For many reasons, but the case is now finally closed. When I seen the news regarding this after arriving home from celebrating a friends birthday, already in a good mood, this just made my weekend even more. Now it's Monday morning and I have recovered from the weekend's antics
Leaves me full of hope and dreams of what else could be true, and what else is still out there waiting to be recovered or discovered. Hope is a wonderful thing.
1983... Back then how did you fix a massive fuck up? You took it out back, shot it and buried it out in the desert never to be heard from again, pretending it never happened... Until construction workers dig it up in the future! But some mistakes just never go away, and for Atari they just never recovered. From the start this game was a custom designed recipe for disaster, and i can only assume all parties involved were coked out of their heads, Tony Montana style:
So, for years, decades, It was rumoured that there was a "mass grave" of ET Atari 2600 cartridges in a landfill somewhere, and now in 2014, 31 years later not only has the legend been confirmed as true but the actual cartridges complete in their retail packaging have been unearthed at a landfill in New Mexico, after permission was finally granted to excavate the site, an Urban Legend among gamers, even inspiring films, (example below) now laid to rest.
Not going into the back story or details here, just felt this was blog worthy and one of the great gaming mysteries solved, at a humble landfill in New Mexico. Now, how many of these excavated cartridges will find their way onto ebay? Would you buy one, a piece of gaming history?(I wouldn't) only time will tell.
A lot going on at the minute so have not been keeping to a blogging schedule, even with videos on my Youtube channel, but less so here.
I've decided I want a dedicated Old School Gaming PC, for older games, e.g. 90's games that require windows 95/98 and support XP. Especially the games I just can't get running right on modern hardware either on Linux via WINE/DOSBox, Windows via compatibility modes or on virtual machines.
One Game in Particular pushed me to do this as I really want to play the damn thing, That game is: DARK VENGEANCE from developer Reality Bytes, which I picked up from a charity shop recently along with a few others.
The initial plan:
Objectives:
Spend as little money as possible
Use Parts I already had left over from old PC builds
Run 3 OSs including windows and Linux
Recreate original "golden age" PC Gaming experience
As I wanted to go with one PC that could run Windows 98SE, Windows XP and Linux in a triple boot situation, I needed hardware that would be supported over all 3 operating systems, Initially this is what I came up with:
AMD Athlon XP / Socket A/462 CPU and Motherboard
At least 1GB of RAM
Hard Drives, 1 boot drive, and some data drives.
DVD-ROM / Writer
15/17" 4:3(non widescreen) TFT screen with build in speakers.
PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse
Hardware I already had:
Keyboard & Mouse
Athlon XP 3000+ CPU
Various DDR 1 RAM modules 256mb-1GB sticks
ATI Radeon 9200SE 128mb AGP card
Various PCI sound cards including SB Live 5.1, SB X-FI xtreme audio.
Gigabyte motherboard with KT266 chipset(micro atx)
Random P4 motherboard, DFI lanparty Socket 939 motherboard.
1.5ghz P4 CPU, Other random P4 CPU
Some items to acquire!
Having some of the components was good but I was missing some essentials like the Monitor and Power Supply, I also needed some hard drives and a case << yeah need a case to put everything in! also a CPU heatsink + fan would be an advantage.
After checking prices and various other avenues to get a lot of the parts needed, and it seemed the best and most cost effective option was buying a complete PC, or at least the base unit, didn't need keyboard and mouse. I went around some second hand and charity shops looking for a Monitor, and Found one! also needed a desk to set the system up on, so I grabbed one of them too from the same shop, also a charity shop so I can feel good about that at least.
When I got the monitor home I found it had no power supply :( and strangely the power socket was actually built into the D-SUB 15 pin VGA connector, To address this, I decided to check the polarity, the required voltage and amp ratings were on the back of the monitor so all good there, 12v 3amp, I had a 12v 1.5amp adaptor so I tested with that and it worked, for a while, but needed a bit more current, keeping with the "spend as little as possible" objective and not trusting cheap Chinese AC adaptors: my thought train went something like this:
Monitor 12v 3amp > Only on when PC is on > PC PSU provides 12V with plenty of amps > DC in jack for monitor is on VGA connector > Bingo!
I'll power the monitor from the PC Power supply.
EM-150 TFT Proview 12v 15" monitor (not a pic of my action one but the same)
So I cut off the connector from the old 12v 1amp adaptor and wired it up to a female 4pin molex connector and tested by hooking up to PC power supply molex male (same that goes into the back of your CD/DVD drives)
Worked perfectly and for prolonged periods. nice! also the monitor worked as did the sound from the built in speakers. So I now had a Monitor with speakers a method of powering it and a Desk! Excellent!(Monty burns style)
Now for the rest of the missing hardware. Reluctantly I went to ebay to search for a cheap old PC, after a lil searching i found a few options and decided to go with one that matched my initial plans the best(and had free shipping) so scooped one for £20: specs below:
AMD Athlon 1700+ CPU
Jetway V266B v3 Socket A/462 Motherboard
1GB DDR Ram
2x 40GB hard drives
256mb Geforce 6600LE Graphics card
Network Card
480w PSU
Floppy Disk Drive
Sony NEC A/ND5170A DVD Writer
CPU heatsink and cooling fan of course
The All important case!
Nice, pretty much just what I need, and combined with the parts I already have should work well.... Should...
I also ordered a laptop IDE to Desktop IDE converter / adaptor, as I found an old 40GB laptop IDE drive I wanted to use also, and an extra 80mm cooling fan both of which were really cheap.
Anyway, everything Arrived after a few days, well packed too, Now on with the build!
The case i was happy with, nothing special but useful features like front USB ports, and one thumbscrew and you can open the whole case. plenty of room for fans and drives, solid built minimal sharp edges. While the system worked and had XP pre installed also has a license key on the side, there were a few issues, which I was ready for and expected on old hardware.
The actual Case - pic from ebay listing
Immediate Issues:
About 9 Swollen Capacitors(all same value)
Motherboard old BIOS not recognising CPU
Very dusty inside and fans a little noisy
Video on fan cleaning.
Luckily the capacitors were cheap got 10 for 99p, 1800uf 6.3v, and replaced them, then more luck, the motherboard MFG (http://www.jetway.com.tw/jw/download_show.asp?productid=V266B) still has downloads for it up on their website, including chipset drivers (via anyway) and an updated BIOS from 2006(original BIOS from 2001). and having a floppy drive made updating BIOS easy, although finding a working floppy disk was the hardest part.
Also having the manual was very useful as these older boards use jumpers to set CPU speeds and multipliers etc, also for front panel connector pinouts and USB header/audio pinouts.
Now, to test further I installed a Linux distro and Windows XP, then windows 98se, although the best practice for this would be to first partition the hard drive, install windows 98, then windows XP and then Linux last.
and so the issues started, while XP and Linux worked perfectly fine, 98se didn't like the graphics card and didn't like having the 1.5GB of ram I put in, long story short it was a pain in the ass, another issue i had was with the motherboard, now due to it's hardware constraints eg, having backwards compatibility with SDRAM so it has 2 DDR slots and 2 SDRAM slots, this means although it is a 266mhz chipset, it is limited to 133mhz, and this in turn limits the CPU, speed, i tried everything i could think of but couldn't get the CPU running stable at over 1.6ghz, the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ I put in was being detected as an 1800+
The board however does have some nice features, while lacking on-board graphics, usb2.0 and on-board network, I like the fact that if i wanted to I could throw even older hardware into it. also the BIOS post screen shows some nice data about fan speeds and temperatures etc. and it also has 2 system fan headers as well as the CPU fan one. and everything is located nicely.
Conclusion to part 1 and where i currently stand...
What I now plan to do is build two PCs one running 98se and a lightweight Linux distro for emergencies etc, and a second one running XP and Linux. I'll run these using the same keyboard mouse and monitor using a KVM switch, I've also ordered a USB 2.0 card for the V266B motherboard as 1.1 is just too slow and using usb to boot and transfer files is just easier.
I had a spare PSU i was using for arcade boards, but sadly today, that PSU passed away, so I've also gone and ordered a new PSU which again was the cheapest one I could find, Also I still want the monitor to be powered by whichever computer is active at the time and not have a separate adapter, the only other Issues I need to address are the KVM switch and Sound distribution e.g. if the KVM switch does not also switch sound. and one in my budget probably will not lol.
Hopefully the update for Part 2 will be more successful! And also include final price and parts list, cover the software used, and any other knowledge / tips that may be useful for anyone attempting this.
From looking over their website and doing some reading, It seems these guys have a great ethos and sound, admirable philosophy on what they do and why they do it, which in turn gives the Games they produce that extra bit of soul, sometimes lost in commercial developers.
They have a number of games so head over and check them all out, But this post will focus on just one of the games, and that game is Maldita Castilla:
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, GNU / Linux, Ouya
Gameplay:
The Game plays pretty much exactly like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts or Ghosts 'n' Goblins, so has nice simple responsive controls and a familiar gameplay mechanic, pretty much pick up and play 2 buttons, "jump" and "fire" and the direction buttons, up, down, left, right. Kill the ghoulies, beat the bosses and collect power ups and different weapons, there's also other items such as coins, crowns and general "loot", either dropped by enemies or from chests or "secrets", the whole point is to obviously beat the game with the highest score possible, there is also a time limit so keep an eye on that. There is a variety of enemies also which change and increase in difficulty as you progress.
Graphics:
Graphics are done purposefully in the style of late 80's arcade games in fact not only the graphics but the whole game is in that style, and as far as I am concerned that is a good thing. The graphics have been created pixel by pixel to give an authentic old school look, which works. The sprites look good and animations are all smooth and flow well nothing looks out of place or tacked on. Also they graphics scale well, attention has also been taken to give the game an old school look and feel with optional scanlines and "old n used" monitor look, although I didn't see any way to configure this on the Linux version(off by default).
Sound:
Sound for the game for me is excellent, It's been created via emulated yamaha YM2203 sound chip, which was used in many late 80's / early 90's arcade games. This gives a really nice authentic feel and sound..erm to the sound. Me Likey.
Storyline:
The game has a storyline and there's a text and graphic intro so I'll let you be the judge of that. The setting for the game is old Spanish / European medievaly legend / history. Which in itself is fairly bloody and very fitting with the graphics and gameplay.
My Youtube Video on the Developer and Game and where I found out about this little gem of nostalgic awesomeness:
Conclusion
My Verdict, in case you have not already guessed, CHECK IT OUT! NOW! GO DO IT! DOOO EEEET!
Remember that this is my .conf file and is tailored to my system and setup so edit it to suit yours. This one does not auto-launch the game, but if you want to do that just add these commands to the end of the conf file:
c: cd tombraid tomb.exe
This should work for any other DOS game also. Just remember that some DOS games need to be launched via a .bat file instead of the .exe
A bit about disc Images.
I use a disc image here instead of just mounting the actual cdrom in my dvd drive for a few reasons, but mainly it just makes more sense. there's a few different options that can be used but i went for a .bin / .cue image. The reason for this is it's nice, quick and easy and mounts in DOSBox with no hassle.
A lot of DOS games use CD Audio for their music and tomb raider is no exception, meaning it is a mixed mode CD having multiple tracks 1 for data and then the other audio tracks, and in order for the game's music to work it needs the CD audio tracks which is why I use a .bin / .cue image (the .cue file is the one you need to mount in DOSBox, as it contains the track information/ CD layout) they(.cue) are just simple text files and can even be edited the .bin file is the actual disc image.
ISO format does not support multi track mixed mode images so and .ISO image will only be the DATA track and no audio tracks, this will work but you'll get no music in the game.
There are other options, it is possible to use a .ISO format image along with a .CUE file pointing to audio files for example mp3 files, this will allow for smaller file sizes as the audio tracks will be compressed mp3 files. This method is also fine but a bit more involved, however it is recommended if you need to keep file sizes down.
Imgburn is what I use to make .bin / .cue files and can be found here:
So as the title states this is just a quick and easy mod to enable direct output of Stereo Sound from the HNG64.
First up is Why? And the answer is, Because I can, I feel like it, and i like a nice easy way to hook it up to stereo speakers / external amp / whatever else i feel like. Or maybe adding this to an arcade cab with custom speakers etc..?
There are a few ways this could be done, but I'm doing it this way for a number of reasons,
1. I have the parts needed lying around.
2. It's nice and practical for what i need.
3. It's completely and Easily Reversible without damaging or altering the hardware.
What's required:
1. Good Quality wire that's not too thick but not too thin,
2. Some form of Stereo Audio Jacks or Sockets (3.5mm headphone jack or RCA phono jacks work nicely)
3. Solder
4. Soldering Iron
Now this could be done a little more easily if you had access to a connector that fits the 4 pin header on the HNG64 board, I initially tried a floppy drive molex power connector but it didn't fit even after trimming a little.
So what I decided to do is solder the wires directly to the pins from the header on the back of the PCB.
HNG64 Bottom PCB
The 4 pins are (from right to left when jamma connector is facing towards you) Audio Left, Ground, Audio right, Ground. The two ground pins are common and you can follow the traces from the other two pins for left and right audio to the corresponding pin on the JAMMA connector, they are clearly labelled on the HNG64, Pin L is for left audio or mono and Pin 10 is for right audio
Pins for Audio
I used some RCA phono jacks that i scavenged from an old satellite box a while back.
so all you need to do is connect 3 wires 1 for ground, 1 for Audio Right and one for Audio Left.
Then just hook up some speakers, receiver / amp or headphones and get your game on!
If you wanted to tap some un-amplfied audio you would need to get it from somewhere before the volume pot.
Volume can be controlled by the volume pot which is beside the 4 pin connector, also so this would be a great spot to put a headphone jack if you were to consolize the HNG64.
Got my hands on some interesting arcade hardware for a really good price on ebay, What I got were two systems in a bundle and then a game for them off the same seller(always handy to have a game...). One unit was meant to be working and the other faulty, which is fine as I like tinkering with these things. So what did I get? What I did get is the Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade system (HNG64) Fighting board and one game which is Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition / Garou Densetsu: wild ambition. As stated I got 2 of the arcade systems, one system is faulty and one works, so all good there. Now there's not a whole lot of information out there on the Hyper Neo Geo 64, or at least not easily found and accessible. It did not last very long when it was released and only has a handful of games(and you'd need very big hands to hold them).
Working board with game
Faulty Board, no game
Now with this hardware, there are a 4 different boards and different game types are only compatible with their specific board. the 4 types are: Fighting, Shooting, Driving and a Korean board, which only plays the Samurai Showdown games. Having had some (all be it brief) experience with the older Neo Geo MVS hardware(progress with which is still on hold) I still had my hacked test control pad and MVS wired jamma harness, I just had to mod the latter slightly connecting up all the +5v Ground and +12v wires instead of just the top row as the HNG64 is a dual layer board. For video out I'm using RGB SCART so Red Green Blue and sync straight from the jamma harness. There are 2 revisions of the HNG64, Rev1 is non JAMMA and Rev2 which has a JAMMA connector which can be configured via a switch on the bottom PCB to either standard JAMMA or MVS mode, there is also a switch for the audio output which enables you to swap between Stereo/MVS and MONO jamma, as standard jamma only supports mono audio from the connector while MVS supports stereo.
SNK Hyper NeoGeo 64 MVS/JAMMA switches
Power: With Regards to Powering the HNG64 I am simply using a PC ATX power supply which gives plenty of amps on the +5v and 12v lines so Ground, +5v and +12v all come into the MVS JAMMA harness via a molex connector so it's nice and easy to connect / disconnect. the ATX power supply is modified with a simple switch to turn it on / off (as normally the PC motherboard would handle this) you can google how to do this if you want. Sound: for Sound there is a 4 pin header near the JAMMA connector which is for Stereo out and also a Volume control which is nice. As I didn't have anything to plug into the header I had to do a small mod in order to use it. which I'll cover in another post. Video Connection: Is just as stated earlier simple RGB and Sync taken directly from the JAMMA connector and going to RGB SCART, now not all TV sets or monitors will like this some are more tolerant than others, my Sony Trinitron works fine with this setup whereas my JVC CRT does display an image but it's not a very good one, this does work fine with a GBS 8220 CGA/EGA to VGA scaler/converter so with this it's nice and easy to hook it up to a VGA monitor, I have not tried any superguns but I assume the HNG64 should work fine with them although you may need to switch to jamma mode for some.
HNG64 on VGA monitor via GBS 8220 EGA/CVG to VGA converter board
Controls: for the controls ideally I'd want an arcade stick and buttons but sadly I do not have any, so going back to my MVS testing I took a MegaDrive ASCIIPAD which has a similar 4 button config to the neo geo and also a dpad, start, mode, and 2 shoulder buttons. I removed the chip in the controller and wired up the buttons to work with the jamma harness so the face buttons are ABCD and the Dpad is well.. The dpad up down left right, start is start, mode is 1p coin in, and the shoulder buttons I wired up for Test and Service.
Asciipad MD-6 hacked to work with MVS / JAMMA
Starting up: so with everything hooked up and the game rom board seated, it's time to fire this beast up, now what you will want to do is probably set some options in the test mode both for the game and the system, while there are some physical DIP switches on the board (a bank of 4) I have no idea what these do. instructions did come with the boards but they're all in Japanese, which I can't read. You will not be able to enter the test/service mode unless there is a game connected and loaded if no game is present then the system does not boot and sits at a blue screen, when powered up with a game in, it will run through some checks then display a crosshatch and boot the game you can then go into the test/service mode. You can set various game and system options here all the usual like difficulty, credits, number of rounds etc and also I/O tests sound test and options and also set to Free play or whatever, one to watch out for is if you boot a game and there's no sound on the Hyper NeoGeo 64 animation or game intro, make sure you have "sound in demo mode" turned on.
The Faulty Board: as there seems to be little information on the hardware and no real reference or starting point for common faults it boils down to just simple fault finding, probing, testing, swapping parts, etc. trial and error basically all the fun stuff. What the board is doing now: It powers on but goes to a blank but stable red screen and stays this way. I believe the NeoGeo AES does something similar if there is a ram error, but I am unsure if this is in anyway related, perhaps the board is just dead altogether. What I know is working: Power, it's powering up and also the smaller bottom board as I have swapped this over with the working HNG64 and all is well so the issue lies with the top board which has some ram chips and the processors / whatever else is on there and also a large voltage regulator with a big heat sink.
Where will I start: Well I will start to look at the ram as mentioned earlier the AES does something similar with ram faults and the ram checks are the first checks that the working board seems to perform power on / boot up. Thoughts, Feelings and conclusion: It's a step further into the unknown world of arcade hardware for me, and a journey I take on with wonder, awe and renewed optimism, As for the HNG64 I really like the thing, These are built like tanks, literally it even kinda looks like one with the game cart/rom board on top, very well made and heavy construction.
There may not be a whole lot of games available and I may not be able to afford most of them but it's nice to have, and the game I do have is a lot of fun classic SNK fighting in 3D, Also this system puts out really nice crisp visuals and great audio. More to come on this. But I am very happy and will try to resurrect the faulty board if I can, if not then so be it.
