Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering

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mellott124
rebel
Posts: 18

Re: New Homemade HQ Dreamcast Link Cables Interest

Post#41 » Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:24 pm

|darc| wrote:
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?


Let me get the parts in and see how it goes. I'll consider this.

It won't be easy to open up my cable. The glue that I use to bond the cable is quite a strong bond. More times than not it splits the connector housing plastic before the glue lets loose.

gamingtrucker1
dark night
Posts: 63
Contact:

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#42 » Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:55 pm

Can i still get one ?
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Xiden
Developer
Posts: 2219

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#43 » Tue Jun 16, 2020 9:03 pm

gamingtrucker1 wrote:Can i still get one ?


I believe he is still taking preorders:)

Send him a email at [email protected] to order one

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Nico0020
Sunday Shootout
Posts: 653

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#44 » Wed Jun 17, 2020 1:31 am

Ive seen homemade vs cables pop up on ebay before. Are these from the same person?

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Xiden
Developer
Posts: 2219

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#45 » Wed Jun 17, 2020 2:00 am

Nico0020 wrote:Ive seen homemade vs cables pop up on ebay before. Are these from the same person?


No, this is the first time for Kevin to make these cables.

mellott124
rebel
Posts: 18

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#46 » Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:39 pm

Wanted to give a quick update. Internal PCB is here next week. A slight delay getting it in to sync up with some other designs I have in process. I did receive my VB version of basically the same design and after 3D printing a jig to hold the pins, its working brilliantly. Same process should apply to the DC serial cable. Looking forwarding to getting these to people.

mellott124
rebel
Posts: 18

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#47 » Sat Jul 18, 2020 3:29 pm

Its definitely pushing the limits of what I can do with my printer but its working well so far. Here's some pictures of the internals of the prototype connector using actual Dreamcast AV pins. Doing some adjustments and then I'll post pictures of a fully assembled connector. Tooling is especially important. The last picture is under my microscope of the alignment JIG that I use to hold the pins while soldering to the PCB.

IMG-4926.jpg
IMG-4924.jpg
IMG-4922.jpg

mellott124
rebel
Posts: 18

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#48 » Sat Jul 18, 2020 9:32 pm

Here is the completed connector. This really turned out even nicer than I was expecting. Getting the DC AV pins to work was icing on the cake.
Attachments
IMG-4932.jpg
IMG-4931.jpg
IMG-4928.jpg
IMG-4927.jpg

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Xiden
Developer
Posts: 2219

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#49 » Sat Jul 18, 2020 9:58 pm

mellott124 wrote:Here is the completed connector. This really turned out even nicer than I was expecting. Getting the DC AV pins to work was icing on the cake.


Looks awesome! Thanks again for your hard work!

mellott124
rebel
Posts: 18

Re: Dreamcast Link Cables Pre-Ordering now Open

Post#50 » Thu Jul 23, 2020 7:21 am

I could do serial to USB cables now as well. And if people are really interested in just connectors, then lets talk via email. [email protected]

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