330 Mega, Pro Gear Spec.

[ALXAndy]

Hullo !

I intended to start this a couple of months ago but being busy with lots of paper work and then my health has delayed it somewhat. However, I did want to make sure it was all viable and would work before posting so I didn't look like a total belmet.

If you hadn't worked it out the title is what the Neo Geo displays on booting. However, the funny part is it says specifically "Max 330 Mega" yet over the years they made games larger than that lol.

Any way, I pre ordered a Neo Geo AES remake about a year ago. I got the noti it had been delayed for an entire year, and kinda lost my temper a bit. That said in the time since I pre ordered it I realised that a multi cart I had in my dreams that would cost maybe £60 on AliExpress not only didn't exist but when it did it was over £300. It also did not work very well. I have no idea why it is such a sod to make a multi cart for the Neo Geo but immediately I realised that it would end up being a display piece (I am still getting it, and have bought WH2 Perfect for it !) but yeah. As such I figured I would use my Rasp Pi 0 to emulate the Neo Geo on.

Since then I have messed around a bit with another Pi (an original a mate gave me) to make a Pihole and realised it was so much faffing around that it would probably better to find something with the OS on it already and go from there. Hence, £23 Android box from Ali.




I have a 180gb SATA SSD on an adapter (USB) for extra storage.

The box arrived a couple of days back and I started to mess around with it. I installed Retroarch, then spent many many hours trying to get it to see the hard drive. It dawned on me after about four hours that with the remote it is impossible. I switched it to mouse mode and sorted. However, then Final Burn would not launch the roms I had. Apparently they are Neo RageX roms for the AES and the Final Burn emu only loads MVS roms ffs. With that sorted I loaded a game up.... and..... Terrible. The image was super but the audio was stuttering like a pig. Many hours later fiddling with settings and I have it perfect. So perfect I hooked up a game controller and spent the rest of last night gaming.

So now with the idea tested and working I started to think about what I want it to look like. I want to put everything inside a CNC machined shell that looks awesome. Not decided on the design or the colours just yet, but it will be reasonably large. Mostly as I want to mount an IEC socket...



That is fused and grounded, as well as an internal power supply. This has been ordered also, 5v 5a.




I bought a pair of 5v fans. I will chop off the USB connectors and wire them into the power supply to free up more USB ports.




I'm also going to de-shell the android box and put a small cooling solution on the main chip. So then it was time to find a suitable controller. Mostly as a Dpad doesn't feel right an an analogue stick feels even worse. Like stirring porridge. This was the hardest part to find, and I am not even sure it will work yet. I may need to open it up, fit a suitable input to USB board and add a cable but hopefully it may work as ordered. This is a limited edition controller meant to pair with the Neo Geo arcade mini.




Being USB C it may work? no idea. I did weight up the pros and cons of making my own proper stick, but it would run me over £60 and be quite unwieldly. I always found the Neo Geo CD pads (which is what that is modelled from) to be better for couch gaming.

OK so then I ordered two USB sockets like so.




And a HDMI socket to cable.



I also want to make up my own external IEC cable custom as I usually do, so I got this (I've got a euro plug here)




And then this triple core braided wire.



Lastly for now I have ordered the blocks to hold it together



As I said, not ordered the plastic yet but will next week once the other parts have all arrived. Probably red and black? but who knows?

 

[ALXAndy]

Afternoon. Parts are arriving. I stripped the box down to just the board. I was surprised to find that most of its weight was a slab of steel lol. Under it was a 6mm thick heat pad on the core.

Went online and bought a kit of pi heat sinks for a fiver.

Went with sideways as the fans will be on the right side.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK everything pictured is now here.

I ordered the acrylic last night. I’ve ordered Red 440 and white. Those will be the main colours then a light blue for the SNK logo and some black (those two are 3mm not 5).

Unfortunately I need extensive dental work and it begins tomorrow. It shouldn’t stop me though but I may need a couple of days to feel sorry for myself

Acrylic came to £42 total.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK here goes. This is the red.

And this is the blue

 

[ALXAndy]

Last bits ordered. I bought the euro plug as it was part of the set but I need it to ground. So this was £3 odd.

Noting the ground pin. I wanted rubber feet so I got some white ones hoping they don’t turn yellow.

Then some new hopefully sharp counter sinks.

Lastly for the power wires inside I got some braid.

I’ve started some of the wiring too.

 

[ALXAndy]

Quick update no pics yet.

I decided to try and get Retropie working on the 0 2W I bought last year. I figured it was going to be fiddly and annoying and command based like Pi Hole but it totally isn’t.

I got it installed quickly enough but ran into a problem. My usb hub (just a basic one) refuses to do anything when plugged in. As such (annoyingly) I can set up a controller but not use a usb drive to load roms. That said I have now got the roms on the drive as to do so you format your usb drive (in this case 180gb Intel SATA on a USB adapter) and simply put a folder on it titled retropie. Then you shove it into the pi and it creates all of the directories itself. Then it’s just a case of plugging said drive back into the laptop and dumping roms into their corresponding folders.

Sadly I can’t load anything due to it only having one USB output ffs.

I’ve ordered one of these from pi hut.

Cost me £12.50 shipped. What’s nice is it has a male and female socket….

So I can stack my Nic card over it.

I’m not even sure if this is what I’ll use I just want to see how it performs as a neo geo. The android box is obviously quite weak but lots of fiddling got it there, I just want to see if this performs better

 

[clone]

Big project looks interesting.

 

[ALXAndy]

It’s going to be a scratch build like the last one I did. I think with my CNC I’ve progressed on from modding now.

Switching to the Pi added a couple of issues. Mostly powering it from the internal PSU I bought. I realised that a couple of months ago I’d bought some adapters for USB micro. My gaming PC has a mini keyboard with track pad and it’s micro USB. So I got a 3 pack of adapters. I only wanted the usb c to micro so the other two were lobbed into a drawer. Any ways, I found an old A to B printer cable and chopped off the B end. Once that was done I used the PSU to power the A cable, connected on the A to micro and the Pi now runs from the internal PSU.

 

[ALXAndy]

Ugh I feel like I’ve lost a piece of my soul lmao.

USB hat came and it’s awesome. I then spent ten hours trying to get it working. Not the USB hat the emulator.

I’d already spent an entire day trying to find the correct roms for the finalburn on the Android box. Turns out that set doesn’t work on the pi ffs. They’ve made it almost impossible to find the correct rom set. Typical emulator devs tbh.

I found someone’s rom upload but the Neo geo roms (about 4gb) were mixed into a 16gb file. So I then spent 2 hours picking the peanuts out of the poo with a list of Neo geo games in another window.

Finally it’s all done.

Plastics and other stuff came tomorrow so today it’s wiring day. Design will start soon but I’ve already designed it all in my head.

Final purchase is these for £7. Speed selector sold it to me.

 

[ALXAndy]

As usual the design is all in my head. We have, however, our first piece off the machine.

This is the beginning of the front panel assembly. The front panel is quite complex so I got this one done first.

It will make more sense in a few days time but it’s bob on so that was great.

 

[ALXAndy]

haha I was going to leave it there for today, but then realised that the front looks a bit daft due to the holes. The SNK logo is a negative, and will host a blue badge. Then this panel is going to sit over those holes for P1, power and P2.

 

[LewisRaz]

Looking to be another great project!

 

[ALXAndy]

Right side panel is done.

Left side panel is the vent side and I’ve kinda gone nuts so it’s hours haha. I’ll kick it off when I get up tomorrow.