Post everytime you get ANYTHING retro. We want to know (^v^)

[acidbearboy]

[kyo_244]

Still haven't managed to get any pics of the sealed twin snakes.. but from what I can remember.. regarding wii games at least.. only first party nintendo games had the "nintendo" seal strip while others had just clear ones.. I imagine the same goes for gamecube games which would explain why twin snakes has the clear strip/seem. So further evidence that its genuine

[mmmonkey]

Me being too stingy to buy a couple of SNES RPGs, I ended up going down the SFC route and doing some hacks with EEPROMs to put either the original English ROM on the cart, a fan translated one or, in the case of Mana - an enhanced one.



The amount of time I get to spend playing games, this lot could keep me going for 10 years!

[noobish hat]

You, me, and redstar_dan should go into business. You make the carts, I'll translate the manuals and boxes, and dan can construct them.

[nakamura]

Star Ocean!

[danholo]

Me being too stingy to buy a couple of SNES RPGs, I ended up going down the SFC route and doing some hacks with EEPROMs to put either the original English ROM on the cart, a fan translated one or, in the case of Mana - an enhanced one.

The amount of time I get to spend playing games, this lot could keep me going for 10 years!

Didn't think of that as an option, how does it work in practice? Worth getting one of those Everdrives?

[speedlolita]

From a legal stance I'd say it's no better than using an Everdrive..

It's cool though, so kudos.

[mmmonkey]

It's been a steep learning curve getting to this stage. I'd love devices like the everdrive, not sure if there's one which supports all those games though? Earthbound has some crazy copy protection built into it (although probably patched by now), Mario RPG and Star Ocean use some special chips (might be supported now, I'm not sure). There is a site selling Star Ocean made from scratch which doesn't the special decompression chip, so probably is playable on rom carts now. I'd only sell extras that I've ended up with after experimenting though.

[danholo]

It's been a steep learning curve getting to this stage. I'd love devices like the everdrive, not sure if there's one which supports all those games though? Earthbound has some crazy copy protection built into it (although probably patched by now), Mario RPG and Star Ocean use some special chips (might be supported now, I'm not sure). There is a site selling Star Ocean made from scratch which doesn't the special decompression chip, so probably is playable on rom carts now. I'd only sell extras that I've ended up with after experimenting though.

There is the "SD2SNES" which is hard to come by but supports the special chips. I can't say about copy protection. EEPROM seems like an interesting hobby but have no idea to go about it. I already have Seiken Densetsu 3, and was looking to get SD2 but don't want to tamper with the carts... Maybe get another one but I don't know what to do with them at all in that case. Just play it in Japanese...

[speedlolita]

Feeling incredibly smug right now.

I bought a Junk Neo Geo AES from Hit-Japan for $50 + $40 post, which is around ?57 together (console only). It's not in the best of condition but it's not damaged, certainly in good enough condition to satisfy me.



Fairly low serial number at 143242 also.

So I open this thing up and it's caked in dust.



To begin troubleshooting I attempted to find the fuse, although there doesn't appear to be one like on the PC Engine and SNES. I was going to hook up an LED to test power throughout the board but there was already one present. Upon powering on, of course, there was no indication of power.

So I began probing and noticed that the connection on the back of the AC power jack was only reporting 1-2v, which should have been around 12v.



Broken joint, so about 5 minutes later:





The LED now illuminates. Unfortunately I don't have any games, video hookups or even controllers currently but I'm pretty sure that I've fixed this. Everything else on the board looks solid and the cartridge slot looks to be in pretty great condition honestly. Shouldn't cost much to build an RGB cable for it (?5ish) and convert my VSHG for use with the Neo Geo either.

I think I got lucky.

[Colin]

Nice one. 143242 isn't a low serial number for an AES though!

[speedlolita]

Well, I mean in the sense that I shouldn't have to do the RGB bypass mod.

You're right though.

I'm glad it wasn't too early or I'd have to use a different PSU from my PC Engine as earlier boards use 5v.

[_SD_]

New Astro City

[mmmonkey]

some very nice purchases there, nice cab :-) and nice work speedy!

[speedlolita]

What you got for the cab then _SD_?