Cathode Ray Blog

It’s hard to believe but there was a time when rumble was not a standard feature of controllers. The N64 made some of the first steps with it’s “rumble pak” in 1997, then a few years later in 1999, Nintendo tried to add rumble to it’s GameBoy lineup by including a rumble motor in certain game carts.

One of those games was Pokemon Pinball, which gives you a little feedback when you hit a bumper. When I got my cart out of storage the rumble was not working at all, which is to be expected in a 25 year old motor. My first step was to open the cart up and manually rotate the motor: often they get stuck in place and need some help to spin freely.… Read the rest

This is a short video to remind y’all to take precautions when working on a CRT TV.

High voltages can build up underneath the anode cap and you need to ensure you discharge the tube in a safe way before you work on it.

In this clip, Steve from RetroTechUSA is discharging a tube live on stream and we see it spark 3 times before the charge was eventually drained.

If you would like more information about how to safely discharge a CRT tube, please watch this classic video from Steve. In fact, this is the video which taught me how to build a discharge tool before he and I had even met. He really is the master of CRT repair.… Read the rest

In this article I will take you through repairing the OEM Nintendo Super Famicom RGB JP21 cable and then I’ll make my own JP21 to EURO SCART adapter so I can use this cable in my setup.

SHVC-010

This is the official OEM RGB cable for the Super Famicom in Japan. It was produced in limited quantities which gives us some indication about how popular the JP21 standard was in Japan back in the day.

While JP21 carried RGBs (as EURO SCART did), the Japanese had their own special plug for component video. When a system supported component, it was regular to see the typical 3 x RCA plugs, however what was even more common was a plug they called “D-Terminal”.… Read the rest

If the trigger on your retro light gun is feeling mushy, here is a mod kit to help.

An eBay seller by the name of MagicTrashman is selling a (almost) drop in replacement micro switch and 3D printed bracket for a range of light guns. I bought a kit for the Sega Saturn Stunner and in this video I install it and give you my thoughts after a play through of Virtua Cop 2.

MagicTrashman on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/magictrashman

They have replacement microswitches for

Sega Saturn Stunner
Sony Playstation 1 Guncon 1
Sony Playstation 2 Guncon 2
Sony Playstation 3 Guncon 3
Nintendo NES Zapper
Sega Dreamcast Starfire
Sega Dreamcast MadCatz
Sega Dreamcast HKT-7800
SNES / Mega Drive Konami Justifier (the blue and pink guns)
Sony Playstation 1 Konami Hyper Blaster

Tunes in this video are from Adam Silady Music.… Read the rest

Dec 26, 2022 Update: A MiSTer core update just dropped which says it integrates the atrac17 patch into the main MiSTer core. This means you do not need to manually enable the patch as I describe below, it should already be enabled after an update_all. From what I can tell in the patch notes, the rest of the article should still be relevant. I am currently on holiday in Japan (follow my twitter for daily Hard Off pickups!) and I will do a full update when I return in mid January

Analog racing wheel support is just starting to become a thing on the MiSTer FPGA with the popularity of the PS1 core and the upcoming Outrun arcade core.… Read the rest