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. :-)

NeoGeo MVS 6 Slot Arcade Hardware Repair Part 1.

Thought i'd keep a record of what im doing here and maybe it'll be of some help to someone else who knows.

I have a Neo Geo MVS 6 SLOT (NEO MVH MV6 (6 slot) arcade board to repair

It's had the battery leak but any more than that as of yet i do not know.
The battery is located on the bottom board at the opposite edge from the volume sliders and headphone/ speaker jacks.

It's Huge! but an impressive beast.
Metal shield for the top, Slot Board and then Main board on the bottom.

My first attempt at repair of NeoGeo hardware, so this could go horribly wrong. but hey, i like to jump in at the deep end.

First off, i Stripped it down. some stubborn screws and a bent mount from shipping aside(see pic below for how mount was bent.)

Yes that's a blurry pic, but you can see the board mounts sticking out of the box! lol..

Anyway. i Cleaned the board up, Removed the leaky battery, went over the damaged / leaked acidy area with some baking soda and water solution then cleaned it off with water and dried board throughly.

here's what it looks like now.

Fig 1. Back of bottom board below battery

Fig 2. Top of Bottom Board, Acid Damaged Area

What I need to do is remove the stubborn black sticky foamy gunk so I can take a better look at the traces on the bottom below the battery area. I can see some are damaged.

on the top part, there's plenty of traces which look completely wrote off or very questionable. so alot of work to patch them up.

I may also remove some of the chips in that area and make sure there's no corrosion and they're OK underneath.

The battery was simple to remove just De-solder two pins from the bottom of the board(middle-right of "Fig 1" pic)

That's all so far as i need to stock up on some supplies

Solder, Wire, Flux, etc.

Thoughts So Far?

Big Job! Big Board!  But all being well, achievable i really hope i can bring this board back to life. first of many? prehaps i would like to work on some smaller boards eg 1 2 and 4 slot or dedicated(no slot game built in), and other arcade hardware.

Ye Olde Meade - The Making Of

And Today is a new day, after a random dream about a zombie apocalypse i've decided to make up a batch of Mead. And share the magic of mead making for all of you alcoholics out there.

few things to consider here.

1. Legality 

Check if it is legal in your country or state town or provence, where i am its legal to make homebrew booze as long as its not moonshine / spirits, so beer / wine / ale / mead / cider etc, all good.

2. Hygiene

You Will NEED to make sure EVERYTHING you use is clean and sterilised or you may end up making vinegar or the bad kind of alcohol that blindes / kills you, 

3. Risk of poisoning blindness and death > see point 2.

If you're allergic to any of the ingredients, obviously avoid them.


So, aslong as those 3 points are understood here we go:

Assuming you are not completely hopeless and can mix things together clean things and have use of limbs this is easy! (if you dont have use of limbs ask for help from someone who does)

im going to be doing 2 batches of 2 litres here

Ingredients:

1. Honey
2. Water
3. Sugar
3. Fruit
4. Yeast
5. Some kind of nutrients for the yeast

Equipment:

1. Liquid container / Demijohn / Large Bottle
2. Something to sterilise everything
3. A funnel may be Useful but not needed.
4. Balloons / airlock bungs
5. Secondary Liquid container / Demijohn / Bottle (optional)
6. Bottles to Bottle it when its ready.

Now obviously your bottles / containers / Demijohns need to be sealable and clean

Adjust and experiment with ingredients to your taste / the amount your making.


There's many ways you can do this but this is my way. the cheap easy lazy way.

1. Clean and Sterilise everything (i'll assume you're not thick and can work this out)
this step is important so dont skip.

2. I'm using Bottled water bought from supermarket this is the easiest option and provides you with the containers you need also. im using 2 2litre bottles here but you can get larger bottles / jugs my 1st batch i used a 5 litre jug.

Pour out (or fill with boiled water(let cool first!) if you didn’t buy it) roughly a quarter of the water from each bottle

2. Add Honey to bottles  im using 1x 454g jar in each bottle of water. you can heat the honey by putting the jars in some hot water to make it run easier or buy the squeezie bottles of honey.


3. seal the bottles, and shake, shake like the wind, until the honey is mixed well with the water this may take a few mins of shaking.

4. Add a small amount of sugar to the mixture this is for the yeast to help it on its way.


5. Wash! and chop up whatever fruit you would like to add to your mead mixture. im using oranges here and some raisins(these also contain nutrients and help the yeast) you can put the oranges in skins and all this doesn’t matter.

6. add the yeast. you can get specialised brewing yeast, but I'm just using easy bake  baking yeast that comes in sachets, one sachet per bottle should be enough. the reason i use this is because its fast acting and includes nutrients to help the yeast along.
 
7. seal and shake up again.

8. open the bottles and grab some balloons(or the airlock bungs if you purchased some), these act as an airlock, as gas from the fermentation process needs to escape but we don’t want anything nasty to get in. Poke a small hole or 2 in the top of the balloons and secure them around the top of the bottle

like so 

9. Place the bottles in warm safe place they wont be disturbed and can work away, temperature is important so don't put them out in the cold or the yeast will die and not do its job.

I will say on point 9. there may be some overflow / spitting from the bottles as gass and some of the mixture bubbles up and escapes so place the bottles in a box / container where this wont cause any mess / concern.

10. let the yeast and mixture work away until its stops bubbling this can be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on your yeast and the temperature of the enviroment.


after a few weeks(1 - 2 depending on point 10.) you can either transfer the mead to a secondary container (this is called racking) and leave to mature / age a bit (a few weeks to a few months is good) or just put it somewhere cold and let the yeast die off in the same bottles(eg you dont need to transfer at this stage).

after its aged to your preference, you can bottle it and/or go ahead and party like a Viking

my last batch bottled:

Movember!


And also Hairy December!

Normally I don’t do clean shaven, I prefer the scruffy look, I don’t have the most impressive facial hair in the world, but this November, I've decided to Show the Mo.

Now I Shouldn't need to explain Movember, so I won't

Basically it means i have to make the effort to shave a lot more than usual to keep a moustachio going and keep it relatively tidy(shame about the rest of me, meh!)

so like this:

To make up for this, im going to go for a Hairy December, in which case im aiming for something like this:

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to Hairy December a lot more due to many factors,  mainly laziness

My 1st Ever Blog Post


Don't know or care really if anyone is going to read my ramblings, feelings, ideas, and general madness.

But thats what will be showing up on here. things i like, things i hate, things i'm doing, things im planning on doing. and things in general i deem worthy of sharing.

Warning: may contain rants and personal opinions that you may not agree with, and may even anger you. if so, you are free at any time to navigate away from the page, close the window, or whatever else you need to do. or if you want, bitch and moan. its all good.

Many Many ideas and thoughts going on inside my head right now, will do a few posts explaining some of them soon.

what to expect? Random Geekyness, Techy goings on, maybe some other bits and pieces, plenty of Ranting, Football(soccer) related nonsense, Gaming(as in Video Gaming) both Retro and Current Gen, maybe some home brew alcohol related goings on.

Plus Anything else in-between.