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I’m pretty sure this is a recent change as I wasn’t seeing it before, but I’m now being alerted when somebody messages the store after they made an order. A speech bubble icon appears next to the order in the fulfillment list.

This is very convenient because the amount of emails we get can make sorting things like this quite difficult especially if there is an email backlog. So when we are building the cables, it’s now possible to click these icons and see if an adjustment was requested immediately.

Because of conveniences like this making this work a lot easier to handle, it’s unlikely I am going back to eBay. People changing their order after the fact is actually quite common and now, much easier to sort out.

This uses a 100% 3D printed plug which can be populated with pins - we've tried it and tested continuity via a socket, it works.

So why make the entire plug?

The disc drive connectors are too shallow to be mounted in a hood. We just took a model for one, made it longer and with notches to fit in a hood, then copied the connector hood off a Sony RGB converter designed for these TVs. So even though we don't have the tv, this should work fine as it's the exact same dimensions and I've made a few of them in the past for people using the plugs taken off those converters.

We bought the pins for populating edge connectors, and only the pins that are used for RGB, audio etc need to be populated.

So I printed the plug part in blue, but it can be printed in black, obviously. This just makes it easier to see.

I'll be putting these up for sale for $40. 

So why unscrewable plugs?

1. Some people like to tinker and want the ability to potentially modify the cable.

2. Some people want future proofing built in. Your cable gets damaged - no problem, it's easily repairable.

3. People want to be easily reassured that attenuating resistors are present (they are, unless you specify you do not want them.)

4. *We* want to be able to fix plugs easily. I'm not infallible. I probably discover an issue during testing something once a week or so, it sounds easily fixable but when you're cramming every order into limited time, the post office's about to close and you've just discovered a fault it's...not fun.

5. These big plugs make producing BNC cabling much, much easier. All capacitors can now be crammed into a console end plug. 

6. People kept flinging mud at me for using glue. It's necessary to glue those clamshell cases together.... Until you don't have to because you quit using them.

- Why a 3D printed plug?

1. Well, we got sick of our suppliers increasingly bad quality control. The pins get thinner year on year as they try to save metal so - throw it out and do it over. We are COMPLETELY replacing SNES plugs with high resolution printed parts *soon*. We'll be using gold plated ROHS standard pins in our SNES connectors, and the plugs are as fat as official SNES versions. Lots of room for electronics in these plugs. We are not increasing the prices, either.

2. We want more room in the plug. The imported ones are tiny, presumably to save plastic. So at the least we are going as big as official plugs. We want to fit electronics in the console end plug and we want to do it now, not next year. We will be adding custom circuit boards down the line.

3. We want INSTANT production when we get a new idea and we don't want to have to throw away bulk product or have to use it up when we decide to change something.

- Worried about the quality of the 3D printed plug?

I don't want to brag about this 3D printer so I'm not going to. "Look what I just bought" is not a pastime I engage in. I'm almost ashamed of how much it cost. Almost. But it is a workhorse dual extrusion (can print two parts at the same time) printer aimed at small businesses for low volume production. It is capable of very high resolutions. 

- What's a workhorse 3D printer?

It's a production level 3D printer capable of highest speeds in the "consumer" category but it's actually more geared towards small businesses who can't afford one of those $40K+ 3D printers employed in actual factories. It is deemed a workhorse because it can be left running 24/7 with minimal servicing required down the line.

- What is the 3D printer?

It's not a Monoprice 3D Mini or whatever the heck those are called, those $300 ones that I don't have time to tinker with or service.

I'm still ashamed of how much it cost and if I say so, somebody out there in the wonderful world of the internet that terrifies the living crap out of me is going to say something like "look at the fun stuff she's buying with YOUR cable money."

It's not a toy, though. And it has printed nothing but plugs since it arrived. That and the silly keyring thingy that was in its sample library.

- Are you going to reduce the price of BNC cables?

I'm working on this. Those BNC plugs with the hood on them that fits the capacitor inside it are not cheap. I'm not going to solder a premade cable on though, because I like to have control over the cabling we use and I don't want to buy a massive batch only to find the quality tanked (and this does happen, I throw away parts more often than I'd like to admit.) So I'm working on getting much cheaper (But still high grade) connectors without the hood, making the hood and making it all easier to put together.

This is for a dual PS1/PS2 BNC Extron cable. It's big enough to fit those HUGE 1000uf capacitors.

Otherwise, we recommend purchasing one of each cable for PS1/PS2. One will contain 220uf capacitors, one will contain no capacitors.

We can customize these as required.

Playstation cables are currently out of stock as we are overhauling them. We expect them to be available over the weekend.

 

This is an unscrewable SNES plug - these are designed to fit a sync stripper (for pal GameCube and others if required). We also had the idea to try a 90 degree angled version, as shown. Both versions will be available. The 90 degree angled one will fit in a base SNES, SNES mini and Famicom Jr/Av NES. An N64 version of the 90 degree angled plug will have to be specialized, this basic one won't fit, the plug will have to be elongated.

We are now working on the adaptor port for SCART to 34 pin RGB Sony CRTs.

We're modifying all console plugs over time to be user accessible and in the case of this PlayStation plug - big enough to fit components inside.

This was needed to accommodate capacitors in PlayStation jp21 cables (1000uf don't really fit in the jp-21 plug config) and sync strippers (needed for BNC.)

PlayStation parts are available now in large format and will be supplied to customers ordering csync versions - and a csync BNC cable will be up on the site very soon.

We've been encountering dozens of issues with eBay over the past two years.

(Yes, our eBay store is retro_console_accessories.)

It isn't related to returns, we don't get many and we'll honor them on this store too (using PayPal gives you even better return protection than eBay - 6 months vs. 2 months, if you are worried.)

It isn't related to being worried about getting bad reviews - we don't get many poor feedbacks, and the Amazon style customer reviews on eBay product pages are optional - we left ours opted in. We could opt out at any point, so it isn't that.

It's related to the store being too popular for its own good, to the point it isn't compatible with eBay. 

Out of stock items are not displayed to customers in ebay stores. This results in hundreds of emails asking for links from people who want to watch a listing til it is in stock. Most buyers are aware that the stock is added every day at 7am est - it's in our FAQ. One thing we can't do is add links to every single item in the FAQ so we spend at least an hour a day mailing links to people. This issue was the main reason why we had our eBay products at a very high price a few months ago, with a "best offer" option so people could reserve an ostensibly out of stock item and we could accept it when it was restocked next day. We did it so people could see the listings, reserve a cable and so we could cut out the considerable email workload and spend more time working on cables. 

Which worked to an extent. The problem with that is it caused controversy with some people thinking we were trying to sell cables at $1000.

This was the point when I began working on this website.

We are still fighting the email overload from eBay. It is intense and the lack of cables confuses some people, others "get it" but still need a link, others want to reserve a cable we sell in a normal listing via "customer request" and this results in more email going back and forth.

It's not a good situation for customers. It's not a good situation for us, and it results in less cables being made to supply a growing community because we have to reserve a lot of our time every day for eBay messages. We keep falling behind on eBay messages because we get so many.

This site is great because it lets people see, and watch an out of stock listing. It lets us constantly update the handling time via the big banner at the top if we get too much workload. We even left this store on during hurricane Irma because of how easy it was to put the big alert up there and inform our customers. eBay don't even show product descriptions to mobile customers now so the information is hard to get out - hence during any situation that results in delays shipping out, we'll turn eBay off and leave this store on.

We *hate* eBay because of how non flexible they are (we'd love to display out of stock listings but the option isn't there) and we are trying to move away from it.

We would be extremely grateful to those who can spread the word. Please, if you link to my products anywhere, *don't use the eBay link* - use the link from this store.

We have a secret affiliate program if you are interested. It's secret to try to avoid issues, we don't want to have a hundred affiliates actually competing against each other for link revenue and for people to get upset when they do extra work for no pay because another affiliate's link was chosen. If you understand this, please email me. 

This was brought to my attention by a customer so we bought one to check.

The cheap SCART to SCARTs on Amazon are not shielded coax, but paired cables.

Paired cable is somewhat better than non coax, but not by much. 

The difference relates to the fact that the paired cable has an isolated ground wire (coated in transparent vinyl) running alongside each signal line whereas true shielded coax will have some kind of shield all around the signal line (in cheap VGAs for example, foil shield is used, in our coax cables there is copper wire wrapped around every core.) 

The upshot of this is a cable that looks identical on the outside, and even very similar on the inside. It is however, much easier to solder paired cable because you do not have to strip, pull away the shield and isolate it in heatshrink. So you can produce what looks like high quality cabling with much lower production times, and the production times will actually be the reason for the low prices. That and it's probably new old stock that a European company realized they could get rid of in the USA.

We will never use paired cable in place of shielded coax. I thought this needed an update because the price per foot of Amazon scarts actually drops lower than our coax cabling supplier - but no, we are not going to use it in our cabling. It may well be slightly better than non coax but it's not even viable as an option there as it's way too thick. 

We evacuated on Friday, and we ended up here. It was going to be a stop off point because it was in an evacuation zone, but since the evacuation has been rescinded, we decided to stay. We were going to travel to Atlanta but that would result in having to stay away an extra 2 days potentially. We don't want to subject customers to extra delays especially as it looks like West Palm Beach won't be as affected as previously thought. We don't know how badly the power and Internet services will be affected, but we will do our best to not delay dispatches as much as possible,

Some of you have had your orders mailed out from here. Others have been delayed, we could not take everything, and we apologize for this. We delayed a couple of larger orders as it will be more difficult for us to replace those if anything goes missing.