"Pressional mod service" (yeah...whatever!)

[SUMIRE]

Looks like the problem with my Panasonic Q's lack of sound in game mode is due to the shoddy workmanship of Raven Games poor quality RGB Scart leads. I have been reliably informed that a short has occurred on the SCART end sending the voltage for the channel select down the audio lines and blowing my board. Incidently, at the time, I paid ?70 freaking pounds for this cable. ft: ft:

[neogeoman]

Regarding my pathetic page, http://www.gamesx.com:

It's far too vague in places and it doesnt actually explain why a mod works and how it's working. For example you will not get a Saturn region mod working using their guides, you need to understand the logic of the jumper settings yourself

Translation: I don't make pages for stupid people, I make resources for smart people to learn and experiment on their own. You won't find more than a handful of idiot's guides on GameSX.com for a reason: Well, two reasons:

1. I think people should experiment and learn and poke around on their own, handholding's for children.

2. I'm lazy, detailed idiot's guides take a lot of time and effort and I've got other fish to fry (see http://nfg.2y.net/games/ for those fish).

This Saturn mod guide is the single most detailed guide to the Saturn's jumpers on the internet. It includes diagrams for nearly every Saturn system in existance, and AFAIK it's the _only_ one to detail the HiSaturn Navi mod. What more you want, I should do it for you?

[Lyris]

Hmm, this is just my two cents but when expensive-ish hardware is being operated on, I'd prefer to have as much help as I could get and leave expirements til later...

[Shimmyhill]

I agree that lots of people mess mods up, games-x is a splendid site and in no way can be blamed for dodgy home mods.

I do not do my own mods as i can not solder (know your own limits) my m8 does all mine, bar ps2 that i got from will @ london consoles.

Madeira games where excellent modders, my m8 used to work for them and did some pioneering dreamcast stuff long before others. He remember Saurian from IRC days when he was new to the game.

My point is that you should pick someone with good feedback (london cosoles, Saurian etc) however i feel its turned a little nasty esp to Madeira games who where always top modders and very friendly (used to personnaly pick stuff up)

[?pint]

I did my own Xbox mod with the X-ecutor chip. Well, not exactly. I got a guy at my dad's workplace to do it. Very easy to do, though there was some worry that he hadn't used enough solder. He was an electronics guy and had all the right tools, inlcuding an incredibly thin soldering iron. I got him to use as little solder as possible... and in my opinion in the work is excellent. The chip is secure, the wire provided was insulated and cos it was only one wire, didn't look messy at all. And it hasn't failed me at all yet.

[bwi]

Regarding my pathetic page, http://www.gamesx.com:

your page was invaluable when i built my supergun and made all neo geo connections. Cracking site

thanks

Bri

[Papercut]

I agree, I'm a fan of gamesx.

just a shame its not updated more often

[Firsty]

I used Tony Ross' Saturn Mod guide or some background info.
Very basic site, but good info.

I agree tho, you gotta have a clue what's going on.
It's hard to explain how the saturn regions work to a newbie.

[tamago]

Well Madeira Games modded my DC with no problems.

they also modded my PS2 with an Origachip (in the days before the Messiah), it cost me ?85 even though I provided the chip myself. The PS2 has since stopped working. Which is most annoying as it is a PAl machine and I live in Japan now. The PS2 still boots PAL games, but only from standby??

Is there any hope Saurian? I'm coming back to England next week.

Have you looked inside your DC? (I bet thats a totally different story)

No chance with the PS2 I'm afraid (it's been touched by others) it's much better to work with fresh solder points and a later revision of PS2. PM me and I'll give you some information that will help you loads.

What are everyones good/bad experiences of http://www.madeiragames.com/? I bought a pre-modded Gamecube off them (early 2002) and it's still working (thankfully).

[superkully]

Their prices look rather expensive... I'd go with www.londonconsole.com. Will's a great bloke.

[neogeoman]

just a shame its not updated more often

It's tough to find more consoles to add or more ways to list the same data. You can only post the PSX AV pinout so many times before people realize you're just ****ing with them.

That's another reason I think it's a nice resource, without the idiot's guides. If you want the pure data to do with what you will, no one's got more, and really, you can't improve on a pinout. What are you gonna do, make a flash animation of a joystick connector? >=)

There are some holes and the occasional innacuracy, but by and large I think I accomplished what I set out to do. When I started GameSX.com some six or seven years ago there was almost none of this info available online. I started the site because this pissed me off, and I thought maybe I wasn't the only one who needed the data.

Glad to see there are a few people that use it.

[Papercut]

There are some holes and the occasional innacuracy, but by and large I think I accomplished what I set out to do. When I started GameSX.com some six or seven years ago there was almost none of this info available online. I started the site because this pissed me off, and I thought maybe I wasn't the only one who needed the data.

Yeah, I used to have to work out all that stuff myself. Figured out the snes av port about 10 years ago now, wiring up each signal by hand to see what it was, and worked out the snes pad schematic to build my own arcade stick.

No resources available for any of this stuff back then, unless you knew an importer, and there weren't many.

If I hadn't found gamesx, I'd have had to set something similar up myself

So yeah, its a cool resource. I think the info-only approach is good, method is down to the individual. Someone who doesn't know the first thing about modding a saturn should probably pay someone to do it.

Last time I visited there were a few things gamesx lacked though, lets have a look:

- ntsc GameCube rgb mod

- pal/ntsc snes av differences (be nice to mention the caps and resistors needed):

As seen below, the SNES does have RGB capability. I was able to get a stable raster on my NEC MultiSync "classic" using the RGB and sync pins. However, the video levels are not RS-170 compatible. The DC offset needs to be filtered out with some large capacitors and the peak-to-peak video amplitude may need to be reduced to 0.7v by using a lower load impedance than 75 ohms."

... is a bit hard to follow.
afaict ntsc machines need 220uF 6v electrolytic caps on r, g, b and sync (from my Japanese Nintendo snes rgb cable) and pal machines need a 75 Ohm resistor across composite video and ground. See my posts here:

http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/viewtopic.php?t=3125

- some info on xbox vga boxes/transcoders/component video/prog scan

- amiga 23 pin d type video pin outs

- atari st 13 pin din video pin outs

- be nice to have some 8 bit video pin outs (c64, atari 8 bit, spectrum digital rgb)

- could have mentioned my dos psx memory card reader :

http://www.gamesx.com/mccap/

http://www.debaser.force9.co.uk/psxmc/

*edit* - what am I thinking? there is a whole bunch of info you could add about psx controllers.

[neogeoman]

Wow, too many good suggestions, looks like a lot of work. Let's see what I can do to reduce that load:

NTSC GC RGB mod: There isn't one AFAIK, just the component cable hack, which was covered to death in the AtariLabs forums (and linked from the GSX mainpage) so I didn't bother to duplicate the effort. Always meant to.

PAL/NTSC SNES differences: Screw PAL users.* The quote was left intact because at the time I didn't understand it either and I didn't want to muck up the original meaning by running it through my decoder wheel.

There's gobs of info on VGA and video signals on AtariLabs (and I'm working on yet another uber-cool ultra-sweet super-awesome complete guide to video signals right now as a matter of fact).

The Amiga, while never more than a glorified games console**, is still a computer IMO, and Amiga fans suck.

The ST on the other hand is mega-wicked*** but is still a computer, and GSX is all about games pinouts (and stuff that isn't covered in English elsewhere, like the X68k and FMTowns).

I don't know anything about freaky PAL computers like the Spectrum, sadly. I do try and draw the line at computers, sticking with consoles keeps the range of stuff I feel compelled to cover to a relative minimum. There are too many computers, and the HardwareBook covers most of 'em anyway.

I should tear down the MCCAP page since I lost the software in an incident I don't care to discuss and the original author has no interest in supporting it any more.

* PAL is a great unkown to anyone outside of Europe, and as much as I'd love to discuss the differences I don't know what they are. If it's not the freakishly different terminology it's you weirdos spelling everything with an S instead of a Z.

** I've never actually used an Amiga, but c'mon, it has to be a failure to fit in with the failure trilogy of the Amiga, 3DO and Lynx.

*** At this time I was running out of hyphenated adjectives.

Now, all that said, please feel free to submit, in excruciating detail, any text and diagrams you feel I'm missing, and I'll be happy to copy and paste 'em with full credits to you. =)

[Treble]

If it's not the freakishly different terminology it's you weirdos spelling everything with an S instead of a Z.

[Papercut]

NTSC GC RGB mod: There isn't one AFAIK, just the component cable hack, which was covered to death in the AtariLabs forums (and linked from the GSX mainpage) so I didn't bother to duplicate the effort. Always meant to.

I meant the cable hack, yeah.

PAL/NTSC SNES differences: Screw PAL users.* The quote was left intact because at the time I didn't understand it either and I didn't want to muck up the original meaning by running it through my decoder wheel.

fair enough, but its difficult to figure out whether you have a pal rgb cable or an ntsc rgb cable without this info.

I don't know anything about freaky PAL computers like the Spectrum, sadly. I do try and draw the line at computers, sticking with consoles keeps the range of stuff I feel compelled to cover to a relative minimum.

fair enough again, but personally I'd extend the coverage to machines used mainly for games. The 8 bits (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair, etc) and the 16 bits (Amiga and ST) were really just games machines. If you need an excuse to cover them, you could kid yourself its for the Commodore Max, Commodore GS, CD32 and 5200.

I should tear down the MCCAP page since I lost the software in an incident I don't care to discuss and the original author has no interest in supporting it any more.

well my dos tools with psxgamedit work fine, and are kind of supported Doesn't work with nt4/2k/xp though, bit of a minefield really. no doubt someone out there has already written a much better win32 version that does.