Shinchan's cheap-ass MVS setup

A thread to track the progress of my MVS build.

Expenditures so far:
MV-1A board and 161-1 cart: -$20.00
Supergun kit from eBay seller honupata74: $37.50
"Junk" Hori Neo II stick: $40.00
Joystick/buttons/misc from FocusAttack $55.79
AES to BNC cable from RetroAccess: $54.00
Electronic bits for stereo mod: ~$18.00
5v power brick $6.95

Total: $229.74

Okay, so maybe not so cheap, but I'm up and playing for less than $250.

So while trolling CL, I stumble across an ad for someone selling a sketchy supergun setup, but he also happened to have an MVS board with a 161-1 and an original Magician Lord cart and for the price I figured I couldn't go wrong. I intended to get a NeoSD anyway, so I sold the ML cart to cover my cost plus a tiny bit of profit.

I figured since I didn't really know what I was doing, I should find the cheapest RGB supergun that I could find, and went with the DIY kit from eBay seller honupata74 as other users on the board indicated that the kit at least works.

The kit from honupata74 seemed to be pretty good for a simple SG. It was missing the power LEDs but the seller had replacements to me in a couple of days. Build was pretty straightforward, I'm an amateur but it went together in about an hour. The PCB was marked really well and any questions I had the seller was pretty responsive.

He has 2 different configurations meant for either vertical or horizontal loading MVS. The one for horizontal loaders didn't really do it for me as the controller ports would be facing up, and I thought if someone tripped over the controller cable or something then that would be problematic. The configuration for vertical loaders almost blocks insertion of the cart, but I figured if I was using a 161-1 or a NeoSD then I wouldn't be changing carts all that often and I liked having the controller ports facing the front so that any mishaps at least had a chance at pulling out of the port instead of pulling the whole shebang off of the shelf.

I also decided to do a 5v conversion on the MVS board so that I could use a cheap power brick.

Junk Neo II Hori stick. At least 2 of the buttons were dead. Desoldered the buttons, soldered in a Sanwa stick harness and wires for the buttons to the PCB. I know folks usually grind down the plastic where the stick goes to get everything to fit. I tried several different ways to get the stick to work without all of the plastic removal, but the non-standard spacing that Hori used for the stock stick just wouldn't let things line up. I did manage to retain one plastic riser for a little bit of strength. The stick is slightly off-center from the hole but still has full range of motion. I did have to bend the connectors on 2 of the buttons to get the bottom cover back on. Focusattack service was great.

I really wanted to get to playing, so the OCD wiring cleanup will need to wait. I also need to clean up the rusty top plate and get some kind of graphic wrapped on there, but it plays like a champ as it sits.

Shinchan said:

View attachment 53982

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Looks great. Thanks for the pictures.

Stereo mod board. Pretty easy to slap together but it would be nice if someone was making a kit with a dedicated PCB. 3.5mm jack for either powered computer speakers or in my case the RGB cable has a 3.5mm plug on the din end and stereo RCA on the monitor/BNC end.