Greetings from way down below!

I don't know if TVs in New Zealand are packin' SCART sockets but this sure is an amazing country! I been looking at the mountains rather than digging in the trash but I did think this little CRT pile up was worth a mention:

CRTs way down in Dunedin

A pink problem

It's been a long time since I first posted my guide to customising a Grundig CUC 5630 chassis for use with GroovyMAME.

For ages I've wanted to finish the write up by uploading some screens of the finished product in action. The only thing that was stopping me was a persistent gauss problem. I just couldn't shake off a pink strip down the left hand side of the screen.

At first I thought it must have been a faulty degauss circuit and so I swapped out the chassis for another identical CUC 5630. Once I saw that the problem was still there I knew I had to go to the hassle of dropping in a different tube. Luckily I had another Loewe CT1170 waiting in the wings. Yesterday I pulled the tube out of the that and swapped it over...

Magic! No more discolouration. The finished product is now working very well indeed! Great colours, perfect geometry and awesome image stability. The only problem is the soft edges. It must be something about CUC 5630s... they're always slightly foggy in the edges. Their focus just can't compete with later Loewes, Sonys and Philips. The problem is that those other TVs tend not to have the same range of analog geometry controls... There's always a compromise to be had in SCART Hunter land!

Anyway, I'll update my review with some images once I've caught up on sleep! In the meantime, check out a preview:

Hammerin' Harry (info screen)

Hammerin' Harry (title screen)

Hammerin' Harry (in game)

UMSA review updated!

Just a quick note to say that my UMSA review has (finally) been updated with screenshots showing the unit working with a huge range of SCART TVs! All shots are of the UMSA running with the latest version of GroovyMAME. Test TVs are courtesy of my pal Rob! Cheers Rob!

Quite an epic test session! Phew...

Sony KV-3400D with GroovyMAME

Tool time

Today I received my early Christmas gift to myself:

Brown box

I ordered this stuff about a week ago from Mektronics and I was pretty excited when I got a call from the office at work to say it had arrived.

This naughty splurge was for a bunch of choice electronics tools I've had my eye on for years. I figured I might as well get them now and enjoy them in the coming years instead of always wishing that I had the right tool for the job.

The run down

So, as you can see, I ordered myself up a Hakko 808 desoldering gun, a Hakko FX-888 soldering iron, a Steinel HG-305S heat gun and a Fluke 114 multimeter. This kit should help immensely with repair and customisation work.

The low down

As you might imagine, I'm really excited by the possibilities! Just gotta find some free time to get stuck into it...