SNK Hyper NeoGeo 64 Arcade Hardware Stereo Sound Mod.

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.

Some Interesting Arcade Hardware: 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.

Retro Review: Alisia Dragoon SEGA MegaDrive / Genesis

I'll start by saying, This is a post I've been meaning to do since I got the game, and it's been a while since I picked it up, I didn't want to comment on the game without giving it some game time, and I just have not got round to doing that, until now... While I've not been able to throw a whole heap of time into it, I have played it enough to know, I like this game, simply put, it's SEGA Mega Drive at it's 16bit blast processing best.

I'll keep this post short and sweet, I'm just going to gush over this one as it just brings back a whole load of great nostalgia for me, and I sat on the floor this morning, in the dark (4-5am-ish) with some headphones on infront of a CRT TV and put in some solid gametime, it felt great like i was back in my early 90s youth.. Anyway, This is a 1992 release developed by GameArts and Gainax, published of course by SEGA(in North America and Europe, GameArts in Japan), a side scrolling fantasy platforming "shooter"(more erm zapper?).

My thoughts on the Game:

Story/Plot: Classic fantasy save the world from the evil powerful magic bad guys who have awoken their all powerful master, you play Alisia(oh look "feminists" what's this we have here? one of them strong female heroines that are apparently non existent and under represented in the video game world?? And from the early 90s too!!!) so you're a sorceress / warrior with dragons and stuff and yeah you shoot lightening at enemies, all good stuff!

Graphics: This game looks great, the sprites, backgrounds, animations, effects all very nice and colourful, looks outstanding on a CRT via RGB scart in all it's 16bit glory.

Sound: I felt the sound and music were excellent, that is all. now as i said in the video my model 1 mega drive is modified so it gets stereo sound direct from the sound chip and it does sound great.

Gameplay: Controls are nice and responsive and everything works well, although when zapping enemies due to it being auto targeting sometimes it does not target the enemy you want when you want, but all in all it works really well, but don't be fooled even though it is auto targeting the game still packs a decent challenge and is by no means easy, enemies come at you from everywhere and the game can be brutal / unforgiving and even "cheap" at times but that's all part of the fun in these games, beating them! There's plenty of secrets, power ups and also you have a slection of "dragons" to chose from during game play, which have their own attack / power, but also are just as vulnerable as you and can be killed, but do help especially when there's multiple enemies on screen.

Here's a short-ish game play video so you can see for yourself what it's like.

Conclusion:

I really like this game, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has a SEGA Mega Drive / Genesis or anyone who likes these old school games, it's not expensive and easily available on the likes of ebay or maybe out in the wild if you're lucky, if not, check it out on an emulator, you won't be disappointed it's well worth the time. Top notch 5/5 11/10.

Small update:

Has taken me far too long to get this post out there but I've been busy and distracted by many things. Including my new youtube channel TheSynrgy1987 which now has channel art! Also now have a Domain name: http://www.thesynrgy.com which currently only links to this blog.

Beer: A look at Corona Extra - Viva Mexico!!

Corona Extra

Beer, Yes.. I like beer, so I thought why not share it with the world or at least anyone who happens across this blog.

In this post I'll be Drinking some Corona Extra, and also testing out my new Trusty Beer Mug which will not only facilitate drinking of beer, but also aid in everyday non beer drinking activities, such as drinking or water, orange juice or Pepsi:

Why is there a Dreamcast Controller there? Who knows...?

A bit about Corona Extra:

This is the first time I will be trying Corona while sober, I've had it many times while already drinking or already drunk, but never from a stone cold sober state. As you can see in the picture above, It's a Clear Gold coloured beer, imported from Mexic, weighing in at 4.5% vol. this is the 330ml bottle, and is Eq. to 1.5 UK units per bottle. How this differs from standard Corona I have no idea, I didn't get any to compare. Corona Extra is distributed(in the UK) by "Molson Coors Ltd".


Conclusion:

I was Actually surprised, I enjoyed this beer and would highly recommend it to anyone(Except pregnant women) for any occasion or just for a cold beer whenever, when I tested/tasted for this post It was at ambient room temperature and the Glass was slightly cooler, Gives a nice Crisp taste but nothing overpowering, and not too gassy either. when poured into a glass There was no head at all. after drinking there was kind of a sweet or honey-like smell from the Glass which was also pleasant, Anyway I like this beer it's good and adds to the list of Mexican drinks I like.

So Yeah, if you can, stock up on these and keep a few in the fridge for whenever. It's also not expensive at all. Corona Extra gets my Official ThumbsUp! "Good all rounder" beer rating... which I just made up.

My beer rating system:

The system I use to rate beer has more of a mystical and/or extra-normal Basis rather than scientific as I do not believe science is applicable to beer rating as it's more of an individual and spiritual experience. the science of my taste in beer does not apply to the next person.

Retro Gaming: Ebay SNES Part 2 - Getting started

Small update on the Ebay SNES.

This is an update from an earlier post Part 1 can be found here: Ebay SNES Part 1.

The 4.5mm gamebit arrived giving me the ability to open up the console. Which I did, arriving also a cheap Chinese video capture USB dongle, I’ve not played with it much yet and I'm not expecting much from it either.

Anyway back to the SNES, I opened it up, turns out to be a SNSP-CPU-01 motherboard, took some pictures of the inside for my own reference they can be found here:Photos on Flickr, although it wasn't needed I went ahead and changed a few of the Capacitors anyway with some I already had, There's not a whole lot inside the SNES so it's not a big issue, just thought I'd do it while I had it open. here's a quick list of values:

Value	Voltage	Amount
47uf	16v	1
2200uf	25v	1
33uf	25v	2
10uf	50v	5
2.2uf	50v	1

Other models of SNES may have different components, these are just what mine has, also being one of the early PAL models yours may be different. I did not change all the capacitors as I didn't have all the ones I needed so just changed what I had(2200uf, 47uf, 1x 33uf) the others I need to order up along with some LEDs. I'm using just standard electrolytic radial capacitors and not the SMT ones.

Progress!

Few other things I completed while the SNES was in pieces, PAL SNES consoles are unable to use USA/JPN control pads and also some 3rd party imported pads as standard, this may not effect all PAL units but it Did with this one, There's two methods of fixing this, one is a mod on the control pad PCB itself which involves added two resistors, which I won't go into, It makes much more sense to make the console universally accept control pads from any region. And this is very easy, Just Bridge 4 points and that's it, a little bit of wire or legs from a resistor or capacitor work great too. Here's a Picture of the Controller port PCB with the points to bridge outlined in red:

Also in the above picture, you can see the red power LED I'll be changing this to a Green LED because it fits the theme/look I'm going for and I like Green better, there's a 160ohm resistor in series with it(2 legs top right of pic). After doing this quick mod, I tested with a control pad from a retrobit "RetroDuo" which did not previously work with the PAL SNES, and now it works just fine.

The Second thing I done was widen the cartridge slot to accommodate US Game Carts, yes, I could have got adapter/converter but meh didn’t want to, and yeah i could have got a US SNES but meh they're ugly as all hell, and SFCs are a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay right now but would still need a slot mod or converter.


Look a bit rough, but then I did use a mini hacksaw/blade but it's by far not the worst job I’ve seen, I'll tidy it up somewhere down the line when I get to the aesthetics sand / smooth the rough edges etc, along with extending the cart slot flap to stop dust getting in.

That's all for now, but there will probably be a part 3 and maybe even 4, who knows! <place holder for link to part 3>

Retro Gaming: Ebay SNES and my plans for it...(Part 1)

Back once again with the geek behaviour 

Not made a blog post in a while as I've been busy with life and stuff, I do however have a number of unfinished posts to complete and publish. but for now here's a pick-up + plans post.

The Pick Up.

Picked up a Super Nintendo Console(PAL) on ebay for pretty cheap, came in at 99p + postage, was just the console itself + the original power supply, and I'm fine with that. It was sold as "for parts or repair, not working" description said "powers on so may work" and "found in house clearance". So when I put a bid in, I didn't know if it would work or not.

LE SNES

It Arrived well packed and in pretty good time, so I was pleased with that, gave it a quick clean up with some "Dettol Anti-Bacterial multi action wipes" I use these for general cleaning and normally give things a wipe over with them when I get something used they're citrus-y so I like that too. The console itself is a bit yellowed but by far not the worst I've seen, Didn't have a AV cable(I thought I did but must have got rid a while back) so I hacked together a RF cable from a composite video cable and a old TV RF cable like so:

Like I said quickly hacked together just cut n soldered, this is just temporary to test the console so I'm not going to leave it like this(but does work great for RF), will get RGB SCART cable for it. The console did actually still have the Multi Out AV port cover bung still on it so this was also nice.

The Console, as I said it's a bit yellowed but overall it's in pretty good condition for it's age no cracks or chips and no serious marks. So using the new hacked together cable I hooked it up to my LCD TV/Monitor as it's got a tuner in it, stuck Super R-Type in and Powered it on, and got a picture straight away, working, although no sound(oh shit), so I went into TV settings and the Coax input was set to "cable" so I changed this to TV/RF Antenna and went to "Autotune" after a few seconds the SNES was picked up and stored as a channel, now with sound! A-La-Below:

Crap video just showing it all working - 

Sorry for the sound and video quality it was filmed with a phone camera, had a hard time getting it to focus and some very lazy half arsed editing + creaky chair noise.

Plans for the SNES:

Got this SNES with the intentions of Modding it which is why I was looking for a cheap one and not too worried about the condition / yellowing. Mods I have planned are as follows:

• 50/60HZ Switch
• Lockout Chip on /off switch
• Cart Slot Mod to fit US Game Carts
• Power LED mod
• LED's for switches
• Paint job with logos and decals
• Replacing Capacitors(although all is working fine)
• Controller port mod to accept US/JP controllers

As of yet I've not been able to open her up, I ordered the wrong Game Bit screwdriver, i got the 3.8mm one that fits the Cartridges(NES and SNES + others) but needed the 4.5mm one that fits SNES consoles and SEGA Carts + others. So I'm now waiting for the right one to arrive. 3.8mm will still come in handy so I'm not bothered. 

I Am aware of the supercic/IGR mod etc but don't want to do that yet or to this console. I'm not interested in playing super mario rpg so this will do, at least for now. I'm looking forward to the Retron5 and that is looking like it's going to be pretty good.

So yeah that's it for now. more to come...

Link to Part 2 

The OSS: Honourable Mention Zero Tolerance SEGA MegaDrive / Genesis

Yes, It's a bit strange having an honourable mention in before the main content but hey, I'm not one for "properness" and the "correct" order of things so fuck it.
I'm still working on play throughs, getting screen-shots etc. For the other games so this one will do for now. yeah I could google these but prefer to take my own where possible

I picked this game up for pretty cheap on ebay a while back, not really knowing what to expect, the name looked appealing so why not? Purely an impulse buy.

Here it is in the MegaDrive + Mega CD, it's in one of the larger 3rd party carts similar to EA carts and can be opened with a torx bit for easy cleaning.

Zero Tolerance:

I was expecting some kind of shooter or side scroller of some kind, what I got was a 3D First Person Shooter, yes.. a FPS game on the SEGA MegaDrive... It's pretty impressive for the 16-bit console. The game itself is very Doom/Wolfenstein like, and plays surprisingly well on the MegaDrive, although the actual game window is smaller than full-screen(see screenshots), I am aware of other first person games on the MegaDrive, such as Core's "Corporation" which has more "RPG" elements and also known as "Cyber-Cop" in North America. i may look at the PC version of this in another post.

Now you me think "this is just a crappy Doom clone", and you'd be forgiven for thinking that. But you'd be kinda wrong, 1. It's not that crappy, and 2. It's more Wolfenstein in space than Doom.

The Game:

Released in 1994 from developer Technopop, and published by Accolade, this was a MegaDrive/Genesis exclusive, at the time it was overshadowed by the likes of Doom, and Wolfenstein.

The game has a nice animated 3D rotating SEGA logo and a cool looking animated Title screen / intro with nice moody music, Two player mode is also available which is in the options menu it says "Two player (Via Cable)"  so a second TV, megadrive, game and the link cable, which connects via the second controller port are required for this, so I have not tested this. Also in the options menu you can enter a password, which you get once completing a level by clearing it of enemies, pause the game and it will list the completed levels with the password beside them, along with a large map of the current level, Now if you're familiar with older games you'll know what these passwords are for and what they do, if not, work it out.

You get a choice of 5 characters when you begin the game, when one dies you can chose another. each has their own speciality and varied starting items which can have an effect on gameplay.

There is a Story/plot to the game, but I'll not go into that too much here, basically you're part of a badass "Zero Tolerance" commando unit and you gotta kill all the alien bad guys. What more do you need from a FPS video game plot? 

Controls:

The game Controls fairly well on the MegaDrive pad, I've also tried with an arcade stick but find the pad works better, controls can be changed in the options menu you can chose between a few different button configurations, but as standard D-Pad moves back forward and turns left or right, holding A then pressing left or right will allow you to strafe, pressing A and up, will make you jump, and A+Down will make you crawl / go prone, B shoots, C button will cycle through your inventory which is displayed at the top of screen. Turning around can be a bit slow but not to the point where it gets unfair. movement is relatively smooth in the 3D environment which is again impressive from the MegaDrive hardware.

Graphics and Sound:

Music and sound: Although basic during gameplay, is nice and moody and doesn't get annoying or mess with the sound effects, the Weapon noises / gunshots are also satisfying, the game also includes digital speech which is clear and audible, So, Thumbs up there.

Graphics: The Graphics for the hardware this game runs on are very impressive, textures and enemies are nice and clear when close up, there are also some nice effects like blood splatter on the walls or floor when you kill and enemy although the environment is 3D the enemies and items are 2d sprites which again is expected but are clear and work well.

Having said all that, it can be hard to see enemies at a distance, which is where the hud comes in, with it's mini-map which shows which direction you are facing and enemies show as red dots. also show is an ID card for your current character and health / ammo / item stats, your inventory at the top and in the bottom left your "comms" which will flash up information or when the level has been cleared. the actual gameplay happens in the upper section of the screen, this is probably due to the hardware limitations, as also seen in the likes of duke nukem, quake, doom, wolfenstein etc, having options to reduce the 3D gameplay window size. But here, there is no option to change this, but it's not needed i played this on both larger LCD screens and an older(as old as the game itself) 24"CRT(1994 sony trinitron) and it was fine.

Video of intro, options and gameplay, captured with kazam and played on Gens/GS R7 on 64bit kubuntu 13.04 - played on an emulator as i don't have any capture equipment / decent camera, video put together with openshot.

Conclusion:

Zero Tolerance is nice and satisfying, again this is an impressive game, and a fun one at that, these days being used to super high frame rates and 1080p+ shooters these days it's hard to go back to these limited older titles and actually play them, but it is worth it, and really puts into perspective how much the industry and technology has progressed in the past 20 years.

I would highly recommend anyone with a MegaDrive / Genesis to pick this one up, it's truly a really good title and it's not at all expensive, with 40 levels there's plenty to shoot through, and it packs a decent challenge too.

Bonus Point: Both Zero Tolerance and It's seemingly unfinished sequel have been deemed by the developer as publicly distributable Freeware so feel guilt free to hit the game up on an emulator ;-)

The roms can be acquired here: http://www.technopop.net/ along with plans to make your own link cable for Two player. nice!

Some New Content Ideas, and where I'm going with them.

Well, like the Title subtly suggests, I have some ideas on new content. As I have not had as much Geeky/Gamer content as I would have liked recently, I'm going to remedy this with Two new blog post categories, which I will explain in this post. There will still be random non-geeky / non-gaming related posts, and due to their random nature I'll not really bother categorising them But will also throw in one non-random(may still be random in it's own right), non-gaming, non-geeky category which Means 3 in Total. Fun times!

Anyway, down to It...

The New Categories:

The OSS - This will be a gaming related category, Focusing on Old School Shooters, mainly first person, but not restricted to any particular genre other than "shooters", decided this as it's one of my favourite gaming genres, and there's many great titles and series / franchises to look at, The name explained is of course OSS = Old School Shooters pretty simple.

The OSEX - Here I will look at two things, Open Source software, and also Operating systems again mainly open source but basically anything that floats my geeky boat, to explain the name, it's simple, OS = open source / operating system, EX = experience, didn't want to call it OSX as this can be confused / associated with apple's OSX, which I most likely will not be looking at.

Booze Reviewze - I will be Reviewing random Alcoholic drinks that I’ve tried from some of my favourite and regular drinks to random and obscure lesser known drinks, this should cover anything from beer, lager, spirits, liqueur, anything really, although I'm not a big wine drinker, I won't rule anything out.

What Else?

Other Changes to come.. A domain name! lol maybe a website and a .com, we shall see what happens there. Some artwork and design are needed I think, so there's plenty for me to work on. other than that, I may also throw in some cooking related content, and other valuable and useful skills for the collapse of civilisation or whatever random apocalypse that may or may not come to pass. Video content is also something I'm looking into although I do not have a decent camera so would need to get that sorted first.

Above all, Relax and Have Fun.

To Be Continued...

Guinness Luxury Milk Chocolate Caramel Bar - A Brief Review

Completely unrelated to anything other than my Love of all things Guinness.

Now Guinness is as they say an Acquired taste, but once it has been acquired through drinking a few pints of "The Black Stuff" there's little better out there in the world of booze than a nice dirty big pint of Guinness. So if You've never had a pint of Guinness, get down to your local Irish bar, pub or booze store and remedy that problem with one(or more) of these:

A Freshly poured pint of Guinness(left)
still settling, as the saying goes "good things come to those who wait" - Let the Guinness settle before drinking.

This Pint of Guinness(right), has Settled and is Ready for drinking, a sip has already been taken.










Now, down to business and the whole point of this post. Guinness, (or perhaps Diageo who own the Guinness brand along with others like Smirnoff) have decided to branch out with the Guinness name into... Chocolate! While there are a few different "flavours" I will focus here on the one I tried personally, and this is the result:

Guinness Luxury Milk Chocolate Caramel Bar

Packaging:

 

Nice, clear, simple easily recognizable Guinness logo, easily distinguishable from other competition on the shelves of a store etc. outer packaging is card that opens at either end, easy to open and inner packaging is foil.

Now for the important bit.. the chocolate:

Now these next two pictures are not my own, shamelessly stolen from Google image search, as i forgot to take pictures of the bar itself, and by the time of writing... It had been nom'd

Showing inner foil packaging and the bar itself, it's divided up into 12 blocks, that can be broken off and nom'd individually.

Showing the Guinness Flavoured Caramel inside.

Taste:

The chocolate itself is nice smooth milk chocolate as described on the packaging, the Guinness flavoured caramel, also nice and smooth, not too runny or too hard, just the right gooey consistency, and yes, it does have a Guinness taste to it, which although is only stated to be 2% Guinness, does give the caramel a liqueur taste so it may not be to everyone's liking.

Out of my Test Subject(Guinea pig) sample group, no-one died, so this was good, no reported illness nor any other medical issues arose due to consumption of the chocolate bar in question. 2 people out of 6 did not like, 4 out of the 6 including myself did like it which gives us a 66.6% approval rate 

In conclusion:

It's not for everybody, but neither is Guinness itself, my advice:

You only live once, Try it, also if you've still not Tried Guinness Try that too!

More Geeky stuff to come!

Project: Botanic Endeavour... Part II

A little while ago, I decided I'd try my hand at growing some plants, as in my previous blog post: Project: Botanic Endeavour - Part 1

This will be an update as to where I am now, The initial post was made on the 7th July 2013, so just a few weeks ago.

As of right now, All i have been doing is watering the plants each day, nothing particularly meticulous or scheduled, and they are still sitting in the same pot with the same home made compost as they were planted in, sitting in the same window.

We've had unusually good weather, it's been sunny and bright, only in recent days has it became stormy and a bit more rainy and overcast, the sun was great however while it lasted, but it seems not just for me but for the plants also.

The Tomato plants have grown very quickly, and even the citrus plant has done well, although considerably slower growing than the tomato plants. I may change this to it's own pot very soon.

Here is a before and after comparison shot:

Before. (07/07/2013)

After, (now) 08/08/2013

bad angle but this is a close up of the Citrus plant

 

 

 

The tomato plants have Grown like erm.. something that grows very fast.. And the citrus plant has grown, although much slower, but still alive and developing, which is great. As I said above I will probably move the citrus plant to it's own pot soon. 

All in all not bad I think for someone who has no clue regarding these things, helped out i think by the great weather we have had and the awesome home made compost.

Home Made Compost: How To 

As it worked so well, I thought I'd add this at the end although it's all common sense, obvious and as simple as simple gets, here's how to stockpile your own home made compost. it helps if you have a garden, yard, shed or garage.

What you will need is a container to put your compost in for it to do it's thing and become erm.. compost... anything will do really you could even skip this and just have a heap in a corner or your yard or garden, but a container is just easier and more tidy.

you can get specially designed compost bins, or just use any old plastic bin / container or whatever you like, i have some compost bins for the job. 

Basically what you want to do is anything decomposable waste from your day to day activities collect instead of binning, it helps to have a small container you can use throughout the day or week and then empty it into the compost bin when full. 

Obviously be sensible with what you put in try and stick to vegetable / fruit waste, e.g. peelings, cores any parts you don't use, you can also throw in things like used tea bags, egg shells, garden waste also paper can be put in too. basically use your common sense.

what you also want is worms getting into the compost to do their thing and help it along, some things may need to be shredded before putting in like wood eg branches, also you don't want to add anything that will grow like seeds. but grass trimmings are fine. 

once you've build up a fair amount just leave it for a few months to do it's thing normally about 3-4 months is fine. plenty of in depth tutorials online. 

And that's all for now.

Unreleased SEGA MegaDrive / Genesis Game ... Time Trax -Released..

Old School Game Time..

I've Been wanting to post about this for a while since it was brought to my attention.

But I wanted to give it a a bit of game time before i made a post about it. Also I'm not 100% sure regarding the legalities of this piece of software, and / or It's Distribution but i assume the good folks who got this out to us have had that covered? if not.. oh well.

Regardless, I see no harm in a quick write up on the game, which did see a release back in the day for the Super Nintendo, however the SEGA version was never released... Until Now!

Sadly It's not a Cartridge release, for obvious reasons, so it comes as is, in Binary (.bin) rom format, which should be compatable with almost all of the emulators out there, flash rom carts such as Kirkzz's EverDrive, or if you're that way inclined and tooled up, Flash the .bin to a 1mb rom chip and hack it into a MD/Genesis cart (eg a cheap sports game) to play on the real hardware if you, like me are still rockin' a MegaDrive Console.

Eventually i plan on doing the latter, but currently do not have a rom chip or programmer.

The Good Folk over at http://segaage.com/ have made this release possible, and happen, so a new game for all to enjoy.

Anyway, the game is "Time Trax" a nice little platformer in classic 16bit style, while the graphics are not earth shattering even for back then, the gameplay and music are pretty solid, music is especially good. but that is all subjective so i suggest checking it out for yourself.

Screenshots of the Title Screen and Options, taken by myself using Emulator "Gens/GS R7" on Ubuntu based system 13.04 64bit(almost everything i do is/will be on free and open source software, I'm a big Advocate of free and open source operating systems and applications):

This Seems to be a Different Screen to what is show over on SegaAge

 

Options Screen

The Options screen, has the usual, a music / sound test, Difficulty settings, and 6 different controller settings, this is nice as there is no manual with this release, so set this as you like.


Back Story:
The game does have a back story, you play Captain Darian Lambert, Fugitive Retrieval Section, the Year is 2193 - and theres a whole heap of back story and text which im not going to read right now or go into.

Gameplay:
Basic platforming gameplay, Nothing special here other than the ability to slow down time, this as per the games storyline, is one of Captain Darian Lambert's psychic powers, slowing down the perception of time for other human enemies, however this does not work against machines, this will need to be used to get past certain areas/ obstacles etc. and only lasts for a few seconds at a time, then quickly recharges. Then, the standard jump and attack buttons, you start with a long range electric weapon which is good vs machines, but only stuns human oponents(keep shooting them and they eventually die), for them you need to get up close and beat them up hand to hand, (same button)

As per classic platforming rules, there are secret areas and boxes, barrels and crates will contain items / points / power ups,

Movement and control are all solid, although I've yet to play this on an actual MegaDrive but i dont see there being any issues. there are spike pits to fall in and pipes to shimmy across, ladders to go up and down etc.

 Graphics:
In-game graphics are as to be expected for a 16bit MegaDrive game. how they compare to the SNES version I can't say as i've never played it. Here's some quick gameplay screenshots:

Player standing still with enemies above and below. Note the overlay graphics which can be seen around the edges i think they're meant to be webs, as there's spiders which crawl off them and into the players path, which i thought was a nice touch.

Shooting - not it's more effective to beat up the human enemies up close. at the top left you can see your life meter(the green bars)and the number of lives or "1ups" you have(the heart shape with the "2" in it), on the top right is your time slowing power meter, this will drain as you use your time slowing power but will recharge quickly when not in use.

Shimmying(?) over Spike pit on pipe - every old school platforming veteran knows: "Pipes are our friends" and "spike pits are bad mmmkay"

When you die and fail your mission, the game lets you know how disappointed it is with you by rubbing it in:

And Rightly So! Shame on you!

 
Sound and Music:

Well, Really , it's all there as far as I'm concerned, Cheesy 90's yet catchy, not annoying music, well composed, and decent sounding 16bit tracks, sound effects again are solid and kind of what you would expect. all in all solid


Conclusion:
Solid old school, stop the bad guy, save the world sci fi platformer, good solid gameplay, music and sound are good, graphics nothing special but solid, controls are good and solid too. So I say, Check it out! win win, you got nothing to lose here. Solid all rounder.

Note1:
So far i have only played the first level, due to time constraints, and other goings on, also as I said I'm not sure how this compares to the SNES version.

Random Update - The Boredom Strikes Back..(router mod/hack)

Boredom Strikes Again!

I Had a few more heatsinks spare and a fan lying around so I've gone n done it again, this time to a BT HomeHub V1.0(I think) Black

On the back of the NetGear mod here: Clicky Clicky

The Hub has the Thompson Speedtouch 7G firmware flashed onto it, so not the BT one.

This was a messy, quick, thrown together job again, just for the hell of it.

Again fan soldered directly to power jack, this router has no on/off switch so its always on while plugged into the mains.

The fan i used this time was a single 12v 0.2amp case/cpu cooling fan. found it in a box of junk.

Hacked a hole in the home hub case, and hot glued the fan on, why? because I'm lazy and it works.

Pictures:

Hole + heatsinks:

Completed and powered on

Yes it's dusty and ugly as all Hell I know but meh it's gonna be hidden out of the way so I wont see it.

This Router had a tendency to lock up/freeze from time to time so I hope this will fix that, I really need to buy some new networking hardware.

That's all for now, probably more waffle coming soon.

A little something on the side - Project: Botanic Endeavour.

What?

I like to keep busy and have random shit to do, keeps the min occupied and stops me from doing other more random increasingly stupid shit.

So what I've got sitting here in my window, is a plant pot, into which I put some home made compost and some seeds. added some water, and they started growing!

Why? - Why not? Fuck you.

Essential skills for the end of the world / zombie apocalypse, collapse of civilization as we know it.. etc.

So as the story goes, I was making a sandwich, chopping a tomato n decided "I'm gonna plant these seeds n see if I can grow my own tomatoes" so after eating aforementioned sandwich, I set to work googling information about growing plants from seeds, especially tomatoes.

Now you can't just stick the seeds in the soil straight out of the tomato, as they're covered in a protective layer of gooey jelly stuff(yes that is the correct scientific terminology) first you got to get rid of that. one way I found suggested fermenting it off, leaving you with just the seed. Since I'm all about fermentation as per: ye olde meade making of i decided to try that.

I stuck the seeds into a plastic drinks bottle with a little water then sit them in the window for a few days and let nature take it's course, after a few days they were ready, Poured off the water and goo, and dried the seeds with some tissue paper.

Next, I put the seeds inside some tissue paper then put the paper into some small pots (yogurt pots or drinks bottles cut in half) added a little water so the tissue was damp but not swimming, and left them in a closet for a few more days.

Checked on them after a few days and the seeds had sprouted roots, added some more water and waited another day or two and they had leaves, or at least the beginnings of leaves.

Removed the new plants carefully from the tissue paper trying to to break the roots and added them to a pot full of home made compost, which is rought and lumpy kinda stuff but seems to work well.

Here's what they look like now after a few weeks: of just watering roughly once a day...

There are a few other things growing from the compost, I'm not really sure what they are but meh whatever. there's 6 tomato plants growing, i did remove some grass that had started growing I'll leave the other things in there n see what they turn out to be. i did plant some orange seeds in the same pot(for the hell of it) see below:

Out of curiosity I also tried this with orange and lemon seeds not too sure how well this is working yet though. but the lemon seeds didn't work at all they just went all gooey and nasty after a while. However some of the orange seeds did start doing their thing, so I planted them with the tomato seeds;

Of course in my divine wisdom I did not mark or label their positions i think one may be growing but not sure. We'll see how that plays out.

What's Next?

I will probably need to separate the plants into their own pots / growing areas soon they seem to be growing quite fast. Not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them, make up a mini DIY indoor greenhouse or maybe put them outside.

Either way cool lil experiment, I'm pleased with the results so far, so I'll do more updates maybe if I end up making the indoor greenhouse or actually getting some Tomatoes from them. And if the orange seed actually grows.. Time will tell.

What Happens when i get Bored. (Netgear router cooling mod)

Something non gaming related today, but still nerdy so all good...

OK so, i have a NetGear modem/router, it's not the best but does the job i need it to do. and is a shit lot better than the one i got from my ISP.

Now it previously had overheating issues, dropping connection or locking up completely and needed to be reset at least once a day. So i eventually got pissed off with it and decided to do something. And no, it wasn't buying a new router like a normal person would have.

First, I took some small ram heatsinks off an old graphics card, and put them on the router's chips, this actually helped a lot. so i left it alone for a while. then seen a video and forum post regarding netgear router mods:

heres the video -

I decided to go for some Overkill, because i had the parts lying around, unused. Set to work on my router:

1. Cut honking great rectangular hole in the top casing.
2. Soldered ground and 12v wires to the Power jack pins on the router.
3. Took a HDD cooler (akasa dual 12v fans) popped it on the top over the hole i'd cut(measured to fit of course)
4. connected the ground and 12v wires to the fans.
5. closed it all up and secured the hdd cooler in place with some trusty hot glue, i would have used screws / bolts but didn't have any that would have worked.(eg too long or too fat*thats what she said*)

And here's the end result:

Stuck the NetGear logo back on after i shot the video sorry about quality was using phone camera and sometimes it doesn't like to focus.

Before:

^After^

Final Thoughts:

Overall for a stupid mod that cost nothing and alleviated my boredom for a while, I'm happy, it does what it's meant to do. Whereas most people should be fine just adding the heatsinks which can be found cheap on ebay or wherever i just wanted a lil more oomph.

What would i do differently?

Now as the 12 fans are wired directly to the pins on the power jack, they are always on and always at 100%, they're not really noisy but are audible, so i would maybe find a different point to connect them(after power switch for example) and also perhaps Add a trim pot / variable resistor or on / off switch or both to give a little more control on fan speed (and therefore noise).

but there's plenty of fans going when my main gaming rig is on and it's beside the router so don't really notice when its on. anyway. + headphones so no big deal.

What's Next?

Next, i may give similar treatment to my hacked V1.0 BT homehub as it tends to have similar issues only not as bad.

NeoGeo MVS 6 Slot Arcade Hardware Repair Part 2, small update

Slow Progress:

Slow progress, waiting, more waiting, ordering parts, ordering supplies and tools. meh! I HATE WAITING!

 Something along the lines of a Star Trek Replicator needs to be invented, would put an end to a lot of waiting. A lot of items i need have to be ordered online, some for them USA or China, for various reasons, mainly being where i live, no "Radioshack" or decent local electronics suppliers. Just one big chain, which do not always have what i need. "Maplin" and can be a bit pricey.

other things have also slowed progress, more important events in life haha pesky life getting in the way of my nerding around.

On to the actual progress:

Area around the leakage has been cleaned and acid neutralized, as per Part 1, i have lifted a number of ICs(chips) from around the Area, a few HD74LS05Ps, a HD74HC32P, the D4990AC calender clock chip, a NEC uPA2003C and the DM74AS244N closest to the battery.

I removed these for three reasons; 1. To make sure the traces that run under the ICs were not corroded / broken, 2. To Clean up any remaining acid / corrosion, and 3. To make sure the chips themselves were not damaged and replace if required.

There was a fair amount of corrosion on the legs of the chips and the solder wasn't great either. so i decided to just cut away the legs from the DM74AS244N and the 74LS05s, the other chips came out with little effort so i cleaned up the legs on them and will try and re use.

I've also replaced a electrolytic capacitor that was right beside the battery, just because i had a few spare from previous projects (Game Gear Recap i think)
 


So Where i am now: 

What i get when the its all hooked up:

it's actually white not pink, poor lighting and the flash from camera(my phone cam doesn't like to focus well or take pictures of CRT's).

From the information I've got so far it looks like something is stopping the 68000 CPU from firing up, either a broken trace somewhere or a ram issue. or both lol.

Waiting! for some New HD74LS05s and DM74AS244Ns. more solder and some flux as I've ran out / have little left.

I may also order up some SRAM chips but will wait until everything else is in place.

I may also have another Neo Geo board coming my way soon, another multi slot but with a less severe issue, although this is not concrete yet.

I am determined to bring this beast back to life.

So basically this update is a Load of babble 

Finally I would like to thank l_oliveira over on www.assemblergames.com Forum for some useful info and pointers (also great group there, recommended place to check out)

Ebay Luck. Gaming Related randomness

Well, all i'll say is you can still get a good deal on ebay although getting more and more rare! (although everything on ebay is apparently "RARE!"

Registered Trade Mark.

I was browsing ebay out of pure boredom, and happened across something of interest at an interesting price (cheap! my kind of price) now these normally go for more on ebay.

but i grabbed a Sega Dreamcast for £10, was console only and no modem

the reason i got it was for parts mainly case and motherboard, power supply etc as spares, Anywho. It was listed as "untested spares and repairs"

so i thought Like ol Jack Burton always says: "What the Hell" and went for it.

After a few days, it arrived but i missed the delivery guy. luckily royal mail office isn't too far from me, so the next working day i went up to collect it.

Now when i got it, i tried to take a quick look on the way home. but damn... this thing was well packed. it took brute force teeth and claws to get it open. impressive and commendable packing job! which im not used to from ebay sellers, let alone for a supposedly faulty item.

when i got home, gave it a quick dust and checked inside to make sure nothing was disconnected and all the components were there. they were. all good. connected my cheapo vga box "Game" brand. and stuck in my rather scratched up Virtua Fighter 3TB disc.

Boom! fired up first time, memory battery is dead but they all are by now. so just ok'd the date and time.

that's Via composite video and not VGA

needless to say the DreamCast is no longer going to be used as parts, as it's too good and works perfectly. Bargain! and a nice surprise.

now i did notice an issue, and this was a pain in the arse to fix.

my cheapo VGA box wasn't displaying all colours ( Red Green Blue) it was missing the red, 

so determined i set about fixing it too. as i dont want to pay stupid amount of money for another one.

basically the problem was wear and tear on the connector that goes from the VGA box to the Dreamcast AV port. It's cheap quality crap basically. 

cracked it open, fixed the problem after some frustrating soldering and pin manipulation. got it working like new. now it looks pretty ugly but does the job fine.

here's what it looks like now:

blurry picture i know sorry.

nice green electrical tape and super glue
 holding the connector together

just tape and it's own clips holding the box in one piece.

Last time i got lucky on ebay was when i picked up a Model 1 SEGA Master System, again, supposedly faulty, but worked perfectly when i got it, came with a Joystick and the SEGA Phaser light gun and a MK2 MegaDrive AC adapter.

The only issue is that inside it was missing the metal shielding, this does not have any effect on the system though it's working to this day

Random Ramblings. :-)