R-type Leo conversion!

Having been a fan of the R-type series since the late 80's, I always thought that Leo was quite a different game from the regular series. But it's still an R-type!  Since I already own R-type and R-type II on original hardware, I wanted to have Leo to join the set!  Unfortunately an original board is really expensive. But converting a Major Title 2 to R-type Leo is much cheaper and really easy.

I picked up a MT2 for $225, EPROMS cost me $20, and of course there's a bit of time to convert.

I ended up following the instructions made on the Arcade-Projects forum, my most favorite place to converse with fellow arcade enthusiasts:  https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/irem-m92-conversion-log-major-title-2-r-type-leo.4680/

The Ultimate Dreamcast

God I love the Dreamcast.  What an amazing failed console. It was ahead of it's time. It was a console we didn't deserve it, but the console we needed.  So many great arcade games that were direct conversions *not ports*, since the the DC is built under the same hardware as the Sega Naomi.

I own a Sports Edition, the cool black console, but I wanted to upgrade it for modern gaming.  Enter the DC Digital.  Amazing device that adds HDMI output to your DC!

I already had an ODE (optical drive emulator) called the USB-GDROM,  that removes the original drive and you're able to run your game images off a USB device like a HDD or Flash drive. This ODE has served me really well for a while!

But it requires you to disable the 12v rail (since that's used for the optical drive) to reduce system overheating from the PSU.  Then, a good measure is to add a new Noctua silent fan. He's the fan installed with a custom 3D printed mount:

I opted for a high capacity Flash Drive connected to the back of the system. I'm running a 215gb Samsung Fit Plus drive, which is more than enough space for all the good games on the system. Attaches to the back:

The DC Digital is a small board that mounts above the metal shield, and taps the digital video signals straight from the motherboard. Ribbon cables are soldered various points and SMD chips and fed to the DC Digital board. 

The HDMI-mini port is cut out in the back of the console right under the venting holes. This was a clean install!

The results?  Clean crisp high resolution HDMI video! Every Dreamcast game looks amazing! 

Been a while since my last update

Gah, life!  I can't believe it's been 2 years since my last update!  Lots of stuff going on in my life that has got me to neglect my updates to this blog. But it's time to give it a new post.

Things are great! I'm a dad of our #2 child, new job, new house...lots of changes in the last couple years.

The twitch stream has been going really well!  I'm up to about 2000 followers now, and have built a fantastic community of retro arcade enthusiasts that regularly show up in my stream and on my discord channel. 

I've gone through a lot of projects since, from artwork to arcade, so I'll be updating this space with more posts!

Here are the links to twitch and discord: 

https://www.twitch.tv/gillaxian

https://discord.gg/qcRKyFN