Bacteria's project: "Project Unity"

[bacteria]

Made the drive bay casing for the DreamCast, and extended the wires to the motors; hopefully they aren't too long (will test the unit tomorrow). Took off the original black top off the drive and used as a template for the holes in the old CD tray (from a PlayStation 1 game holder, as last time), the thickness of the plastic of both is about the same too.



Will test tomorrow everything still works ok - if it does, then the relocation is done.

[bacteria]

Finished the DreamCast board for this project. Original fan moved out of the way, controller daughter board screwed onto spacers, RGB wiring done and wires secured, going to use controller cable as makes it easy to remove if need to, drive unit completed. This is ready now to install into the Unity system, ie wire up the audio/video and power; just need to do a bit more work on the controller and wire that into the Unity system, then testings.



The DreamCast section is screwed into a piece of 6mm thick board, that will be screwed into the side of the Unity casing and be located there. Trying to make this system as easy as can to get to all boards if need to do repairs in the future. Only hassle will be if the PlayStation 2 needs the lens cleaned or whatever, that will mean removing the Saturn (sitting on the NeoGeo and secured by a couple of screws) and the NeoGeo which only has a few screws into the Unity casing; so not hard. The more systems installed, the more relevant things like "what if I need to get to the bottom system" becomes ever relevant!

I then will test all the systems again, as had to make the changes before for the shoulder buttons, before moving to the GameCube.

When I started the project I was making videos for each system, that's a bit overkill I think, so i'll probably not do another video until all the units using drive units are installed and done, ie after the DreamCast, GameCube and CD-i (if using) are installed; then another video will be about the cartridge systems, the development of the casing to make it look pretty, etc.

[bacteria]

Not updated a while!

Had to use a different PS2 controller as the one with the membrane didn't allow game intros. Fixed now, different controller board.

This was a pic of the better boards, during wiring process yesterday:



Working now on the CD-i to get that back into the Unity system; will then complete the DreamCast system and get that installed too.

Updated my sig, thought it a good idea to colour code the project status.


BTW - my video on the (final) master controller got onto EnGadget, Hack-A-Day and some other cools sites too!

[AppleQueso]

A question/suggestion:

Since using different controllers for different games requires you to switch out those controller 'carts', would it be possible to simply have whatever 'cart' is inserted determine which console is selected to play as well? Or have you already done that?

[bacteria]

No, wouldn't be possible as all lines need to be independent, you'd end up with needing around 350 connections on a cart, instead of 50, and also the wires concerned would not be able to work with the amperage some of these systems need. Nice idea though, did think about that at the planning stage but it wouldn't work.

[bacteria]

Tried getting the old CD-i into the system, but the CD-i seems to have died, tried loads of things to get it going again, given up on it now. No great loss, only one good game and one average one, no loss. Back to DreamCast now!

[bacteria]

Made a channel for the Saturn drive unit to slide in and out of, and a backstop so it can't go out any more than designed to.

Made channel for the DreamCast too. Also superglued some struts to be the spacers for the DreamCast board to attach against.

[benderx]

its kind of weird at the moment that wii is like a baby sister of the alpha and omega with nintendo/sega emus. just saying

[Drakon]

its kind of weird at the moment that wii is like a baby sister of the alpha and omega with nintendo/sega emus. just saying

Emulation will never feel like the real hardware.

[bacteria]

^
like he said!


This is what I was getting at before - the DreamCast is installed in place, not wired to the power, controller or video lines; however is secured in place with drive unit too.

To stop the situation of the Saturn's wires getting caught potentially or the DreamCast ribbon getting in the way, simply secured a piece of cardboard onto the Saturn motherboard to separate the two sets of drive wires and ribbons; only secured in place by some tape, when done testing later, will probably hot glue in place.





The GameCube will be secured to the side of the Unity case, as with the DreamCast, however the GameCube will be mounted on top of the DreamCast boards by thick spacers.