My Website: DC Hardware Development

[WarGames]

Hi All,
I've spent quite a bit of time updating my website: http://web.vtc.edu/users/cph11120 I started last year. As part of my Final Project for my electrical degree at my school, I had to implement a reasonably complicated circuit and document its purpose, how it worked, etc. The site has been around for almost a year and a half now so I'll give you a little pretext as to how the site/project has progressed.

In 2006 I built the VGA level conversion circuit seen all over the web, like the one seen at http://www.gamesx.com and attempted to replicate Axlen's
Dreamcast USB serial adapter. The VGA part worked out fine, but I had a lot of issues with the USB adapter, and I never ended up getting it to work.

After passing the class, I pretty much gave up on the USB adapter, and lost interest in the Dreamcast for a while. I spent a lot more of my time dabbling in XBOX and Playstation2 modification and repair as the number of friends I had that owned a Dreamcast was null. I regret not documenting more on my experience with the 'next gen' systems but I was hardly doing much "development" and "analysis" compared to work I had done previously with the Dreamcast.

After the summer and fall had passed, I went back to college to retake classes and my Final Project class was one of them. Once we began working independently on our projects, I immediately decided to center my project on the Dreamcast again once I got the approval. I made a lot of progress compared to the first time. I ultimately decided that before I try to build an extensive 2 sided board with serial UART/USB capabilities I should try to build the simpler version like the serial cable schematic on Marcus Comstedt's site and first breadboard everything before making a PCB.

I had a lot more success with the serial port this time around and discovered that a lot full of Transceiver Integrated Circuits are available that are compatible with the Dreamcast's serial port. This time around I did a lot more research on the technologies (VGA and A Lot of serial/RS-232 theory) and very thoroughly documented the steps I took and why I took them. For those inexperienced with electronics, I hope this site can give you some initiative and help in order for you to build your own DC Serial Cable and realize what it is actually doing.

The older version of the site that's been around since last year had some issues so I fixed a most of the errors and misinformation but it is still definitely under construction. Although the page is far from complete, I figure now is a good enough time as any to share what I've documented so far and get some feedback and some anticipation on the projects I plan to do on the Dreamcast. The site is fairly organized so far, but I am open to suggestions and feedback and even requests which is the reason I started this thread.

Well that's it for now, thanks for the interest!

http://web.vtc.edu/users/cph11120

[Mark30001]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing.

[|darc|]

Cool.