Thread Split: Drakon's Modding

[Voultar]

We've discussed this before, both privately and publicly.

You can't control what people think, Drakon. You can however, control what people are influenced by. Skips wasn't the engineer behind the barrage of pictures containing your god-awful mod-work. That was of your own doing. Skips isn't responsible for the ill criticisms that you've been in receipt of, that falls solely onto you. You provided the fuel for the party. You put the can of gasoline too close to the fire here.

Turn the tide, release some good mod-work with consistency, and sway the public consensus.

[Skips]

I found threads skips posted in 2015 referencing me with those same old pictures from when all of this started. People read that and continue sending me messages based on that even today.

http://www.retromods.net/viewtopic.php?t=33

The least skips could do is admit that he's a pathetic asshole who gets off on all the attention this has brought him. I admit the quality of my old work was terrible and I never had any problem doing that. I just needed to get good enough to realize how bad my old work really was. The only person who refuses to improve is skips. Skips loves keeping this community in the stone-age of maturity. Ironically the reason why skips' life is so lonely and pathetic is because skips is so immature and skips refuses to become more mature.

Skips pretends to not care about this stuff yet skips obsessively posts about it. It's because skips loves attention and skips hates anything that could make skips look bad and take that attention away. The only modification skips needs to make is to his pathetic life and how he handles his lame situation.

HMMM the only time I see me directly mentioning your name was in regards to what type of glue gun you were probably using and when I incorrectly thought a moderator over at Neo-geo.com was using your account to troll me (which I did apologize to you about because regardless of how much I despise you I still would have wished you a Merry Christmas had I known it was actually you). I simply posted pictures of terrible modwork. The whole point of that thread was to give examples of what people should not do. It was re-posted since we were starting a new modding site at the time and we wanted to recreate a version of the Messy modwork thread over there. Boo fucking hoo if its your work. Sorry but I am not sweeping those pictures under the rug, its on you to prove you aren't like that anymore. I am not going to hide it to make you feel better. Like I said, continuing to just go back and forth with me is doing you no good. Go out and participate again. Post newer cleaner projects as you go and offer tips, ideas, and advice like a lot of the modders here do.

P.S. Don't mistake just not giving a fuck and being blunt/rude for immaturity. At this point you are just going in circles and really don't deserve any other type of answer. I have given you the constructive criticism you claim to so eagerly crave, take it or leave it.

[Drakon]

We've discussed this before, both privately and publicly.

You can't control what people think, Drakon. You can however, control what people are influenced by. Skips wasn't the engineer behind the barrage of pictures containing your god-awful mod-work. That was of your own doing. Skips isn't responsible for the ill criticisms that you've been in receipt of, that falls solely onto you. You provided the fuel for the party. You put the can of gasoline too close to the fire here.

Turn the tide, release some good mod-work with consistency, and sway the public consensus.

Yes he was. Skips shot and posted those pictures instead of just talking to me about his concerns. I didn't force skips into doing that. Skips said a lot of lies about me and people bought it, so for those things skips is responsible.

Thanks to people like skips people ignore most or all good work posted.

Skips mentioned my name and posted much out-of-date pictures of my work, without my permission. Unfortunately regardless of how well-intentioned those posts are people see those and interpret it as "drakon's an asshole" and spend their time messaging me to let me know that I still cover everything in glue, I should kill myself, that they're better than me, etc etc.

[Voultar]

We've discussed this before, both privately and publicly.

You can't control what people think, Drakon. You can however, control what people are influenced by. Skips wasn't the engineer behind the barrage of pictures containing your god-awful mod-work. That was of your own doing. Skips isn't responsible for the ill criticisms that you've been in receipt of, that falls solely onto you. You provided the fuel for the party. You put the can of gasoline too close to the fire here.

Turn the tide, release some good mod-work with consistency, and sway the public consensus.

Yes he was. Skips shot and posted those pictures instead of just talking to me about his concerns. I didn't force skips into doing that. Skips said a lot of lies about me and people bought it, so for those things skips is responsible.

Thanks to people like skips people ignore most or all good work posted.

Where did all of the pictures come from? Did Skips take them and upload them to the internets?

[Skips]

We've discussed this before, both privately and publicly.

You can't control what people think, Drakon. You can however, control what people are influenced by. Skips wasn't the engineer behind the barrage of pictures containing your god-awful mod-work. That was of your own doing. Skips isn't responsible for the ill criticisms that you've been in receipt of, that falls solely onto you. You provided the fuel for the party. You put the can of gasoline too close to the fire here.

Turn the tide, release some good mod-work with consistency, and sway the public consensus.

Yes he was. Skips shot and posted those pictures instead of just talking to me about his concerns. I didn't force skips into doing that. Skips said a lot of lies about me and people bought it, so for those things skips is responsible.

Thanks to people like skips people ignore most or all good work posted.

me me me me me me me me me woe is me, thats all I hear. GO PARTICIPATE AND PROVE YOU HAVE CHANGED, just as Voultar has said.

[Drakon]

Where did all of the pictures come from? Did Skips take them and upload them to the internets?

I didn't take them. Skips took some of them yes. The ones skips didn't take skips made sure to post them publicly without my permission. Unfortunately all this did was make people believe that's what my work still looks like.

Heck, if they had been posted without my name attached to them keeping the focus on bad examples and keeping the focus off of making people believe that's what it still looks like I would have seen that as a good thing for the community. The only pictures of another person's work I'd ever post were ones that the person had posted him/herself.

[Skips]

We've discussed this before, both privately and publicly.

You can't control what people think, Drakon. You can however, control what people are influenced by. Skips wasn't the engineer behind the barrage of pictures containing your god-awful mod-work. That was of your own doing. Skips isn't responsible for the ill criticisms that you've been in receipt of, that falls solely onto you. You provided the fuel for the party. You put the can of gasoline too close to the fire here.

Turn the tide, release some good mod-work with consistency, and sway the public consensus.

Yes he was. Skips shot and posted those pictures instead of just talking to me about his concerns. I didn't force skips into doing that. Skips said a lot of lies about me and people bought it, so for those things skips is responsible.

Thanks to people like skips people ignore most or all good work posted.

Where did all of the pictures come from? Did Skips take them and upload them to the internets?

I took the ones of that melted ass AV Famicom. They were initial shock pictures I took, kinda like how Jason did with his video.

[Drakon]

And since skips still ignores it, once again, how my work looks:

[Voultar]

So, do I have it right that you find both Skips and Jason primarily responsible for the public shaming you've endured over the span of 3 years due to their public critique of your mod-work?

It's their fault, and not yours, right?

[Drakon]

So, do I have it right that you find both Skips and Jason primarily responsible for the public shaming you've endured over the span of 3 years due to their public critique of your mod-work?

It's their fault, and not yours, right?

Once again the quality of my work was my fault. The fault of skips is him spreading lies about me not being interested in improving, and making people think that's what my work still looks like by continuing to repost pictures of my old work without my permission. Skips pretends that wasn't his goal but really it was and skips is just doing it for attention, the same as Jason did with his videos about my work.

Their collective fault is making the community believe that talking to me about concerns like a normal person is useless. That's the type of environment they've helped create. Their fault by posting those things is making people believe that attacking the competition is better for the community rather than working together.

I don't think anyone is "primarily responsible".

I just want to bring to light that I apologized for my fault years ago. They never apologized for theirs and they don't want to. They like the attention, unfortunately it's the only way skips can get attention.

[Voultar]

So, do I have it right that you find both Skips and Jason primarily responsible for the public shaming you've endured over the span of 3 years due to their public critique of your mod-work?

It's their fault, and not yours, right?

Once again the quality of my work was my fault. The fault of skips is him spreading lies about me not being interested in improving, and making people think that's what my work still looks like by continuing to repost pictures of my old work without my permission.

Their collective fault is making the community believe that talking to me about concerns like a normal person is useless. That's the type of environment they've helped create.

Modding for your own personal stuff is one thing.


Modding on a commission basis as a service, where money is exchanged is entirely different, and plays on a unique set of rules.


When you provide someone with a service and cash is exchanged, all bets are off. You have no "protection" from an ill-review of your work when someone pays you for it.

Otherwise, everyone would be buying shitty products or hiring a shitty plumber without any foresight of knowledge. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

[Drakon]

Modding for your own personal stuff is one thing.


Modding on a commission basis as a service, where money is exchanged is entirely different, and plays on a unique set of rules.


When you provide someone with a service and cash is exchanged, all bets are off. You have no "protection" from an ill-review of your work when someone pays you for it.

Otherwise, everyone would be buying shitty products or hiring a shitty plumber without any foresight of knowledge. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

I would agree, if the current reviews actually reflected what my current work is like. Everything posted about me ignores anything good I've ever done and focuses only on the bad examples, even if they're very out of date. They're not reflective at all about what people would receive. Even when I posted work I had done just for myself long before I did work for hire people would post lots of hate about it. This is a general problem where people constantly bash each other with very biased reviews, even for personal projects.

Again I want to point out I'm not trying to win back any business. I just want people to know how full of shit these posts and people are.

There's such thing as shitty work, but there's also such thing as shitty reviews.

[leonk]

Since skips has ignored it now twice, here's a recent job I did:





.

I don't know what you and skips have going on, and frankly I'm staying out BUT HOLY SHIT DUDE, you are proud of those reproductions!?!? If I sold someone something that looks like that, I would give them their $$$ back.

- why the hell are you using electrical tape? This shitty tape hardens like a rock, falls off and leaves shitty gunk on everything! No one in their right mind uses electrical tape inside electronic devices. Learn from what commercial companies do - buy a damn $2 roll on Mylar tape!
- still didn't learn to not use hot glue. It's right there. Holding 2 wires down! What the hell!?
- no one who calls themselves a modder will ever use DIP EPROMs when SMD EPROMs and hole remapping PCBs exist. Yes. You can make those games without using a single electrical wire!

Sorry. But you still have a lot of learning left.

[leonk]

Ive been making reproductions for close to 14 years. I'm so tired of fixing other "fly by night" reproductions for customers that are at the end of their rope. I've actually started a hall of shame on my web site showing some of the crap I see.

Here info from a few years ago on how to do it correct with snes. Adapters exist for all cart types.

http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/29f032-solder ... ter-board/

Pay more for adapter. Pay for programmer adapter and charge customers more. Educated customers will pay more for quality work.

When I do any retro mod I always email the customer a picture of the inside of the system. Nothing to hide. Should be as beautiful inside as outside.

[Guspaz]

Why destroy existing limited supplies of real PCBs instead of using high quality repro boards like those by markfrizb or retrostage? Destroying retro gear like this really grinds my gears when there are perfectly good alternatives available. If I were you, I wouldn't tout what you're doing as somehow morally superior when you're pulling crap like that.

[Ed Oscuro]

Cool note about the mylar tape, leonk - a metalized film should also be useful in sorting out RF problems. I was wondering why Drakon didn't use electrical tape with the tinfoil suggested earlier, but like you say that's kind of gnarly, DUDE!

[Drakon]

Why destroy existing limited supplies of real PCBs instead of using high quality repro boards like those by markfrizb or retrostage? Destroying retro gear like this really grinds my gears when there are perfectly good alternatives available. If I were you, I wouldn't tout what you're doing as somehow morally superior when you're pulling crap like that.

Is this directed at me or leonk? I'm unaware of any good alternative superfx pcbs.

What leonk does is amazing quality work I'd hardly call that "destroying", more like improving. Obviously repro pcbs are a better idea but improving original hardware the way leonk does is great.

[Josh128]

So Leonk, you are the mmmonkey? Whats up with the triple M in the name?

[leonk]

So Leonk, you are the mmmonkey? Whats up with the triple M in the name?

No I'm not. mmmonkey I believe is a guy in Germany. I'm just Leon from Toronto, Canada. I'm the guy behind nesreproductions. I just found that link about a 30 second google search. I really like the buyicnow adapters. Makes reproductions very quick and clean.

Guspaz: Cost wise, nothing beats original carts. Many donor carts I see have a label that is so poor, that no one in their right mind will showcase them in their collection. Also, most donor carts cost $5-10. Good luck getting a new PCB made, lockout chip made, and new shell made (not counting shipping) for $5-10. I've yet to see a reproduction shell that's nearly as good as original. Lastly, what about the ecological impact? Recycle old PCBs that were made in the millions, or use new harsh chemicals in making new PCB's. I prefer recycling.

[Drakon]

So Leonk, you are the mmmonkey? Whats up with the triple M in the name?

No I'm not. mmmonkey I believe is a guy in Germany. I'm just Leon from Toronto, Canada. I'm the guy behind nesreproductions. I just found that link about a 30 second google search. I really like the buyicnow adapters. Makes reproductions very quick and clean.

Guspaz: Cost wise, nothing beats original carts. Many donor carts I see have a label that is so poor, that no one in their right mind will showcase them in their collection. Also, most donor carts cost $5-10. Good luck getting a new PCB made, lockout chip made, and new shell made (not counting shipping) for $5-10. I've yet to see a reproduction shell that's nearly as good as original. Lastly, what about the ecological impact? Recycle old PCBs that were made in the millions, or use new harsh chemicals in making new PCB's. I prefer recycling.

On top of that the games he converts most of them were horrible games in the first place. Turning it into an amazing game is a big upgrade. As long as the game you're turning it into is better than the original and the work is as good as what leonk does, that's definitely a good thing.

[ApolloBoy]

and the work is as good as what leonk does

Hahahaha no, did you even fucking read that other post of his?

[Guspaz]

Why destroy existing limited supplies of real PCBs instead of using high quality repro boards like those by markfrizb or retrostage? Destroying retro gear like this really grinds my gears when there are perfectly good alternatives available. If I were you, I wouldn't tout what you're doing as somehow morally superior when you're pulling crap like that.

Is this directed at me or leonk? I'm unaware of any good alternative superfx pcbs.

leonk in that instance, but everyone in general. I'll admit to writing that harsher than I really feel towards repros because of the whole "don't throw stones in a glass house" feeling that his post evoked, I'm not so militantly against using game PCBs for repros in reality, but there are good alternatives in many cases. I don't wanna see any of you tearing apart SNES controllers to put other cable ends on them when there are extension-based adapters available, though

I'm not aware of there being all that many SuperFX repro games worth making. Starfox 2 is the only one that I know of, as all other SuperFX games were released in English in one region or another. I guess there's the Starfox competition cart, but that's not really a full game per se. That said, there aren't any SuperFX repro PCBs that I'm aware of, but they'd be kind of pointless because you'd still need the SuperFX chip itself. I guess such a repro board could be useful if you've got a SuperFX board that's destroyed but still has an intact chip. Doom is always a good option for a doner PCB, I suppose, since it's got much better ports on other systems.

What leonk does is amazing quality work I'd hardly call that "destroying", more like improving. Obviously repro pcbs are a better idea but improving original hardware the way leonk does is great.

If it's not the same game as the original, the original game is pretty well destroyed.

Guspaz: Cost wise, nothing beats original carts. Many donor carts I see have a label that is so poor, that no one in their right mind will showcase them in their collection. Also, most donor carts cost $5-10. Good luck getting a new PCB made, lockout chip made, and new shell made (not counting shipping) for $5-10. I've yet to see a reproduction shell that's nearly as good as original. Lastly, what about the ecological impact? Recycle old PCBs that were made in the millions, or use new harsh chemicals in making new PCB's. I prefer recycling.

New PCBs aren't exactly breaking the bank, with markfrizb's non-SRAM board costing $9 and his with-SRAM board costing $15, to which all that is missing is the EPROM to slap in. Well, the battery too. I agree about the cartridge shells, though, everybody seems to be using the INL ones, or some that look just like it, which is annoying. I'll admit that I've got an order in the mail for a cart with a ripped up label to have something to put the 240p test suite in (made by markfrizb on the simple board). As I said earlier, I'm not really so militantly opposed to these things, it was more a reaction to you calling out Drakon for something while yourself using real doners, which is something that is a little sketchy itself, even if I'm doing it a bit myself.

On top of that the games he converts most of them were horrible games in the first place.

The doner carts that were being shown were Secret of Mana in the form of Seiken Densetsu 2, which is hardly a horrible game.

[Drakon]

I don't see what leonk does as destruction. He desolders chips and wires in new ones. There's no damage done to the pcb. You're just removing a maskrom of a game that's less appealing. I'm not sure how universal those new pcbs are. I'm not really that much involved with repro business. I hope that leonk is okay with using new pcbs as well as old and offering both. Whichever a customer prefers. If it's the customer's cart then that person can do whatever he/she wants with it. When you use words like "destroying" then people who don't understand what's involved become all freaked out and they think that what leonk does somehow breaks or damages cartridges. All of his work looks very easily reversible without damage caused to the chips or pcbs.

I appreciate you showing that what he does was rude, but being rude back to him doesn't solve the problem. In fact being rude back to him makes things worse. I sent leonk a private message and addressed everything he discussed. I don't see the need to be so public and in everyone's face about everything, it helps nothing. I believe in people working together instead of trying to attack each other. I really wish this way of thinking will someday be practised by the majority.

[yxkalle]

I think drakons repros looks fine, but I'm not sure about the electrical tape.

[Strider77]

I love this drama... it's always exciting to see this thread bump back up.

[darcagn]

- no one who calls themselves a modder will ever use DIP EPROMs when SMD EPROMs and hole remapping PCBs exist. Yes. You can make those games without using a single electrical wire!

Those Star Fox 2 repros are made with SFX PCBs that use SMD maskroms, not DIP maskroms. Those hole-remapping PCBs thus are useless.

[Strider77]

I have to ask, Drakon... so why did you use so much hot glue?

[leonk]

- no one who calls themselves a modder will ever use DIP EPROMs when SMD EPROMs and hole remapping PCBs exist. Yes. You can make those games without using a single electrical wire!

Those Star Fox 2 repros are made with SFX PCBs that use SMD maskroms, not DIP maskroms. Those hole-remapping PCBs thus are useless.

Here's I would have done it:



The switch changes between the Japanese prototype and English translation. This pcb design has been floating around since 2013.

[yxkalle]

Maybe a PCB like that can save some time too. Time is money.

[leonk]

Maybe a PCB like that can save some time too. Time is money.

If you are making many of these for paying customers, then yes. It will save you a lot of time! But if you're making only 1 off for yourself, it's cheaper to wire it up rather than order a custom PCB from a place like Osh Park. Many fabs have min order sizes, and given how small this board is, you'll end up getting about a dozen of them!

You also have to have pro tools and good technique to flow the daughter board adapter onto the original SMD pads.