Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Order
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:47 am
signal booster for stable high speed operation with long cable
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Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Order
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 10:10 am
Filtering and voltage protection I believe
Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Order
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 11:53 am
Hi Everyone,
I'll drop the price to $85. That's about all I can do with these hand built cables. Hopefully that helps some people.
Regarding the circuitry in the middle of the original cables, I was told some people even cut those out to improve performance? I'd be surprised if it was voltage protection as the console itself should have that on all input ports. It could be filtering or a booster. 5' to 6' for a serial cable shouldn't really need a booster unless the DC port drives are weak. Filtering is very likely. If anyone has any schematics or other information, I can take a look.
Thanks,
Kevin
I'll drop the price to $85. That's about all I can do with these hand built cables. Hopefully that helps some people.
Regarding the circuitry in the middle of the original cables, I was told some people even cut those out to improve performance? I'd be surprised if it was voltage protection as the console itself should have that on all input ports. It could be filtering or a booster. 5' to 6' for a serial cable shouldn't really need a booster unless the DC port drives are weak. Filtering is very likely. If anyone has any schematics or other information, I can take a look.
Thanks,
Kevin
Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Order
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 12:18 pm
Just sent the mail to pre-order!
Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Order
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 10:59 pm
DcTvsTaisenLink wrote:Just sent the mail to pre-order!
Same here
Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open
Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2020 9:53 pm
Hey everyone, a just a reminder preorders for this cable are still open. Take advantage if you want to score a high quality vs cable recreation 
Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:21 am
Yeah I sent an email as well. I am one of those who didn't even realize a link cable was even possible on DC, or ever existed, so I I got kinda excited lol
Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:25 pm
I just sent out the payment for the small internal PCB for the DC link cable. I should have those boards back in ~2-4 weeks. Probably 1-2 weeks to build. So expect cables in about 4 to 6 weeks. Probably closer to the 4 week mark. I'll keep preorder customers updated on status. Thanks!
I just did another cable for the VB as well. An extension cable for the controller. And I'm working on a new connector for the Wonderswan, which surprised me to also turn out to be the link cable port.
I just did another cable for the VB as well. An extension cable for the controller. And I'm working on a new connector for the Wonderswan, which surprised me to also turn out to be the link cable port.
Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:13 pm
mellott124 wrote:I just sent out the payment for the small internal PCB for the DC link cable. I should have those boards back in ~2-4 weeks. Probably 1-2 weeks to build. So expect cables in about 4 to 6 weeks. Probably closer to the 4 week mark. I'll keep preorder customers updated on status. Thanks!
I just did another cable for the VB as well. An extension cable for the controller. And I'm working on a new connector for the Wonderswan, which surprised me to also turn out to be the link cable port.
You're becoming the Cable master!
Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Interest
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:59 pm
mellott124 wrote:|darc| wrote:Hi there,
At the moment, a friend of mine is currently in talks with a Chinese manufacturer to get these connectors made. We expected to have a quote months ago, but coronavirus interfered with those plans.
However, we planned to do a group buy where other people could purchase connectors. I don't know if you are aware or not but there are many more uses for these connectors than just the link cable so I fear you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to not make your connectors available for purchase by themselves if you are looking to reduce cost by increasing volume.
At the moment the cheapest PC-DC development link is less than $5 in parts to solder a serial-USB interface but we really need a plug-and-play connector for this so we have a better off-the-shelf option for development than the ~$150 broadband adapter.
In addition, the Dreamcast and Arduino basically speak the same serial language so I imagine some homebrew developers would love to get connectors available so they can interface any kind of Arduino accessory to the Dreamcast.
We can also make better quality SD card adapters, MIDI cables, Neo Geo cables, etc.
If that works out that would be great for the Dreamcast community. I’m guessing that you’d need to have 100,000 or more made to get them to bite. For the cost of what people will want to pay for a connector only, it doesn’t make sense for my solution. It would make sense for a machine manufactured solution.
For now I’ll continue with the carbon fiber printed cable because, more times than not, these things don’t pan out like people hope. If it does work out then I won’t have to hand build cables and I’m OK with stopping at that point.
I think perhaps you misunderstood the intention of my post -- in no way am I suggesting you should not proceed with the carbon fiber printed cable (that would be a dick thing to suggest, lol), but it's more of a suggestion that you include an option for buying 1connector at like half the price. Because I agree that there's a very good chance the price of getting these made in China will be out of range of what we could do. I think you might be surprised what people are willing to pay for a connector only. I've already purchased a Neo-Geo cable in the past at $50 only to harvest its connector, for example, which is a very cheap price for that cable... and at your price point I could get one for $42.50 if I bought a cable and chopped it up.
It's hard to tell from the pictures, how easy will it be to open the connectors? Will the cables be fully pinned?