NR RetroWorks
@nachtrave
Programmer & Tinkerer | She/Her Retro Tech/Gaming, Space & Science, Sustainable Living, Clean Energy, Hydroponics, Electronics, Aviation, CAD, 3D Printing, Cats PATREON: WEBSITE: www.nr-retroworks.com
GUTEN TAG! The duck has landed. There are four little screws underneath that sticker but I kinda wanna not destroy the sticker….
I don’t need your PERMISSION to add to 3v3 to my 5v only PCI ports, I just needed a giant heat sink for the LDO. :3 Does it work? Damn right it does!
Each cardette is like its own little IC, made from basic components. I guess that’s a basic ASIC then?
On my desk for teardown today is a very rare Odyssey I console system from the late 70s. Hand drawn traces and these little card sections full of electronics. If you go back a decade or so more and you’d see these little cardettes contain all the same component lined up in sequence.
He is a very lucky baby. Came to us at 8 weeks old. Mia found him crying on the porch. Now Mia baby has a baby brother. :3
Dis is my new baby btw. :3 His name is Sylvester but I call him Sylvie. :3 He has snow boots. And extra thumbs!
The boards have arrived, and WOW DO THEY LOOK GOOD. *nudges your shoulder* I made that ;) I cannot wait to get this assembled and tested.
These RetroPower PSUs are extremely well made and deliver top notch steady power. However, the TI-99/4A version of them requires some modifications. They essentially have done an internal PSU by-pass mod that while it does work, requires soldering and rewiring if you want to keep your switch/LED.
What if the Atari 5200 had one bodge wire installed that gave the cartridge port a R/W control pin? It could do banking. It could do RAM. All natively - no tricks. Well, in theory this works. You just need a single bodge wire or that expansion port on a dongle that goes into the back of the cart.
You’re happy, I’m happy, the NeoGeo AES PROGBK1Y+/CHA256RY+ boards are completed. Now to print off a test set and see if they work!
Atari Lynx fans will know that the game PCBs were printed on this super tiny flimsy circuit board and glued onto the plastic. A sticker was then applied overtop covering it. This is one of those circuit boards. Neat, eh? It’s really thin and flimsy. But that’s it! That’s the Lynx!
Hot off the presses, I just got this thing routed and finished last night. This #NeoGeo CHA256RY board is apart of a set of two, the next one I’ll be routing being the other PROGBK1Y. This board was super interesting though and thanks to @furrtek.bsky.social all the CPLD work is already done.
It’s midnight and I’ve been working on this all day and night and have reached breakthrough! I rearranged the chips one last time, erasing hours of work, only to arrive at SUCCESSFUL ROUTING. At least for the complicated part of the board. God that looks so goooood.
So after getting one fully put together, there are definitely some improvements that I want to make going forward. The switch was too tall, holes need a little bit more work to get them just right, and just various other oddities. The shift register didn’t work because Nintendo used active-high……
NeoGeo AES game board I’ve been working on at work. I call those 32 traces going down the middle the data waterfall.
Guess what I just got? :3 That’s right! Brand new Virtual Boy controller prototype PCBs. ^_^
Those who have a #VirtualBoy will rejoice hearing that HoskBrew is going to be carrying new controller PCBs and power TAP PCBs in addition to the injection molding of such. I know because I built the designs. :3 Just got them send off to the Fab for an initial prototype run!
It’s just a voltage divider circuit and a transistor behind a diode. Thats the entire low-power circuit in the VirtualBoy controller.
Took apart and fixed a VirtualBoy today! Pretty fun little thing - you can see in the pics the way the reflective bit wiggles rapidly to give the image. Standard eye piece not working issue - requires soldering the ribbon cable itself back in. Which fixed it! :D
Built these at work today. (One chip left off to program before final soldering)
Do you see this kitty? This here is my baby kitty. She very baby. Look at her stare. She is memorizing! (Really she just wants to play fetch the blue bottle cap)
No matter what I do I can’t get around it. Insignia, why do you do this to me?