hex65000

That probably won't work. If you cut the power to a logic device and you still apply signals to its inputs the output will be undefined (unpredictable). What I did as an early project before I came across my toploader was to use a dremel to cut off most of the circuit board and then solder wires between the edge card of the system and the points on the circuit board. The result was mixed. Without proper shielding, the signals on the cart to the system were appearing on my screen. I need to finish that project (among others) by building an enclosure around the wiring and come up with a good way to mount the card edge -- which is harder than I thought since the NES contacts are so recessed in the cart. Hex. [ Wishes one of his ideas was actually a big hit somewhere... ]

@ Jetset: I just poked at some of Phil's auctions and they jive with actual shipping costs. At least the 2600 stuff I looked at did. Hex. [ Knows sometimes he can point that thing at the wrong folks... ]

[[ RANT MODE! ]] RE: If I don't like the shipping price, don't bid... While it seems like the mantra of those who do gouge for shipping, I do just that. Since the rules of the auction are up to the seller, perhaps it's time to change the rules to illustrate the point. IE: Shipping: Non-resellers will pay actual shipping, resellers who blatently pad thier shipping costs will pay whatever I really thought the item is worth. Admittedly, it takes time to round up packing materials, and go to the post office and move it on its happy way. I worry that I do these things right. Hopefully I do. HOWEVER, are they not making a profit from the actual auction? If not, then the start-bid/reserve should have been higher. I just don't have any sympathy for the 'plight' of having to burn gas to go to the mailbox when they just tripled their money on something they bought at a thrift/yard sale/flea market/unwatched auction/uninformed seller already. The shipping gouge is just another insult to the injury, and most folks don't read the fine print first -- they just bid. Hex. [ Get's pretty cheesed off at the shipping gougers... ]

Okay look, he admitted that the word 'crash' was not the best choice. I will agree that as time goes on, finding newer interesting games just isn't happening at a good clip. The blobbing together of publishers will make the publishers and the system manufacturers rich. The market is way too big and will not fail. I _predict_ that as consumers we will have fewer true choices as to where our gaming money goes. The cross-marketing does smack of someone somewhere flailing about badly. Determining who is the next question. This also is a good time to re-point out that modern consoles are not geared towards small publishers/homebrew applications. They want their big money for the SDK and possibly a per-unit royalty on top of that. Not to mention the 'special' formats the disc media uses. A small-time operation is going to be harder pressed to make an independant release. Perhaps our resident Activision guy can shed some light on this? At least in the PC arena there are good inexpensive tools to work with. That's another tangent for another time. Perhaps it's Pizza Hut. I don't remember the last time I actually ate at one. Heck, I can't remember where the closest sit-down pizza hut is. If I want pizza, I typically go to Papa Johns (big chain), Mio's (little chain), or Adriaticos (at least 1 location). And while I like the Muppets, them pushing pizza ain't gonna do it. Hex. [ If life gives you nails, load up the nail-gun... ]

Just because I don't trust Sony's hardware, I'd say the opposite. Keep the PS1 handy for PS1 games and use your PS2 for PS2 titles. It'll at least keep the amount of wear on your systems to a minimum. PS1 units can be replaced with a trivial outlay nowadays. Hex. [ "I was kind of counting on your vote back there Max." --Sam "Sorry Sam, I'd rather not get involved." --Max ]

I'm still mystified as to what the actual problem is though. You have a noise filter attached to it and that's it. WTF? The only thing I can think of is that the plug ityself isn't making good contact with the system itself causing a bit more resistance than everyone would like. Not that I leave mine plugged in and powered on an awful lot, and it's definately on a surge strip. (too much to plug in) Hex. [ "Dude, that's #$^^ed up!" -- South Park ]

- Silent Hill This game held my attention far longer than expected. and is surprisingly good for a PSX title. And has an intuitive control scheme unlike the Resident Evil series. - R-Types Hey, It's R-Type. - Tetris Plus Jaleco does a decent tetris derivitive, yeah I couldn't beleive it either. - N2O I thought this was some lame-o Racer, instead I found a tempest-like shooter that was decent. - SoulBlade The predacessor to Soulcalibur. Hex. [ Last seen trying to wrangle his N-64 stacks under control... ]

But... But... it's Jaleco. You mean that they did something that's unique and good at the same time? The only title that I ever knew had any kind of demand by them was Tetris Plus. Hex. [ Still won't bid on it -- I've got enough on my plate. ]

Just to chime in with a nod of me too here. Be _VERY_ careful when mucking around with the back of the TV, and do not use metal tools to perform your adjustments. You can get plastic screwdrivers and such for just this task. Hex. [ Remembers as a kid getting a good whack from his father when I put my hands too near the transformer... ]

I'd check for the obvious thing: a break in your cables. second: Does it run all nine wires straight through, or does it leave lines out to keep cost down? The last thing that comes to mind is a voltage drop along that cable may be too much for the atari to pick up the proper signal levels. After you get connectors, and hefty cable lengths involved it's amazing how much resistance you wind up with. If you have a DMM handy (or to borrow) experiment and see what happens. Hex. [ Eliminate the obvious and well, it must be something else... ]

And Yea Verily it is the PAL version... A shame really. Hex. [ Trapped in the loooooney bin. ]

Just as a bit of constructive critisim, you might want to throw in some kind of keypad so they can play Star Raiders. Otherwise it's kind of hard to play. Otherwise, both of those lots are pretty sweet. good luck on em'. Hex. [ Has done _enough_ damage for one day thankoo... ]

Okay, What happened is that I needed some video cables as well and of course could not find what I wanted. After a bit of research I found a source for the mini-din connector used on the Genesis 2,3, cdx, 32x, & Nomad. I also found the information on what the pinout on the connector did. My first try at this had a much shorter cable and used 3 runs of coax to do the job. It was good, but the cable was: 1) too short. 2)WAY too stiff. 3)turned around a bit funny. So I made this one (and future ones) with a longer cable and replaced the coax lines I used for audio with shielded twisted pair. The cables are kept together with a long length of heat shrink. The end that goes to the system was not quite compatable with the Genesis2 when I started out. the plastic boot that goes around that connector is pretty large in diameter the solution was to cut away enough of the boot so that you could plug it into a genesis 2. (It fits well, but may look a little odd.) Once you attach this thing to your system, simply connect the Left/right/video lines to the semi-matching colors. (I couldn't get White RCA jacks. ) Fire up your Genesis and your'e in business. Questions? Comments? Hex. [ Sing the praise, the praise of pants! ]

Pictures! Explanation follows. Hex. [ Odd solutions since... .... oh some time ago. ]

PM Sent... (again?) Hex. [ Stop the Confusion. Make traffic lights one color: black. ]

I might have a little something that you might consider useful. I'll try to finish putting it together tonight and drop it on the scanner to show you. So you know, I'll want $9.00 (shipped) for it. Regardless, I need to finish this mini-project. I call it my "Genesis cart on a stick". Hex. [ Tap and sacrifice an artifact, you may now summon a new artifact from your library. ]

* BumP * Hex. [ I _AM_ the Overclocked Lemon! ]

Out of curiosity, would you prefer composite video instead? Hex. [ The bare knuckle duct-tape around the head coffee-psycho guy... ]

When I'm at school and have some slack time... It usually winds up being Turmoil. I dunno why, but I enjoy that one. Hex. [ Fresh from the cloning vats... it's the engineering army... ]

I meant that they claimed that they couldn't sell games on the current gen consoles because for some odd reason 2 out of the 3 machines were short-supplied. I didn't realize that the flashback was overly demanded anywhere to the point there was an actual shortage of them over the holidays. Hex. [ Is kicking himself for not snatching up some Zellers carts when the chance was there... CurSes... ]

The most noteworthy finds for me were the Game Gear and Genesis games I picked up. Also glad that I finally found an E-reader at a decent price. (used elsewhere) Game Gear: Pac Man Ms. Pac Man Sonic Chaos Sonic Spinball Genesis: Jeopardy! F-22 Interceptor Jungle Strike E-Reader Cards: Mario Advance 4 stuff -- levels, powerups, etc. Donkey Kong 3 N64: Perfect Dark x1 -- I don't need another copy Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction (plays a lot like Power Stone) Hex. [ I _STILL_ can't beleive they had genny carts... ]

I know corporate responsibility is out of fashion, but after reading that business-speak blob in one of the other threads I can't help to notice that they blamed everything under the sun for their woes. For once I'd like to see one of these impotentates just admit it, " We F####D up. Our new strategy is to fix it and release something that people really want. Now excuse me while I ritually slay 5 of the people from marketing. " Instead it's console shortages, and an overly competitive 4th quarter market. The latter I can almost swallow, but the former sounds like ummmm... bunk. It sounds as if the argument is that since consumers couldn't buy new decks, we couldn't sell a thing to save our lives. You can make that a plausable argument, but it's not like Sony hasn't put a PS2 in the homes of every man woman and sheep by now. As for the Flashback unit, the price point turned me off severely, the tech behind it is obviously flawed, but for 40 bucks you can almost buy one of those N-64 and a bunch of crap games specials from EB and come out better. Or you could buy both of the Midway Arcade Treasures packs and still fare slightly better. The Flashback is worth $20 or less to me, and I'm sure to some of the folks here possibly much less. Hex. [ What? Me bitter? ]

This is really more a rant about my own collecting habits and I was wondering if I was truly losing my mind, and what other folks do. Anyway, by process I mean that an item goes through stages and piles before it hits the end in my collection, before it is accepted into the collective per-se. - Aquire item: It can be anything, a cartridge, CD, controller, a system. I just bought it and I'm taking it home. (Taz Happy Boy. ) - Clean item: The most tedious, annoying, time consuming, and occasionally rewarding aspect. There is little more satisfying than a near immaculate cartridge brought back from the hell that was a video rental store. This gets broken up by type. *carts-- non original Stickers are removed if possible, permanent marker removed/faded, plastic scrubbed down, contacts cleaned and RE-cleaned *cds-- washed to remove fingerprints, foreign stickers removed if possible, cd case wiped down *controllers/systems-- All but the most difficult to disassemble are torn completely down. All plastic parts are scrubbed, dirt is very carefully cleaned off of circuit cards if necessary. Reassemble. (This takes a lot of time, but I can't stand the idea of the crud that gets wedged in controllers from use. Sometimes I have to reclean my own ctrlers because I make em' funky.) If an obviously serious problem is found, the item goes in the 'junk/repair me' pile. - Test item: I've gotten to the point where I have 'criteria' that lets me deem an item good. With a cartridge game it's pretty easy: does it fire up and play? With CDs you have to play a while just to see if anything obvious is going to break, and even then there are no guarantees. Controllers I try to excercise all of the buttons in a very deliberate manner. That way I can see if I just missed a button press or is the controller actually not working. Systems are pretty easy, throw in a couple of favorite games and play for a while. - The junk/repair me pile: It's literally a pile of every questionable item or apparant non working peice I have come across. Usually I'll put some masking tape with a note on it to tell myself why it went in that pile in the first place. So on a cold rainy day (that probably will never come) I can take the time to properly resplice cables back together and cannibalize for parts if needed. It also gets the real crap out of circulation. Think of it as a publice service... - Collection upgrade?: Sometimes I'll buy stuff to get a 'nicer copy' of what I already have or the new copy has a manual included or doesn't have 'Bobs Video Game and Pr0N Barn' stuck onto the cart and the only way to get it off would destroy the original sticker. Regardless, items are checked to see if it actually makes my existing collection (mound) of stuff better or should I just keep the one I have. - I hate this game (a lot): Sometimes I'll play something that annoys me so badly that I deem it not even worth keeping just to say I have it. (IE: Dream TV(SNES)) Not only was it not good, it was annoying. It takes a special breed of non-sports game to get that kind of a reaction out of me. Games that hit this category are true badges of shame for their creators. - Into (semi-sorted) collection: I actually do attempt to keep my collection in some sort of order. I fail at this task regularly. I do however have it grouped rather well and can at least locate the 'stack' of interest. Sometimes the space eaten by a game type is the limiting factor. Right now my Genesis carts in cases are a serious offender in that respect by existing in 3 different locations in the house. - Recycle the extras and unloved: Get the unwanted processed items into the hands of someone who would give it a better home than I. And hey, since it at least is in healthy shape it shouldn't be too bad right? And that's it. What do you folks do? Hex. [ Putting the Ayyyy in tension... ]

It will work, but you need a patch cable that goes from your Genesis 2 TO your 32x. You can also use the Genesis1 with the 32x IF you can find the matching patch cable (I have only seen one and it wasn't mine. ) There are also these metal clips that you attach to the deck to hold everything in place I guess. I have been able to squeak by without them, but its another unintitive part of the 32x... Hope that helps a little bit. Hex. [ Why is he talking in the 3rd person? Man, Hex really hates that... ]

( Aw crud... I'm bopping Sony again... move on if you just don't care. ) It's good to hear that you are getting acceptable customer support; the thing is you shouldn't _need_ to worry about it. I wish that we could gather some real reliability data on some of this stuff -- not just a bunch of reports from message boards. It would at least (on a personal level) either make my (generally low) opinion of Sony's hardware feel well rooted in fact or make me have to reevaluate my stance. Hex. [ Currently has three PS2s just in case of a 'catastrophic failure'... really. ]