codecrank
Professional
- Joined
- May 24, 2016
- Messages
- 204
- Reaction score
- 333
I wanted to play that game but I've never been able to find it anywhere, so I just put a together something for my net city 
This has taken waaaayyy longer that I thought it was going to. The project was plagued by countless technical issues.
first I found someone parting a cab and willing to send one of the panel's stick, buttons and harness without the whole metal base. The joystick's mounting plate had to be cut down and new mounting holes had to be drilled.
glad I ordered so many blanks , I'm about 1/2 down that pile now.
used an 80mm hole saw which did not cut as clean as I would have liked, but you can't see it. Also I don't even wanna know how much an 80mm knockout punch costs..
next I got some art from Alberto, he inspired me to do this project so I reached out to him, pretty happy with the result.
a panel by itself doesn't dot much, so on to finding the game. This is where I ran into a big problem: Sega Hikaru systems are fragile creatures and as such are hard to find and get shipped to you in working order. Sega outsourced the manufacturing of the hikaru to a company that didn't tin the BGA chips properly, causing to fall off during transport . nobody can fix those anymore, not even Ken Westerfield. After months of searching I found someone who was willing to get it properly ready for transport, ok so it came with a NAscar rom board, but it's a start
one of packing steps is applying hot glue on around the bga chip's heatsink. don't do that and the board will arrive looking like the dead or "untested" ones you find on ebay.
so it showed up in working order, yay
now I just needed a Planet Harriers Rom board
and new usb/jvs io port.
found a "working" rom board on klov. that ended up not working after all
the seller would not do a full refund but offered to refund the cost of having it fixed by Ken from irepairsega , since Ken happens lives 20 minutes from my house, shipping was not an issue. Ken swapped it with a replacement board for the cost of the repair.
cool. all good. let's put the panel together and finally play right ?
wrong. bad pot on the analog stick... the original part is impossible to find. no longer in stock anywhere. had to settle for another 5k linear pot and hope for the best.
had to file down the flat shaft a bit, but it worked out great
notice the crimp instead of solder/shrink tube. I wasn't 100% sure the pot would work well
wiring done. I reused a lot of the original wiring, buy thn I was ready to just f'n play the game ...
and the final results...
This has taken waaaayyy longer that I thought it was going to. The project was plagued by countless technical issues.first I found someone parting a cab and willing to send one of the panel's stick, buttons and harness without the whole metal base. The joystick's mounting plate had to be cut down and new mounting holes had to be drilled.
glad I ordered so many blanks , I'm about 1/2 down that pile now.
used an 80mm hole saw which did not cut as clean as I would have liked, but you can't see it. Also I don't even wanna know how much an 80mm knockout punch costs..
next I got some art from Alberto, he inspired me to do this project so I reached out to him, pretty happy with the result.
a panel by itself doesn't dot much, so on to finding the game. This is where I ran into a big problem: Sega Hikaru systems are fragile creatures and as such are hard to find and get shipped to you in working order. Sega outsourced the manufacturing of the hikaru to a company that didn't tin the BGA chips properly, causing to fall off during transport . nobody can fix those anymore, not even Ken Westerfield. After months of searching I found someone who was willing to get it properly ready for transport, ok so it came with a NAscar rom board, but it's a start
one of packing steps is applying hot glue on around the bga chip's heatsink. don't do that and the board will arrive looking like the dead or "untested" ones you find on ebay.
so it showed up in working order, yay
now I just needed a Planet Harriers Rom boardand new usb/jvs io port.
found a "working" rom board on klov. that ended up not working after all
the seller would not do a full refund but offered to refund the cost of having it fixed by Ken from irepairsega , since Ken happens lives 20 minutes from my house, shipping was not an issue. Ken swapped it with a replacement board for the cost of the repair.
cool. all good. let's put the panel together and finally play right ?
wrong. bad pot on the analog stick... the original part is impossible to find. no longer in stock anywhere. had to settle for another 5k linear pot and hope for the best.
had to file down the flat shaft a bit, but it worked out great
notice the crimp instead of solder/shrink tube. I wasn't 100% sure the pot would work well
wiring done. I reused a lot of the original wiring, buy thn I was ready to just f'n play the game ...
and the final results...
