The Blog

Circuit Bending a Sega Mega Drive 2

Nix McRetro // 20th February 2016 // Guides, Hacks, Sega

Here’s a little infographic on circuit bending the Mega Drive / Genesis Model 2, originally from Gijs at gieskes.nl. You can get some wonderfully broken graphics out of the VRAM. Maybe I should do another video - if only it also broke the audio… actually, I did mess around with... Continue reading

Creating a Sony PlayStation Modchip

Nix McRetro // 14th February 2016 // Hacks, Sony, YouTube

A quick look at programming PIC microcontrollers with Mayumi 4 or MultiMode3 modchip code. I was experimenting with PIC12C508, PIC12C508A and PIC12F629 devices. The main difference is the clock source: Mayumi V4 uses the PlayStation’s mechacon clock on supported motherboard revisions, while MultiMode3 uses the PIC’s internal clock. MM3’s internal-clock... Continue reading

Cloudflare CDN

Nix McRetro // 10th February 2016 // News

CDN means Content Delivery Network. They are marvellous things! Putting Cloudflare in front of this little Raspberry Pi web server sounded extremely useful. For web records configured through Cloudflare’s proxy, visitors connect to Cloudflare first rather than directly to the origin server. Cloudflare can then cache suitable content, filter traffic... Continue reading

Mayumi 4 | PIC12C508A | SCPH-7502 | PU-22

Nix McRetro // 9th February 2016 // Guides, Sony

Mayumi 4 | PIC12C508A | SCPH-7502 | PU-22

This is the Mayumi 4 installation I used with a PIC12C508A on an SCPH-7502 PlayStation with a PU-22 motherboard. There are eight solder points in total. The mode sequence is: Strongest Mode -> Old Modchip Mode -> Disable Mode Hold reset for around two seconds to change modes. Configuration recorded... Continue reading

Moved (Back) to WordPress

Nix McRetro // 8th February 2016 // News, Raspberry Pi

If you can see this post, it means I managed to get the website working sufficiently well under WordPress on a Raspberry Pi 2. I’d used FlatPress for a while, but I was missing some of the great WordPress features… errr, well I mean: drop-down category and archive menus in... Continue reading