Category: Project

Posted on by — 3 Comments

MSX2 repair project

My next repair project is this Sony MSX2 computer. Purchased as not working (black screen).

Unfortunately this machine has a bit more to its history than the eBay advert let on. Upon opening it I noticed that the problematic HIC1 board (The video out multiplexer that tends to suffer from corrosion on these machines) was not only missing, but pin headers had been fitted in its place.

This tells me two things. The hic board on this machine had indeed failed. But also, someone had replaced it with the modern replacement hic board but I guess it still didn’t fix the problem so they took it back out and sold the computer.

So, I need to either build or source a hic board for starters. But even then I probably still need to get the actual machine running.

I have already gone over the board with my scope to see if I can see what is going on. For starters it seems the computer tries to start for a few seconds and then comes to a stop. I can see a horizontal sync and csync but it appears the video signal is just a black screen.

I’ve also noticed that the CAS signal for the system memory is not there. Currently I’m assuming a possible memory fault so I will try swapping that out first. If it still doesn’t appear to be running then I will probably look into the ROM chip next.

All of this is under the assumption that the MSX2 should actually run fine even without the hic board present. Unfortunately I don’t have another MSX2 to test this theory.

This is going to be fun 😁

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Virtual pinball cab upgraded

When I first started building my mini pinball cabinet, it was designed to be powered by the Steamdeck. This was mainly because I didn’t have a spare PC kicking around that could do the job.

The Steamdeck has being doing the job, but it had one issue, the loading times! Because the pinball software runs on Windows, I was booting Windows on the Steamdeck from Micro SD. Yes, I could have installed Windows on the Internal storage, but I didn’t want to mess around with dual booting and I wanted to actually use the steam deck for its intended purpose with Steam OS.

I decided I needed a dedicated machine to run the cab moving forwards, but I didn’t want something that was going to take up a load of space. So after looking around at various Mini PCs I decided to give the AceMagician AMR5 a go. This little PC runs an AMD 5800U processor with integrated GPU which I figured should do the job for my little 1080p cabinet. It also has a 512gb SSD and 16gb of RAM.

The PC has a USB-C port on the front so the cable that used to plug into the Steamdeck now just plugs into this. After running the Baller Installer and doing a few extra tweaks, my cabinet was back up and running, but now with amazing boot/load times.

All I need to do now is finish off the physical appearance of the cabinet and then setup some additional tables to play on.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Giving the Vectrex a UV glow

A while ago I purchased some UV overlays for the Vectrex. These overlays require a UV light source to make them glow. At the time when I purchased them, my 3D printer couldn’t handle the size of the Vectrex screen so I made a frame using multiple 3D printed parts and glued them together.

I was never really happy with the design though so decided now I have larger printers, I would re-visit this project.

I also decided to experiment which switching filament during the print so I could use transparent filament as a diffuser.

This still may not be my final version, but I am pretty happy with how this has turned out for nowadays

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Retro room reaches version 1.0

After another busy couple of weeks, I finally have my new retro room/workshop in a possition where I can start to enjoy it.


Obviously, a room like this is never truly finished, but at least I can now escape from the real world and have a nice place to relax.

So let’s have a quick tour!

We start off with my workbench area. This is where I will spend my time fixing old computers/consoles and tinkering with developing hardware for old systems. I also have a PC in the corner which I use for creating models for 3D printing.

Next, we move around to the 3D Printer zone. I have a resin printer on the workbench above, but mostly I use the FDM printers. The K1 MAX is my go-to printer, but recently I also purchased a Neptune Max 4 which has a huge build volume. I’m looking to use that for printing a replacement computer case in the near future. I also have a vinyl sign cutter which is very useful for creating logos etc.

Next, we move on to the console area. Everything is now connected up using Wi-Fi smart switches and automatic Scart switches so everything is playable within seconds.

We now go around to my modern gaming PC which I mainly use for VR gaming with the Meta Quest 3. I also have my bookshelf filled with games from various systems.

Next in line is the retro computer setup. I have some of my favourite computers set up here, but can swap them out with other systems when required. The black monitors are 4:3 HDMI monitors off amazon and a couple of them have OSSC Scart converters connected so I can connect any system up via RGB Scart.

And finally, my home-made mini arcade cabinet and my work-in-progress virtual pinball machine.

I will see about doing a video shortly of everything up and running. You get that real arcade vibe once you have multiple systems all blasting out their own game music.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Another quick update

I now have my computer desks in and setup so just thought i’d do a quick post showing what it looks like. Still got some cable management to do and then I need to make a start on cabling up to 20+ consoles on the other side of the room!

I was hoping to get everything finished off this week as I have another week off work. But think this is going to turn into a longer project than originally expected. It took me two hours yesterday just to sort my cables into two piles of power and video cables lol.

Anyway, here it is!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Retro room progress

I have just finished my two week break from work, of which much of it was spent doing bits and pieces to the new retro room. Still have a lot to do, but here are a couple of updated pics. More to come in the following weeks 😀

Posted on by — Leave a comment

We have moved!!

Things have been a bit quiet recently as we have been going through the stressful process of moving house. But we are now in, and work has started on the new home of north devon retro archive!

I would by lying if I didn’t say one of the biggest reasons I picked this house, was because of the self contained 31ft long basement workshop. This will give me more room to setup my collection exactly how I want it.

Anyway, today was the first day I got to do some work in there to start making it the area I want it to be.

So here is a sneak peak of the room before and after today’s DIY session. More pictures will come as the space progresses.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Mixed Reality Gameboy Emulator for Quest 3

Since getting the Quest 3 on launch day, I really wanted to have a mess around with the new mixed reality feature. So I installed Unity and started to re-familiarise myself with it as it’s been a while since I last used it.

After searching around for a while, I found an open-source Gameboy Emulator plugin for Unity, it isn’t the best emulator and has a lot of compatibility issues, but for a quick project, it would do the job! (https://github.com/KonsomeJona/UnityGB). So with the emulation out of the way, all I had to do was sort out the mixed reality passthrough and controls etc.

So after several hours of messing around, I finally put together a mixed reality Gameboy Emulator.

If you want to give it a try you can download it from HERE

You will need to have enabled developer mode on your Quest 3, then extract and sideload the APK file using SideQuest.

Once installed you can copy Gameboy ROMs to your Quest by plugging it into your PC and copying the .gb files to \Quest 3\Internal shared storage\Android\data\com.northdevonretroarchive.GameboyMR\files\

There is a weird bug at the moment where occasionally the controls don’t always respond properly, if this happens then just restart the app. I haven’t looked into what is causing this yet, so I will update it once I have.

You can move the Gameboy around by grabbing it with the right controllers trigger button. You can also rescale the Gameboy by holding both grip buttons and moving the controllers away from each other. This allows you to play on a 50m tall Gameboy if you so wish!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Super Slim PS2 (Hardware Mod)

After seeing a YouTube video about a modder that had made a super slim version of the already slim Playstation 2, I couldn’t resist building one myself!

This mod takes a 79xxx Series PS2 Slim (Which had a smaller main PCB than other models), then trims it down a bit more and removes the optical drive. Instead of loading from CD/DVD, it uses an internally wired MX4SIO adapter to load games from Micro SD Card.

The modder named Wesk, has also designed a really nice 3D printed case design to house the project. Keeping the design in line with the PS2 slim model, this really looks like something Sony themselves could have produced.

As you can see, compared to the original fat PS2, this new console has gone on quite a diet!

If you want to build your very own super slim PS2 then you can check out a good YouTube video here.

The only issue I came across with this project, is the PS2 version I picked up didn’t have the lid detect switch in the same place. So I had to hot glue my own switch into place. Apart from that everything else worked fine and it wasn’t a difficult project to complete.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

A new DIY case for the Jaguar Skunkboard

A while ago I put together a small project to flash the Atari Jaguar Skunkboard flash cart from a Raspberry Pi (More details here). The Skunkboard can only hold 1 or 2 games at a time so it was nice to not have to keep removing it and plugging it into my PC to flash it.

Since I built that, I have kept thinking about making it more compact and building everything into a single cartridge. Well, I finally got around to it, and here is the end result:

The cartridge has a DC power jack on the top which is powered from a USB cable. This provides the power to the Raspberry Pi as I didn’t want to risk drawing too much current from the Jaguar itself. The rotary encoder on the side of the unit is used to scroll through the game list and select which game you want and what bank to flash the game to.

I think it turned out pretty well. If you wish to build your own then subscribe to my mailing list from the homepage as I will be uploading the build guide and required files in the new year.