General Stuff(tm)

[stephen_usher]

The Elite Community Meet happened over the weekend, well Saturday for the actual event but there was set-up on Friday evening and tear down yesterday.

I only took one photo the whole weekend, and that was of the retro room just before opening on Saturday.

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Yesterday morning one of the team asked if I'd like a "box of retro", stuff found in a garage. Well, of course I said yes.

I had a bit of a sort through last night.

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Well, obviously there's the Sinclair Spectrum +2B with its power supply. There was also a Nintendo 64 with Golderneye cartridge but not power supply, controller or video cable. A number of wall warts were included including on for a Sega Master System. Unfortunately there was no Master System, only a controller and some games. The rest was tat mostly, such as micro USB cables a plenty, a joystick with the plug cut off and a reather bloated looking iPod Touch.

Anyway, the Spectrum mostly worked off the bat. Just needed a clean and the caps on the tape PCB replacing then it was happy.

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The N64 was more of a problem. Without the PSU, which provides both 12V DC and 3.3V DC it's hard to get it working. Similarly, without a special video cable it's hard to see if it's working. Thankfully there's enough info out there to bodge things.

The Kaiweets tool kit has a Nintendo special screw head so it was easy to get into the machine. I checked the PCB for leaking caps and there were none.

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My plan was to make the machine run from purely 12V using a normal jack. I'd wire up a buck regulator as I have spare adjustable ones, and use that to power the main system. Easy enough to wire up by soldering under the board on the power socket connector pins. Similarly connecting some photo sockets.

Looks a bit hacky but it works.

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Not having any controllers is a bit of an issue, so I've ordered a couple from Amazon for a princely sum of just over £20, so they must be top quality!!!

They should arrive tomorrow, hopefully, whilst I'm out. So, I won't really be able to test until Wednesday.

[PhilC]

@stephen_usher I may have a spare PSU for the n64, presuming you'd want to reverse the mods?

[stephen_usher]

It is easy to reverse, but I think powering from a single 12V wall wart is an improvement.

Thanks for the offer.

[rubber_jonnie]

Why does nobody approach me with a box of stuff

The N64 is quite an interesting machine, does yours have a RAM expansion cart at all or just the termination cart that all the machines come with?

You can get video to HDMI adapters quite cheaply from AliExpress, I have one of these Bitfunx N64 HDMI adapter

And it works great, but there are other brands however not all work with PAL systems, which is why I'd recommend this one.

I also have an Everdrive for mine, worth getting if you intend to hang onto it.

[stephen_usher]

The machine is just stock with the RAMBUS terminator card unfortunately. Those RDRAM expansion cards are pretty pricey on eBay, at £40-£50.

I’ll have a look at the HDMI upgrade later.

I’ve bought a “SummerCart64” for the machine, which is like the Evercart.

[mrbombermillzy]

The machine is just stock with the RAMBUS terminator card unfortunately. Those RDRAM expansion cards are pretty pricey on eBay, at £40-£50.

I may have some early RAMBUS Pentium 4 electronic parts still kicking around somewhere. Do you want me to pick out any RDRAM modules if I come across any on my CL5 parts search at home @stephen_usher ?

[stephen_usher]

Apparently there is a board that you can make which uses 4MB RDRAM chips. However getting the boards made and shipped from PCBway would probably cost almost as much as a board from eBay

[mrbombermillzy]

Ah, I see.

[stephen_usher]

Thanks for the thought anyway.

[stephen_usher]

I've just got home from my partner's place and tested the "high quality" N64 controllers.

To be fair the mouldings are good and the buttons etc. feel OK...

On one controller the analogue "down" works only if you pull it down a little, then it goes up.
On the other controller the D-pad does left and down if you press left, most of the time.

Otherwise they're fine.

I didn't expect anything better for £23 including delivery though to be honest.