn't take long at all. Problem is for some reason it isn't working, spent an hour or more this afternoon trying to work out the problem. It works when you manually press the button contacts of the Atari controller board, but not in the Master Controller. I notice the Atari controller has two resistors to the two action buttons, going to take a while to see what the issue is; tomorrow. Hopefully it's something simple to resolve. I know there is nothing wrong with the Master Controller, tested on the MegaDrive a few moments ago and all was fine. Must be something to do with the Atari's groundings.

-----------

As with all troubleshooting, taking the controller to work in stages, until get to the root of the problem. The ground on the controller goes to the d-pad in the usual way, however there are also two resistors that then feed to some of the lines to the console, some of which are for the buttons 1 and 2; pretty sure that's the root of the issue, but need to work out what resolves it; job for today - find enough alternatives for working out a problem and one method ends up working normally!

-----------

Success!

Basically, had to treat it like two separate groundings, one to d-pad and other for the action buttons. Tested on Galaga and works fine. I'll finish off the cartridge unit, and then test with another game just to make sure (Asteroids, as it uses d-pad properly not just left and right). I can then get the SMS board installed, cart in place, and i'll make that video and get it uploaded; will be a fairly short but sweet video though, as a mid-update.

This project is crazy and impressive! I think you can safely quantify it as the largest game library console.

Can you post a close up pic of the 7800 to NES controller mod detailing the wire to resistor layout? Are the resistors right inside the 7800 controller and what is the value of each? A sort of side mod guide that may be of use to other 7800 owners (including me) for converting a two fire button NES or Genesis pad or Wico Joystick to work with 7800 two button games.

[bacteria]

This should answer the question.

The D-pad works as normal; contact connects to ground, nothing more than that.

In the pic below, the black wire is also ground; the two resistors under the board seem to be circa 640 ohms from what I recall, and the pin-through at the top - ignore, it goes no-where. I cut off the orange wire as that actually wasn't needed, seems orange is normal ground too.

So, basically the button 1 and 2 need a resistor each, that's it. There's no chip or other stuff here.

[bacteria]

Spending today and a fair bit of tomorrow modding.

I plan to get the GX4000 console finished in the next hours and then start on the TurboGrafx. The console is smaller than I had remembered so should be fine.

Cut a piece of picture frame backing board and screwed to the case skeleton, stuck a strip of wood at the back to give it support. Idea is the switch slider assembly's cables move over the top of the board (sandwiched by the top of the system case when done) so the cables can move freely, and also now giving me a platform to put the GX4000 and TurboGrafx motherboards onto.



Here is the space I have to play with for 2/3 of the vacant area (blue line, less the space of some of the components on it), half that height for the remaining area. Plenty of space! Realistically, 30mm is the height to play with which is enough to have a couple of boards on each other and secured into place.

[bacteria]

Well, turned out the only way to get the GX4000 cart into place was to squeeze it between the SMS cart and manoeuvre it to the side. That meant I couldn't mount it on the case top layer, so instead, screwed a NES Toaster lid (it's about 1.5" and at a right angle), hot glued a piece of framing board onto it first. Then, placed the GX4000 board on top.

System works, as you see in the pic, and I have only about 1.5 cms headroom left, enough for the TurboGrafx!



One issue though, I wired the back of the SCART port on the GX4000 tapping just the RGB and C-Sync lines to my SCART connections, and I get a diagonally scrolling image. As you see, no shorts, and it works fine with a direct SCART cable connected. That means there must be an issue taking the signals off the GX4000's SCART connections. I'm going to have to see if the other RGB connection from the GX4000 works better, if not, work out what I can do to fix the issue.

Here is a pic of the cart connectors, the GX4000 and SMS ones, on the shelf. They are held in place by screws onto posts, so can be removed easily to allow removal of the console boards, as all the cart based systems are.



Need to experiment to get the GX4000 working properly in RGB!

[bacteria]

Fixed issue in about a minute - tapped off C-Sync off pin 1 on the other connector (for the Amstrad's monitor, they generously gave two RGB outputs).

Works fine now!

The controller is dead easy, no chip or even resistors, just straight connections; so i'll get that done pretty fast.

Finished modding for the day, will be back tomorrow on it. Will get the controller made before 10am tomorrow, then will set to work on TurboGrafx!

(then just have 1 slot remaining on the Unity system after that)

[bacteria]

Today i'll be making the GX4000 controller (NES cart) which won't take long, then working on the TurboGrafx console.

I actually have a UK TurboGrafx console (same unit as used for my IntoGrafx portable made quite a while back), and a CoreGrafx console (PCengine) and a Tunnokoe 2 unit, which is basically a memory backup for quite a few of the games. Although space in my Unity system is quite restrictive, i'll use the TurboGrafx console for the Unity system, as the board is about double the size of a PCengine - the PCengine board is about the size of a CD case in footprint. There were quite a few variations of the console, TurboGrafx, TurboGrafx 16, CoreGrafx, PCengine, etc; however all did the same thing; and also all easy to region free (as in the reference section) by switching a few wires. TurboGrafx and PCengine and the other derivatives use the same HUcards for the games (credit card sized game carts).

The CoreGrafx is going to be used in my project after making an N64 portable with the paper mache casing; the multi-handheld system using the 8" JoyTech screen I mentioned a while back. This unit will have 5 systems inside it: N64, (TurboGrafx) PCengine, GBA, SNES, Megadrive (probably from a hacked Radica, not sure yet). I have worked things out in my mind how to do it, but realistically won't start the project until April at the earliest, probably May or June.

When i've finished the Unity system though, and making the N64 portable, I need to also do a quick fix for the IntoGrafx console - it works great (at least, when last used it about 2 years ago), however after half an hour the screen flashes on and off about every minute; pretty sure it's the 7805 that hasn't got a large heatsink on it and restricted airflow; i've got a 5v switching regulator that will resolve that issue, if it is that. The game doesn't reset, so it will be to do with the video circuit from the console to the screen, hence why I think it's the 7805 overheating and cutting out. Assuming that is all the issue is and the fix sorts the issue out totally, i'll probably offer the unit for sale after the fix as I don't use the console, and plan to implement the system (via PCengine) into a larger multi-handheld unit: i'll take it to the Revival show first though as another working example.

You may also notice I have updated my sig with the Project Unity system progress picture; you may also notice i've put Jaguar back on there - I think I can get it working as a single game only, which is fine as Wolfenstein 3D is the only reason i'm interested in the Jaguar anyway. Worth another try!

[bacteria]

Removed the large external connector from the TurboGrafx, and wired composite (for testing) to pin C22 as per diagram in the reference section - nothing showed up, so I think it's C-Sync not composite (the linky to Gamesx said it was for both) - anyway, this version of the TurboGrafx seems like a later version than the one I used in my portable as I had to RGB mod that one to get nice images, this one, with composite, looks very good indeed as is. When I rig the console to the Unity system, i'll compare RGB to composite as in two minds which to use. On the other TurboGrafx console, which was RF before modding as I recall, green didn't show on the colour pallet until RGB modded; this console however has lovely colours. Interesting.

Tested the system as hadn't tested it since buying it off ebay a few months ago, wired it to 6 x AA cells (9v), worked fine.

After lunch i'll do the region switch mod using one of those 8P8T switches I have in stock; then wire up the A/V, work out the controller pinout, and set about making a start on getting the board prepared to go into the Unity system.

Once that is completed, i'll be on my last system in Project Unity, before working on the casing. Sometime next week I hope/expect to be working on the casing...

[bacteria]

Took a break for a short bit to review the Jaguar option as the last system.

It is viable for a single game only, ie Wolfenstein 3D - which is all I need anyway.

Basically, the controls for that game are:

dpad
A = speed
B = fire
C = open/strafe
5 = automap
Option - cycle weapons
1 - 3 = save game slots
* # = reset game

On this site is the pinout for the controller regards the 4 groundings (as part of the matrix) - yes, 4.

http://emu-docs.org/Jaguar/Controllers/jagcont.html

Working on that, I can do without "A" button as that isn't important in the game; can use 1 save game slot, and the rest of the controls are fine. My Master Controller can work with 4 separate grounds if needed, although if i'd wanted to use "A" button I couldn't make this work without changing the dpad buttons to be mapped to the keypad for the Jaguar, which would be unacceptable.

The picture below is crude, just a rough drawing, but shows I can make the Jaguar work in the system ok. Looks like the option should work ok.