console mods

[Chojin]

i am quite certain that the cost of an actual SNES + genesis + NES combined would be less than the cost of any decent modchip. it would be even cheaper to just buy a console-style controller for your PC, which can also emulate games.

i am vry intrstd in mew's adventures with vga. ideally i'd like to hook everything up to my tv with HDMI cables (which are just DVI cables in a different configuration), but switchers for HDMI are goddamn fuck expensive.

[mew barios]

modchips aren't that expensive, but it does depend heavily on what amount of data you need to send and where it has to go. you can use a pic 12f629 for ps1s or wiis (i think. never tried one in a wii but the internet says so) and they cost me 89 cents, though you do have to program them yourself. i like the ps2 mod because it costs nothing and can be done easily in just a few minutes.

i don't know about xboxes yet. i have 2 sitting in a box that i haven't gotten to though it should be able to be softmodded easily, i do recall that the dev kit was leaked long ago and microsoft has since released a version of it publicly. it's so much like a pc it's hard for me to feel motivated :< i'll try to take one apart soon.

i would love to crack open that neogeo and see what they did :o i'm pretty sure it uses a cxa1145p or equivalent as a video processor so how. HOW :O i guess they could've built their own transcoder and fit it inside there somehow?

i don't know enough yet :<

[Fathom Zero]

Originally Posted by mew barios

i don't know about xboxes yet. i have 2 sitting in a box that i haven't gotten to though it should be able to be softmodded easily, i do recall that the dev kit was leaked long ago and microsoft has since released a version of it publicly. it's so much like a pc it's hard for me to feel motivated :< i'll try to take one apart soon.

It was a fun weekend project, aside from the fact that I had to improvise when I found out I didn't have any hex screwdrivers.

My mum gave our SNES away after a while, so I lost all of my SMW progress. Being able to play it on the TV again with the Xbox was awesome.

That and the modded Halo 2 maps were absolutely insane.

[mew barios]

here's my special playstation edition volume 1 :o i guess. original playstations are a good way to hone your soldering powers. they're cheap, they're common, and every model is really different. there's no telling what surprises may lie in wait :o

you can use a 12c508 or 12f629 to mod any playstation model. the latter is currently in production and pretty cheap so that's what i use, you aren't likely to need to spend more than $1 for one. you will need to have an 8pin pic programmer to put the appropriate code into one but you can build your own with about $5 worth of radioshack parts as i did.



that's my pic programmer, as you can see it has an 8pin dip socket on it and isn't sure how it feels about all this nonsense.



this is a scph5501 playstation. this and the 7000 require 6 wires going to the pic instead of the usual 3, this one just happened to be at the top of the pile. i actually have never modded a 5501 before so i kinda made a huge error in how i ran the wires and had to adjust the heat shield a lil to make up for it. the 7501 also has a soldered on auxillary heat shielding but in this case i'm going to be attaching wires to the bottom of the board and can just ignore it and the weird copper sheet thing i dunno.



i was gonna take a picture of the wires actually on the board but i got interrupted in the middle to perform some random errand and just flipped it over without thinking about it when i got back. i only have 3 different colors of wire at the moment so i grouped them up with heatshrink so i dont forget what goes where.



what a mess :< the first switch i picked up was actually an illuminated automotive switch for mounting on a dash so i had to run an extra ground and with all that nonsense on the pic already it dangerously approaches the class of a rat's nest. i think i only use heatshrink so liberally because it's fun :o



cruddy picture. the switch does light up when it's active, but since it was meant to go on a car it's expecting to be getting 12v and not a meager 5 so it's pretty dim.



and there it is playing castlevania 2. i couldn't get a picture of that switch not looking awful, but i think that may just be because it looks awful on a playstation. i measured it over and over and it is perfectly level with the edges of the playstation but it always looks crooked to my eyeballs. :<

the pic is constantly sending a string of characters equal to the possible region codes in order to make the playstation think that whatever disk you have in there is an original disk of your region, but a couple of games (legend of the dragoon, strider 2, others that i forget) do a check during their initial loading if that stream of data is still going after the console would normally have been satisfied. if so, they give you a screen telling you your console is modified and refuse to run. having a switch lets you play those games without issues :o

beyond playing backups or games of other regions there isn't much benefit to modding a playstation. the nes emulator is pretty good though, i gave one of these and a disc of nes games to my brother when he was sick cuz he doesn't have any game consoles at all and he seems to really enjoy it :o

[mew barios]

in retrospect i coulda ran 12v from the drive and put a 7805 on the other side and had that switch light up normal :<



i did my second gamecube today. i tried to install the chip as close to how it was intended as possible, just leaving the ground unconnected and running it to a switch. it was tons faster but it's really hard to tell looking at it from above if it's really connected to the contact below so i was nervous :o seems to be fine though.

if anyone around here wants any of this stuff let me know, i'm gonna be selling them off later.

[mew barios]

nevermind, the playstation runs off 7.5v there's no point running 2 extra wires just for that :o



this is a 4021 static shift register. it costs about 25 cents and is the only thing besides a proper plug that you need to make your own nes controller. i had been thinking about making my own nes arcade stick but always when it comes time to pay i decide to run off and do some other less expensive project. there's never a box full of arcade style buttons and joysticks at the thrift stores :< i guess you could potentially wire 2 of these together to make an snes controller but i'm not 100%

[Dimnos]

Originally Posted by Chojin

i am quite certain that the cost of an actual SNES + genesis + NES combined would be less than the cost of any decent modchip. it would be even cheaper to just buy a console-style controller for your PC, which can also emulate games.

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/d/xbox-360-controller-for-windows

Plus any ole emulator on the PC

[executioneer]

Originally Posted by Dimnos

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/d/xbox-360-controller-for-windows

Plus any ole emulator on the PC

the xbox controller's kind of got an awful d-pad though, so that's not the best solution for a lot of games