Oh, and for those who don't know, the DC's original development name (also the name written on its mobo) is Katana (a samurai sword). I figured it'd be appropriate if I were to name this smaller portable version "Kodachi", which is the Japanese name for a short sword. Though, the final projekt name on the portable will probably just be Dreamcast Portable haha.
SO here we go!
A perfectly good Dreamcast.....that I aquired for free from a friend of mine who got it for free in a junk bag...
Which some quick measurements, I found that with only a few small trimmings, I could fit the DC into the mold I used for my NESp commission!
SO began the chopping.....
POOF! Goodbye useless expansion port thingy!
Of course, we can't build a portable without some serious cutting action!!!
The failed case parts that were for the NESp commission made a decent screen case for a while....but now...work much better for sizing up the Dreamcast's innards to the casing.
Shaved the DC board and heatsink down, and it all fit quite nicely!
I also did some meddling around with the controller using the junk front plate for the controller stuff. FOr this attempt, I decided to try using the original controller parts. This was mostly to make things easier for the analog stick part, and also to make some decent mounting points for the controller boards.
The stuff fit all right, but it was doomed to fail (more on that in a few).
Next on the list was getting the totally awesome screen hardwired to the DC board...
If you look closely, you'll see the switch I attached to allow for switchable VGA mode. This is important for the portable since not all DC games support VGA mode for some silly reason. Using the switch requires the system to be off before you change it up though, you can't change modes on the fly unfortunately.
Next item up for bids was the power supply. Picked me up one of those little Pico PSUs for the job. Now, we all know the DC will happily run on less than 12 volts, however the fancy screen absolutely refuses to run on anything less than that. I tried a few things, but it' s just not happening. Not a big deal though, as the Pico PSU was quite cheap (all of 20 bucks
) and is a great compact power supply for the whole shabang.
And now for the test firing...stuck in a game I don't care about to make sure it was all alive, which it was...darn my camera has a fast shutter speed--that disk was spinning pretty fast when I snapped the photo haha.
SO the next item on the list was getting a functional controller.
The plan was to save myself a few bucks and make use of my dead controllers that I had just sitting around plus one fully working controller. This proved to be made of fail and aids as none of the buttons other than start and the d-pad actually worked. I thought for sure the ABXY buttons would work, but those failed too for whatever reason
So that went out the window, and I picked up a pair of these guys:
I find it very interesting how the 3rd party Madcatz controller is actually, in my opinion, way superior to the official Sega controller
Then commenced the shredding. Removed the L and R triggers, which was so many kinds of easy when compared to the official controller. They will also be significantly easier to install in the portable over the official parts too.
Then, phase 3: Shredding the original controller for attaching.
As can be seen above, the new controller parts fit quite happily within the limits of the original holes, which are both well within limit of the case itself. As a nice bonus, I can keep the C and Z buttons too! Yeah, they're just L and R, but they're sooooooo much nicer to use than the triggers when rocking games like Street Fighter III and Marvel Vs Capcom...
Since there were no usable screw posts on the D-pad/analog stick side to mount the controller board to, I cut up some of the other screw posts and attached them with some plastic weld. The connection is rock solid, and holds the controller board nicely
So then began the extension process to a still intact working controller. Yeah, I could've cut it down, but I'm feeling a bit paranoid bout these controllers right now, and according to my measurements, there's more than enough room for a complete controller in the case anyway.
After a successful test of the above board extensions, the next step was extending the DC's controller board, and hardwiring the cut up controller to it. Yes, I intend to incorporate the players 2 thru 4 ports
...and of course, extending the VMU port. I was considering going with a fully internal VMU, but found the idea to be silly since I have different VMUs for different things. This will work fine, and save me some room anyway.
All right, that should bring us all up do date on this guy....Getting ready to make the case right now. Need to hit up the local hardware store tomorrow to pick up some more window sealer foam stuff for my vac table. The stuff I have on it is so worn out at this point that it just doesn't work anymore..which I found out the hard way when I tried to form some plastic and wound up with it not pulling down at all
I'm hoping to get the case built up and ready for paint by Monday...but as with all plans of this sort, that's probably not gonna happen
It'll be done soon enough though...soon enough to start and finish my next, much smaller, projekt before MGC
