Console Repair @lemmy.world KokusnussRitter @discuss.tchncs.de 7 days ago

[Solved] Repairing a Sega Mega Drive

Hi there, first post here.

I found a Sega Mega Drive in our basement and am working on restoring it. It turns on, but I have no audio or video.

I never used a cartridge-driven console before, so I want to make sure this is not user error. I need to plug in the cartridge before turning on the console, and then there should be a boot screen and eventually the game.

Is it possible for the contacts to be too dirty to allow reading the cartridges?

And then lastly, I had a peek into the maintenance manual I may need to exchange hardware parts. Should I need to; do you know any trustworthy sellers in the EU that could have parts compatible with the Mega Drive? I have been looking for a 53.2034 MHz +/-20ppm oscillater since it could be faulty, but couldn't find any shop that had one with that odd of a MHz frequency.

Any advice is appreciated. :)

Edit: Thank you all for your comments. On further inspection the contacts on the Mega Drive's cartridge-slot were oxidized. A little bit of sand paper did the trick. :)

8 comments

Probably would not hurt to pop it open and look for obvious problems. Capacitors can bulge on top or leak electrolytic fluid on the circuit board.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor?origin=serp_auto

Look for cracks in the motherboard under where the plugs go in on the back, or any parts where somebody might push into.

Also if there's a bunch of crud in there you can clean it out.

Edit: yes you are doing it right. Put the cartridge in, turn it on.
- The capacitors look okay, and I can't see any cracks (yet). The board and part of it's shroud are however hotglued in place 🎉 so it's hard to tell atm. Can hot glue mess with the conductivity of the board? Because there is one nice blob right on the PCB
  
  Hot glue is non conductive so it should not mess anything up. Out of curiosity, what game did you try?
  
  Edit: also if you don't mind what method are you using to connect it to the television?
The Mega Drive has 4 preinstalled mini-games that load when no cartridge is present, so if you don't get a screen at all, you can rule out cartridge contact issues.

Does the device have 3 separate cables to connect to the TV (red, white, yellow connectors), or a SCART connector? AFAIK they released two different options.
- No, the original versions of the Mega Drive had no built-in games. They will display nothing but a black screen if a) there is no cartridge inserted or b) the console can't read the cartridge.
  
  So they won't even display a boot up screen?
- The Master System had Alex Kid installed but the Mega Drive had no games

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