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I fondly remember playing games like Confidential Mission on my Dreamcast in the games room, displayed on a 26″ Hantarex screen that came out of a video conference room.

However, with the switch of TVs and monitors to LCD / OLED etc, these old guns no longer work.

After doing some browsing across several web sites and comparing the infra red based guns, I decided to build a Gun4IR as it did not seem to require many parts and would fit into one of the plastic gun cases sitting around from the old gun arcade machines that no longer work.

Temporarily assembled using blu-tac, but lets me get it setup using the diagnostics on my PC.

Not the most exciting test, but proves that it actually does something!

I’ve now started setting it up with Mame to do more testing, and apart from the fact that it registers as being gun#2 it seems to work as expected.

I need to try it with some of the other emulators next, as we have a Jurassic Park cabinet that it would go with nicely. I know it has a hole in the back, I need to work out what to put there instead – the gun4ir instructions show a possibility of an RGB LED, so may see exactly what that shows when enabled.

All of the power used to host this site is now supplied by the sun.

This is down to a combination solar panel / battery system installed by UPS Solar which seems to be performing well at the moment, certainly better than the info I gleaned from several websites as to how much energy I could expect to generate at this time of year.

We also switched to Octopus Energy recently, and so far that seems to have been worthwhile as well. The web based information panel is much better than our previous suppliers and they keep us informed of energy saving incentives from time to time.

Should you decide that you would like to switch to Octopus energy as well, then please do so via my link, that way once you start making payments, we both receive £50 worth of credit!

One of the reasons I wanted to build a Retro Chip Tester (RCT) was because there are several adapters available that let you extend the capability of it.

The one I had an immediate use for was the 2708 programming adapter.

I ordered some PCBs for this, put it together and it has now been tested and programs these old chips without too much fuss.

I also added a Wi-Fi adapter to the SD Card, so instead of unplugging the card every time I needed to read / write an eprom, I can simply open a file share from my desktop and access it that way.

The Retro Chip Tester (RCT) was developed to test „old“ memory chips from the 1970s and 1980s, which are often no longer recognized by today’s programming devices.

The RCT is able to identify defective memory cells very reliably. It can save the contents of ROMs, PROMs and EPROMs to a memory card. If the memory chip is known, the name is shown directly on the display. A database with 300,000 entries is available for this purpose. (containing Arcade, computers and pinball image checksums)

Adapters can be built to test weirder ICs or even program obsolete EPROMS (such as 2708 – n.b. it can read them anyway, you only need the adapter to program them!)

I needed to program some 2708’s and you can never have too much test equipment, so I bought a PCB set from the UK distributor here, a PCB for the 2708 programmer from JLCPCB and the parts I didn’t already have from Digikey, a few hours soldering and we have a working tester. (so I can finally test all of those old ram chips I have in the spares box)

Wizard of Wor has finally been tested!

Almost a year after I did the original image for this game, it has been fitted to a cabinet and I’m pleased to say that after some minor problems the image has been updated and works as it should.

Had a request for a change, which may also make sense for Gorf – The option to set how many lives each player begins with when the machine is set to Freeplay. I will look into this when I get a chance.

If you have been keeping up with the MiSTer forums, you will know that there are now at least two DE10-Nano clones being produced, with one, the QMTECH version being available now, and another one due soon.

The one pictured is the QMTech version, and this one has the 128Mb SDRAM fitted direct to the rear of the PCB (rather than plugged onto GPIO_0). This has the advantage that it passes ram tests at 160Mhz.

It also comes in at a much cheaper price than the official DE10-Nano board. I purchased this one with delivery and taxes for £133. (Official DE10-Nano + 128Mb SDRAM module would be around £290)

So, the big question is does it work with the Astrocade interface ?

The answer is … Yes, it does. I connected it up to my interface and everything appears to work as intended. The OTG USB socket is a normal type A socket, rather than the mini-USB, so you need a different lead to connect it up.