CRT

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

Today is Sunday, a great day to leave the CRT workshop and head out into the wide world and not think about retro games for a while. Why not go experience some fine art?

Kumu is the main building of the Art Museum of Estonia and I took my camera to see if they had any visual art displays which involved CRTs. My friend Steve’s has been doing work at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to help them preserve their CRT collection so they can continue to display visual art in the same way the artist intended. We made a whole podcast episode talking about the issues a museum faces when trying to display a visual art piece which was originally constructed with CRTs.… Read the rest

If follow our podcast you will no doubt be familar with Steve’s recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. On that trip Steve gave several workshops on CRT repair and had time to make some videos about the CRTs the museum has in stock. This video has some great footage of Steve using a degaussing ring to fix impurity issues with these big boys.

The last week Steve was visiting Houston, Texas where he was running a series of workshops for the Museum of Fine Art. The purpose was to educate their curators of this museum (an several other notable museums) about CRT preservation and maintenance. Steve tells the story of his 20 hour drive to Houston, the different workshops that he gave and what he learnt about the use of CRTs in the world of visual arts. He also saw a great wrestling match.

If you missed last week’s episode, go back and check out Steve’s tour of prominent 20th century artists who used CRTs in their work.

00:00 Start
1:16 MiSTer S-Video updates
3:28 Steve’s trip to Houston
7:20 First day of presentations – PVM 2030 teardown
22:10 Steve tears-down a dotronix monitor for the first time
30:45 The HDMI to S-video converters driving the exhibitions
32:40 Backstage in the museums CRT storeroom
37:50 CRT or flat panel for visual art?… Read the rest