AES Case Shells for Fusion Convertor Sleeve

[SavagePencil]

Hi all,

I was lucky enough to get one of Furrtek's excellent Fusion MVS -> AES convertors a couple of years back. Something that's bugged me about it is that it's finicky to get in straight, and the spring loaded cart slot doors often make it tough to align it correctly.

I'm looking for a solution where I could either adapt an old AES cart shell around the Fusion, or custom print a new one just for it. I'd like some advice and see if anybody has done anything similar. If there's a repro shell around that I could hack up, I'd much prefer that over using a sac cart.

Any thoughts or advice?

 

[GohanX]

This is relevant to my interests.



Unfortunately, I think too few people actually got the converter to begin with, not many people dug into shell options.

 

[wyndcrosser]

Tipton did one way back in the day, he just cut an AES down and used t-modeling at the top. Ugly, but worked.

 

[BIG BEAR]

If anybody needs an aes shell drop me an e-mail for price as I have a few available.They have wear and what not but perfect for that.
BB

 

[SavagePencil]

@Big Bear: Cool, I'll hit you up. I'm not concerned about aesthetics.

@wyndcrosser: Thanks to you, I found Tiptonium's original post here for Wolf's case mod: http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?17487-PHANTOM-1-quot-MOD-quot-REDUX&highlight=shell

The pics are down, but the Wayback Machine has them archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/2014122...ideogames/reviews/neogeo/images/phantom1b.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/2014122...ideogames/reviews/neogeo/images/phantom1c.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/2014122...ideogames/reviews/neogeo/images/phantom1d.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/2014122...ideogames/reviews/neogeo/images/phantom1f.jpg

Thanks!

 

[JoeAwesome]

I thought about this months ago, too. The best ideas I had were to gut an AES case or find a case like for the MagicKey, possibly 3D printed? I'm also interested to see if anyone finds a solution to this.

 

[Gyrian]

3D printing has got to be viable on this one by now.
Should also offer a much better fit and finish all while sparing a poor donor cart. Kind of surprising, there doesn't seem to be an obvious go-to person for 3D design and printing around these parts. Someone like Lions, I imagine, who absolutely needs a 3D printer that matches the ambition of his projects.

 

[lions3]

3D printing has got to be viable on this one by now.
Should also offer a much better fit and finish all while sparing a poor donor cart. Kind of surprising, there doesn't seem to be an obvious go-to person for 3D design and printing around these parts. Someone like Lions, I imagine, who absolutely needs a 3D printer that matches the ambition of his projects.

You cracking on my 3d printers? haha... They're only as good as the person that built them, I'm afraid.

Seriously though, I'm not terribly familiar with the Fusion Convertor. How does it compare to the magic key? I could possibly make a case for it but it would be a little involved. How many people would really need one? Just a couple? Do they still sell the boards?

 

[Kid Panda]

No, they didn't even ship all the ones they were supposed to. The only person I know close to us that have one is gohan.

 

[JoeAwesome]

No, they didn't even ship all the ones they were supposed to. The only person I know close to us that have one is gohan.

Yep. The drama around this converter is here, lions3. I'd bet only a few would need them as only a few received them.

 

[Gyrian]

You cracking on my 3d printers? haha... They're only as good as the person that built them, I'm afraid.

No, I wasn't even sure whether you had one at all! You came to mind because I'm consistently super impressed with the stuff you build, so I could easily picture your being able to go even further with a powerful 3D printing setup.

 

[GohanX]

I don't have much 3d printing experience but the stuff lions makes is waaaay better than shapeways.

 

[SavagePencil]

You cracking on my 3d printers? haha... They're only as good as the person that built them, I'm afraid.

Seriously though, I'm not terribly familiar with the Fusion Convertor. How does it compare to the magic key? I could possibly make a case for it but it would be a little involved. How many people would really need one? Just a couple? Do they still sell the boards?

I'm not 100% familiar with the Magic Key, but it looks to be similar (a half-height or 3/4-height shell that accepts MVS carts at the top and has AES slots at the bottom). I guess I got the luck of the draw if I got one and a lot of other folks didn't, but it doesn't sound like there's a tremendous number of these things out there, which might make investment into printing one a little iffy?

 

[SavagePencil]

dupe post

 

[GohanX]

Yeah, I'd happily let lions borrow mine for testing if he wants to do it, but there's probably only 3 guys who have one who would want to buy it, so it's probably not worth the effort.

 

[JoeAwesome]

Yeah, I'd happily let lions borrow mine for testing if he wants to do it, but there's probably only 3 guys who have one who would want to buy it, so it's probably not worth the effort.

Sadly true. It would be convenient to have it, though. I might ask BB for a shell, if nothing else.

 

[SavagePencil]

Has somebody already 3D printed AES shells and/or have the source files for them? Lions3, is that how you got roped into this convo?

 

[SavagePencil]

Hey I missed one of the most important pics from the original Phantom adaptor shell:

https://web.archive.org/web/2014122...ideogames/reviews/neogeo/images/phantom1a.jpg

So it turns out that AES carts (and the Phantom) have two holes in the PCB down near the contacts. The AES case has pegs that go through these holes, helping to anchor the board securely and to lock the two halves of the shell together. The Fusion does not have these holes, which will means I'll need to find an alternative to keep everything in place. The Fusion does have some bolts that go between the circuit boards to hold them rigid and to act as a spacer between them. I'm wondering if I might extend those through the case to get a better anchoring. First, I'll figure out exactly where I need to cut the cart shell such that an MVS cart will fit.