No i didn't,That does blow a hole in my dastardly plan,i dont think it matters though something clearly has happened to him but i dont think hes a scammer,why scam 1 person and then go into hiding?
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It really doesn't matter if it's one person or a couple of people. Fear can make people act in funny ways. Maybe he didn't intend to scam zetastrike but instead made a blunder when trying to mod zetastrike's console(s). We don't know why the modder failed to maintain contact.
If the modder is a good soul and something unfortunate has happened to him (car accident, hospitalization, etc), he always has the option of continuing with the pertinent work at the most opportune time. But from my vantage point, it was important for zetastrike to take appropriate action NOW to either (1) get his money back and or (2) have the person return his consoles.
Update:
I just got a PM from my modder. He's been going through an ordeal lately and that's why I stopped hearing from him. The good news is he's shipping my Genesis and Sega CD back to me, unmodded but back in my possession.
Let it be known that he was not a scammer. He had the best intentions, things just didn't work out.
Similar thing happened to me from the sellers perspective, this was years ago though. I sold someone a game on eBay, for something like less than $5. They waited over a week after the auction ended before paying me, and when they finally did pay it was the day before I had a flight booked to go away visit family. I went to the post office the next morning near my house, closed, didn't open until later that day (I didn't have a printer to buy and print postage online). Got to the airport, no post office there. So the game came with me, I felt really bad about the whole thing and emailed the guy explaining the situation and that there would be a 2 week delay before shipping the item, because he took so long to pay. He proceeded to leave horrible scathing feedback on my profile, suggesting I didn't care and suggested I went on a vacation leaving my responsibilities behind. Real life can easily get in the way of online business sometimes, and I'm sure the modder appreciates your sympathy.
Good stuff. I'm glad that the person finally contacted you. The final hurdle will be to recieve the consoles. You may want to go the extra mile and request tracking. As Barone mentioned, please provide us with an update when you've got your items back.
It's good to see that you're getting your consoles back and I had a hunch that things would turn out okay for you; he didn't look remotely like a scammer.
Sucks to know that he's going thru some bad stuff right know, but I hope that he'll be able to overcome his problems and soon be able to continue to do the stuff that he loves.
Yeah, I always feel bad when a person is going through tough crap. But it's a business being run, it's not some buddy that you're doing work for, so there's some due diligence required on their side. Even if it's just a quick message of, "Hey, lots going on here it's going to be awhile before this mod can get done... do you want to wait, or do you want me to ship it back?"/
That is good to hear, all's well that ends well.
I've been talking to him for the past few days and I have to say once he gets all this stuff straightened out, I think he can be a huge asset to the community. He really knows a ton of stuff and has good taste too.
Update:
I got my consoles back. They're both better than when I sent them to him. For the Genesis, he replaced the old top shell with a new, nicer looking one. He also widened the cart slot and installed a purple LED like I originally asked him to. He also re-flowed some bad solder joints and gave the whole board the deoxit treatment. For the Sega CD, he took out the old, failing battery and installed a new battery holder and made it so it takes a replaceable CR2016 and he re-flowed some cracked solder joints, cleaned the laser lens, and deoxited the whole thing.
The only problem is the Sega CD is still struggling to see discs. This has been a problem for a long time, way before I ever sent it to him. Other than that, I'm happy that he went through all the trouble to make it as right as he could. He also refunded me all the money I paid him.
So the modder turned out to be a stand up kind of guy. Glad everything turned out ok for you in the end. :)
That's weird, did he disable the charging circuit for the Sega CD battery? You can use a regular coin cell but the SegaCD uses a rechargeable battery, and from my understanding without disabling the charging circuit it is possible to make the battery explode by pushing more current into a battery that isn't designed for it.
He said the original battery had lost a lot of voltage and would eventually start leaking. He sent me a picture of his voltmeter reading between 1.31V, which is less than the 3V that it's supposed to be at. He says he installed a battery holder and connected it to work with non-rechargables. Here's what he said
Quote:
I am installing a battery holder so you will be able to replace the battery with ease. I purchased a coin cell battery CR2032 non rechargable however i further investigated the sega cd save ram circuit and it is setup to recharge, I think i may just put in the socket so you can put one in later with ease, but I think i may be able to get the non rechargable to work as well because the sram power chip datasheet mentions that it only charges battery number 2 which is hooked up and battery number 1 which isn't hooked up does not charge. i'm gonna try it really fast if it works i can use battery number 1 and it can use non rechargables