JAMMA SEGA MEGADRIVE 2 : PART TWO

Howdy pardnurs,

Well now that the Jamma fingerboard is securely attached to the Megadrive 2's PCB and it fits into the case with its new expansion port we'll move onto the wiring. Through the whole process I will keep dibbing away at finishing up the expansion port as I'm using milliput and it takes over night to cure really. So I add little bits here and there and allow them to cure without the chance of me poking them...cus I'll be asleep :-P

To start with I found a few guides on how to make Sega Megadrives into Jamma-drives and all had a similar starting process:
1) Tap the RGB, sync and ground from either the RGB encoder chip or the additional solder pads on the A/V connector under the PCB.
2) Tap the audio from the solder pad under the A/V connector.
3) Plug the Megadrive into the arcade machine / or Supergun's jamma harness with the normal Megadrive PSU and check that video and audio are working okay.

This allows you to problem solve any issues as you haven't made that many connections so far.

Seem's easy enough right. A few wires and your away. Well, thats kind of right.

I decided to solder directly to the RGB encoder chip as some people said that this may provide a stronger RGB signal. I googled the chip in my V01 megadrive 2 and found the pin-out and started trimming and tinning wires and soldering the sucker up.

Well what do you know?! I get picture!! But, the image seems to move, kind of clicks from one point to another and back again. Like its switching between either PAL / NTSC or aspect ratio. Also the biggest problem, there is horizontal bluring through the colours. Really distracting and causing weird colour clashes. Bugger!

The wiring is so simple where could the problem be?! I assumed that my soldering wasn't neat enough and i'd either bridged two of the suface mount points of the chip so I checked them out and they seemed fine. Hmmm. I unsoldered the wires and then looked up the A/V pinout for the port and wired to the solder pads underneath it. Maybe you can't wire to the chip?

I go upstairs and test and darn it! The same problem! This is frustrating!

I got a few more pinouts and did some google searches and couldn't find anything on the problem. Then it occured to me that its essentially the same as doing an RGB cable so maybe I need to add the 75ohm resistors and the 220uf capacitors?

I made up a little Vero board with the resistors and capacitors and wired it up to check. Same problem only this time its a little darker now as the resistors are lowering some of the signal strength. Stupid horizontal RGB blur!! Its a little harder to see in the Zombies photo but that mottling on the circles is caused by the blur and shouldn't be there.

Thinking that maybe the RGB encoder chip might be at fault I decided to make up an RGB Cable for the Megadrive 2. I'd been planning on doing one anyway and had the parts so I got soldering. Using the great guide from mmmonkey.co.uk.

Another test but with the Megadrive 2 hooked up as normal (no jamma) and the new RGB cable and BING, picture is perfect. Nice and sharp with bright colours. Awesome for the cable as that will be used on my other Megadrive 2 and Neptune but bugger because it shows that something is still up with the Jamma wiring.

Looking over the wiring guide for the RGB cable I noticed that its got Composite Video hooked up via the scart but no Sync. Comparing that with the Supergun wiring guide I noticed that the sync pin on the jamma board is hooked up via the Composite Video pin on the Superguns Scart port. Could it be that?!

I found the composite video solder pad on the A/V port area of the Megadrive 2 and moved my sync wire over to there. A quick test and WOOP! The video is perfect!! No horizontal blurring and everything looking like its using the RGB scart cable!

I know, it seems like such a simple and stupid problem to have with the A/V but when everyone says follow the Encoder pin-out and hook up the RGB Sync and Video ground as is rather than using Composite Video out for sync then your going to run into problems. This took me a week and a half of headscratching and fruitless searching to figure out haha. Yes Im that tentative with hooking wires up incase I blow something.

Now that the Video is sorted I hooked up the Mono Audio out from the A/V port area to the Jamma finger board and hooked the Audio ground up to the Jamma fingerboards ground. Thankfully this worked straight away and is super loud through my arcade speaker, so loud i might have to put a volume switch on haha.

Here you can see my testing setup with Zombies (ate my neighbours) running on the Jamma-drive 2 with the audio hooked up. Thank goodness that stage one is figured out!

The next step is to hook up two switches, one for the 50/60mhz PAL/NTSC mod and the other for the English / Japanese language mod. I followed the guide from mmmonkey.co.uk again as I've used this mod on my other Megadrive 2 and it worked a treat!

My aim for doing this project was to try and keep my wiring as neat as I could. This is a problem though when your trouble shooting and having to hack up wires for testing. Its still fairly neat and easy to follow though.

Here you can see the points I soldered the wires too for the language and PAL/NTSC mods.

Pretty neat wire routing for me I think :-) and with this mod the hot glue is definetly needed as the points your soldering too are very small and you don't get much solder on there and its very easy to pull and break traces if the wires get snagged or pulled.

And here is my wiring up for the A/V parts of this project. I used some ribbon cable from an old DVD player to try and keep them more neat but the problem solving caused me to seperate the wires out doh. Still, its not too un-tidy I don't think.

Here is the view of the top of the Jamma fingerboard with the Red, Blue, Video ground and Mono Audio wired up. Actually looking again it looks pretty neat still. Once I've completed it the wires will be hot glued into place on the PCB and hopefully routed away from the voltage regulators heatsink as I think that might start to melt the wire casings if used for a long time.

And here you can see the underside of the Jamma-drive 2 with the wiring going to the solder points of the A/V port. Still not too messy and once I'm properly happy they will be hot glued into place to make sure they don't come pulled or anything. :-)

The orange wires are the power lines to the underside of the voltage regulator which are supplying the Megadrive 2 with +5v from the Supergun's arcade power supply so I no longer need to hook it up using the Sega power supply. The Jamma-drive 2 is now A/V and PSU cable free! :-D

Next up is hooking up the first joypad so that I can use my arcade sticks via the Supergun rather than a pad out of the front of the Megadrive.

Catch you later

Porl''

JAMMA MEGADRIVE 2 - PART 1

Hi Everyone,

Yep that title is correct! A megadrive 2 that runs in an arcade via JAMMA connection! :-D

I've been eluding to it in the last few posts and seen's I've made a breakthrough with my A/V problem this morning I thought I'd post up the 1st part of my build of this unit.

Its nothing new really building a Jamma compatible megadrive, I'm certainly not the first to do it by any means but I've found a few little things out while building it that weren't really documented when I'd been doing research on them before I started soldering. Also I'm trying to do this Jamma drive a little differently to the others I've seen on the internet. The main difference being that it will be very nearly totally stealthy!! Most jammadrives I've seen have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out of the side of the casing which doesn't look too bad, but to me it won't look just right on the shelf with all the other consoles. So I've decided to make it hidden via a second expansion slot on the megadrives casing. Also I will be over-clocking it and doing the 50/60mhz and language mod's as well as having it power the Sega CD 2 all from the Supergun's power supply. So there won't be a big ol mess of cables everywhere.

Well thats the plan so lets start the progress photos and a bit of rambling. :-)

The first thing I did was scour the internet and read as many forum posts, watch youtube videos and read web-pages about creating the Jamma drive. Trying to get as much research in as possible so that it will run as smoothly as possible. There isn't that much info on doing the mod to a megadrive2 as there is for the megadrive 1, but it shouldn't be too hard to do. . . Also I re-printed the schematics I used for making my Supergun so I had the correct Jamma connections I used.

The next thing was ordering the Jamma fingerboard from ebay. I initially wanted to get the jamma-boards.com blue fingerboard a lot of the american's use but it was a bit hard to find so I opted for a very generic looking plain fingerboard from the UK. Nice and cheap and as long as you check against a schematic you should be fine.

While the fingerboard was on order I decided to start modifying my case so that I will get the stealthy look by hacking it up and trying to add in a new expansion port. As I have some spare megadrive2's around and I had a spare case from a megadrive2 I'd scoured for parts I decided that would be sacrificed for the cause.

I got my dremel out and amputated the right-hand sega-cd expansion port from it. Then I turned to the Jammadrive's case and dremelled out the space for the expansion port to go.

Here you can see the normal expansion port on the right and the new one that will be fitted on the left. I've had to cut the slot a fair bit wider for the Jamma connecter to fit inside the casing so it will reach the fingerboard. I will have to milliput some extra sides onto the port cover to make it all fit nicely together.

With a bit of electrical tape holding it together I tested out that the Jamma connector would fit into the case. With that double checked I set about milliputting and hot glueing the new port into the case.

Here you can see the port now milliputted with some hot glue 'tacking' sitting in the jammadrive2 case. Its nice and rigid and should handle the pressure you have to exert on the case to open the darn thing. Next is to extend the cover to make it meet the edges of the case so it looks all OG. ( sitting in the case in the left image is a Neptune button being re-milliputted, yep it's still going on haha)

While I'd been working on the casing the fingerboard turned up from ebay so I set about lining it up with the new expansion port and hot gluing and milliputting it into place so that it should stand up to the connecter being put on it. You don't want it pulling away from the motherboard when your trying to connect up the Supergun to it!! haha.

Here you can see I tried to place it inward enough so that the motherboard will take some of the load of the connector but not interfer with areas I will need to solder too. Once the milliput cured it really was stuck on there like rock! Brilliant!

And here's how the Jammadrive sits in its case. Pretty nicely I think!! :-D The fingerboard fits nicely in the gap down the left-hand side and seems to balance the megadrive out a bit now. Also I've extended the sides of the port cover so there are no gaps down the side now. There is some finishing up to do to the case but as I'm an eager beaver I will jump onto the soldering to make sure it is starting to work.

Next part : " The woe's of using multiple guides and information from the interwebs to do simple wiring. " haha

Porl''

GETTING USE OUT OF THE OL' PSP

Hi All,

This post goes a little bit off the retro console track but more along the emulation route this time. A short-time ago I was looking eagerly at the new Neo-Geo X portable console thats coming out this christmas. It looks like quite a nice little handheld and I like the look of the AES style base and fullsize joystick. Unfortunetly the plastic doesn't look as good quality as used in the original AES. And I would ultimately love to have an AES over everything else still..haha....im still a geeky 12 year old in my head .

Anyway what the Neo-Geo X made me do was dig out my old PSP again. Mainly because I read that essentially the NG:X is emulating the games, so I thought why bother when I already have one of the nicest looking portables (in my opinion, it still looks stunning) that used to be able to play emulators.

I originally imported my PSP from japan so that I got the version that could be easily hackable to play 'homebrew' and emulators. And after playing through Vampire Saviour a load of times I got the eboots of the interwebs and got a load of emulators on it. Man that was brilliant! Having PC Engine, Neo Geo and Mega drive games on the go with a crispy glossy screen was great!

Unfortunetly for me I got Metal Gear solid for the PSP and you needed to update the firmware to play it. At that time, every firmware that came out they generally hacked it to bits within the first week so I though "what the hell!! I'll update and play this and in a week I'll have the emulators back! woop"......wrong!!! That was the firmware that caused a real problem and the soft-hacks no longer worked and they eventually found out you needed to use a Pandora battery to get the custom firmwares installed. I wasn't going to buy a new battery for my PSP so I had to stick to buying proper games and then It basically started gathering dust on the shelf.

Fast forward to a month ago and a curious google search. WHAT?! you can eboot the PSP again and play your emulators again on it!?!?! oh yes!! :-D

What I found was someone has made an eboot hack the same as the old way to do it called HEN or Half-Byte Loader. You basically upgrade your firmware to a more up to date version and then you get Half-Byte Loader from wololo.net

http://wololo.net/hbl/

You pop that into your PSP folder and your away!!! Occassionaly it doesn't load or crashes but if you get the trick to loading it your fine.

I couldn't be happier again!!! I've got Cave Story PSP and finally working my way through the game as I got stuck on the PC version a few years ago. Its an awesome game and works perfectly on the portable.

I finally got an Amiga emulator to work as well which has always flumaxed me in the past so I can play the games I used to own when I was at school. Complete nostalgia kick and has got me chatting some old school friends about the sundays where we used to have full on game days! :-D

And thankfully SCUMM still works so I can pick away at finally getting through Beneath a Steel Sky and The Dig.

So yeah, if you have a PSP that's gathering dust on your shelf, which to be honest is a real shame for such a good looking and playable console get the HBL on it and get some retro goodness on the go!!

Catch you later for hopefully a post on making a Jamma-Megadrive 2 which I'm in the process of doing. But I'm getting some issues with the RGB out at the minute which is causing some head scratching.

Catch you soon

Porl''

SOME NEW PROJECTS - SEGA, NINTENDO, NEC

Hi all,

While waiting on getting hold of a resonably priced 32x for the Neptune ( Im not after a collectors condition but thats all that seem to be around at the minute...doh) I've got started on a few consoles all at the same time.

I've have one spare Megadrive 2 left thats not been tinkered with. I have one put a-side for the Neptune so that is all safe. This spare that is gathering dust is now going to be modified up to a Jamma-drive! That's right, a megadrive that can be hooked up to an arcade cabinet so that you can play the great arcade conversions on the 'big screen'. Alas I don't own a cabinet, just a Supergun so its a little redundant for me but the making of one seems like a fun little project to me.

I'm planning on making the Jamma-drive 2 a bit more stealth looking than the normal Jamma-drives though. These generally have the Jamma fingerboard sticking out the side of the case or hang out of the CD-rom drive area and look good for putting inside an arcade cab'. But for me I want it to still look good on the shelf and look stock but have hidden uses. mwuhahaha. Also its going to have the 50/60mhz mod, the Language mod and the Overclock done to it.

Im also going to keep it so you can use the normal pads and PSU for playing it as a normal Megadrive on the TV but if you want to chuck it in the cabinet you open the new Jamma edge cover and hook the harness up to it. :D

So I've hacked the case up (as well as a spare case for its expansion cover) and I've started to join the new expansion cover to the left side of case. Thats right, this megadrive is going to have 2 expansion ports!!

I now have the expansion cover and clasp all milliputted into the case so it's getting there. I'll be doing a write up on it once the project is all finished. I have the Jamma fingerboards now so soldering is about to begin this week. Woop!

While I have the milliput out I have taken my old SNES off the shelf and decided to restore it back to its former grey glory. Rather than the nicotene yellow that is now become. I have looked up the retr0brite recipes but with the weather as it is there isn't really enough sunlight for me to get a nice clean to it I don't think and I don't want to have a UV bulb on for 2 days solid.

So i'm going to be mixing a paint to match the original case covers and paint it. While I do that Im fixing a crack along the side from the plastic getting old and also doing the lock-out and 50/60Hz mods.

Going to be ace to play my Japanese version of Turtle in Time!!!!

And the last project I've got is a console I've wanted for the longest time! A NEC PC Engine!!! Oh yes!! I did some scouring of ebay last week and found a Japanese white PC Engine going cheap as it was listed as faulty. So I snapped it up to see if I can repair it and finally have the little console that could.

Im hoping that its fully working and the only problem is that its outputting video in japanese RF so the person testing it couldn't get it to tune in. For a start Im going to be doing the RGB port mod to it so that it runs off scart and will look super nice and sharp. I have Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition on its way so that I can test it all as there isn't a power light or anything on the unit to see if its working.

It looks pretty big in that photo but the base size of it is the same as a CD case. Its tiny!!

I'm really excited about all 3 of my projects! Going to be great to get some of these consoles up and running.

Update again soon

Porl''

MOVEMBER i.e. the realisation of how itchy a moustache can be!!

Hi all,

So this year I've become a member of the Mo-bro's and joined in with Movember. There is quite a large team of us at my work all growing the furry lip warmers. It's quite funny seeing all the people I've known for years essentially being in disguise! haha

I've in the past tried to grow a beard, or at least see how far I could get but I've never gotten further than  2 weeks as it gets so itchy that I nearly skin myself getting the bugger off haha. So when it was suggested we all grow moustaches I thought that it would be easy and non-itchy. HOW WRONG I COULD BE!!

3 weeks in, saturday afternoon to monday. Top lip is itching so much that it has been hardwork not to shave the sucker off! Its amazed me how people grow them for their 'look' but a few people I've spoken too said they never itched at all, so it must just be down to my geeky skin type.

And today, thankfully.....the itching has subsided and its all good again. The magnum p.i. / mariachi band member moustache has stopped becoming an itch feast! Woop! :-D

I'm not sure if anybody will but if you do have a spare quid lying about and you feel generous then please feel free to click on my Mo-space link and chuck the quid my way, bump me up the team listings a little.

http://mobro.co/porlzilla

Cheers yo

Porl''

The progress so far :

FINISHING UP SOME PROJECTS - SEGA

Hi all,

After having a really relaxing weeks holiday in Barmouth, Wales with my girlfriend and our new pup, Hugo. He's only 15 weeks old and was his first trip to the beach. Absolutely loved it!

Well now we're home its time to get finishing up some of my projects that have been lieing around in their 99% completed stages. The first quick finishing projects to do were my Overclocked Megadrive 1 and Megadrive 2. They were awaiting some new SPST switches to be fixed into the casing so they can be all screwed together and popped on my shelf.

I started about the overclocked Sega Megadrive 2. I needed to change the switches I'd put on it to test it all out with my new switches from Rapid Online. I couldn't get hold of any SPST (Single Pole single throw) switches so got hold of 10x Double Pole Double Throw switches as they can be used for a little more in the case of modding.

First things first was extending the language and 50/60mhz mod wires to give them some slack and allow the case to be fully opened. And again I needed to add 2cm into the overclock wires so the switch can be mounted in the case.

a tip : when hot glueing switches into cases make sure you don't get any on your fingertips! I got a small blob on the end of my right index finger and it latched on there and really burned me. Got a nice painful blister right on the end of my finger now haha.

A added some more hot glue to hold the mod wires into place to limit the amount of pull damaged that can happen sometimes if the wires get accidentally tugged.

To mount the 2 colour LED in place you will need to cut down the light block that inside the case. I used a grinding wheel on my rotary tool to get the right shape so that the LED would fit under the clear plastic and the case would close.

I added in the same DPDT switches into the Megadrive 1 and finished that up too.

Next will be either finishing up the latest smoothing on the Neptune case (I'm trying to get hold of a 32x at the minute), starting to make a Jamma Drive from a spare Megadrive or carrying on with my second Supergun.

If I can find the right DIN plug I will make an RGB scart cable to HD the Model 2's video signal :-P

I've also been wanting to change my logo on the website so created a new one and uploaded it. The landscape logo fits the page a lot nicer so I'm happy about that.

Hope to update with some more project work soon.

Porl''

CPS-2 All-In-One Black : Marvel VS Capcom

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd make a little post about a new arcade game pickup I have. Its something that you don't see all that often when you search for Capcom CPS-2 games. Normally the CPS-2 setup is an A-Board mated with a B-Board which is the game. This version of the CPS-2 is different because you don't need an A or B board, its all on the one PCB in a nicely shaped metal case.

When the game turned up in the post I was very surprised at how small it was compared to a normal CPS-2 board. I was expecting it to be of similar size to the A+B setup but the whole Black board is shorter in length than the standard CPS-2 and also thinner height-wise than a single CPS-2 B-board.

As you can see in the photo its got some nice curving to is on the edges. When you think of metal casing, or when I do I think of just a box. But this has some nice shaping to it. The problem with it being painted metal the wear and tear to it shows up and there isn't really a nice way to clean it up. Other than sanding it back and repainting it. I won't be doing that though :-P

Also, you can see from the photo that it has the standard CPS-2 connections to it. Jamma edge, Kick-harness connector and the 2 QSound ports. The volume and setup buttons are different though. The hole you see in the top of the casing lets you twiddle a PCB mounted potentiometer which controls your volume rather than the 2 UP and Down buttons on the side of an A-Board. And the Setup button is a PCB mounted mini button set a little bit back from the Jamma edge rather than the button thats on the side of A-Boards.
 

The 2 photos above show the size difference between the standard CPS-2 setup and the Black All-In-One boards. Also you can see the venting that is in the back of the Black board. As there is no fan in the All-In-One boards it has venting at the back, the volume hole on the top and the Jamma edge connector area are all used to let heat out. And I assume that the metal casing will work as a bit of a heat sink as well.

These boards also differ from the normal CPS-2 setup in its Suicide battery replacement. With the normal CPS-2 B-board you can just switch out the battery with the game board all opened up and just on your work bench away from your Cabinet or Supergun. The Black All-In-One's need to have power to them while you change the battery otherwise they will suicide on the spot apparently. So you need to have the game connected and running (I guess so you can see that its still working when you disconnect the battery) the whole time, being extra careful that you don't short anything as you do it. A rather scary process I would think. Thankfully this game has had its battery changed last year so it has a good bit of time left on it.

Also I've had to have my Vampire Hunter CPS2 board phoenixed recently and the guy who did it for me said that he could more than likely bring the black board back to life too if I mess it up. And he's local! Brilliant! :-P

As well as the board itself being a little bit of an oddity in the CPS2 world as the plastic A+B setups are more readily available the game itself is brilliant!

It has one heck of a character roster! A good selection of the greatest Capcom characters VS most of your favourites from the Marvel world! With the great art style of Children of the Atom and the other VS's series. The Sprites are massive and so well drawn. Its really a work of art!

Here are some images to show the first stage of the final boss, Onslaught. If you thought that The Hulk, Zangief and Venom were massive then check him out!!!!

The first few photos are from me testing out the game on a CRT TV hence the slight doming to the photos. The final three photos showing Onslaught are from my little Flatpanel LCD TV I use my Supergun on.

I can't really think of anything else to write about the game. I'll try to get a little video tour of it recorded and put on my Youtube channel and linked here.

Catch you later

Porl''

HOW TO OVERCLOCK SEGA MEGA DRIVE 2 / GENESIS 2

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd make a post on something that had been playing on my mind for a couple of months. And the thing that had me thinking and questioning was "why does no-body overclock the model 2??". Sure I've seen the Screen Savers video on youtube where they describe how to do it by pinching the clock speeds from the cartridge slot. But I was never convinced with this way of doing it and the guy in the video doesn't get it to work that way. And the way they show the overclock is on his model 1, which is what you find all the overclock info on. Overclocking the model 1.

Well, the way described in the video involves using quite long wires to do the overclock which from my understanding would cause problems because of the length of them. In the model 1 overclock video I've followed Damomonster explains that wires longer than 3 inches will cause problems with the overclock.

Last week I managed to find a very rare video on youtube of someone claiming to have overclocked their Genesis 2, and the way they did it was the same way I'd overclocked the model 1. Using a 10mhz crystal on some vero board mounted on top of the processor. But since then they have taken the video down, so now there are none. Except mine now I think :-P

I've been thinking that if you know which pin to lift on the model 2 processor then in theory you can do the overclock the same way as the model 1. You'd just have to know where to tap your +5v from and where a nice close point would be to get Ground.

Well its pin 15 that you want to lift on the processor, just like on the model 1. The processor is the same as the model 1 but in a smaller form factor. Now we know which leg to use we can begin ;-P

Right, I think I'll write this point for point.

THE GUIDE :

(1) -- first thing to do is to make the 10mhz overclock 'package' described in Damomonster's great step-by-step guide :



A thing to remember is keep your wires nice and long to begin with so you can trim them down to size when you come to mount it and hook it up to the processor.

(2) -- now you've got the 'overclock package' made and insulated up with electrical tape and some nice long trim-able wires we can go to the Mega Drive 2 (Genesis 2). Open the sucker up by removing the 4 screws underneath, then remove the inner metal shielding. For me I find it easier to take the whole motherboard out of the case so you can rotate and investigate it easier.

(3) -- Now the board is out of the case you need to find the processor, which is the square chip in the back right hand side of the board behind the cartridge slot.

The next step is to find Pin 15. I've marked this on the photo in pencil. Sega have been nice to us and have numbered the pins on each corner of the chip. You can see Pin 10 on the bottom left of the chip, so we count across to the right and find Pin 15.

(4) -- The next step is to get the soldering iron out and get it warmed up. I don't know how much heat the legs can take on the processor as they are very small and fiddly to get to so I would recommend a lowish wattage soldering iron with a thin tip on it just in case. I used a 15w Antex for doing this with a small wedge shaped tip. A pencil shaped tip would be even better I think.

(5) -- Now the soldering iron is warmed up and we have Pin 15's location we need to warm the pin. I did this by pressing onto the side of the chip and the soldering pad area and got a thin Pick tool behind the leg. You need to be very careful here as the legs are deceiving! They aren't sticking out from the chip, thats the soldering pad that gives it that look. The leg is actually wrapped back and under the chip to raise it from the PCB. To give some ventilation I assume.

While heating the leg gently wiggle and bend it outwards. Remember, take your time so you don't pull the solder pad up at the same time!

You should end up with the chip looking like this :

You can see Pin 15 now lifted free from the board and the solder pad is still underneath.

(6) -- Well done!! That's the scariest part done! The next steps are delicate still but that was the hardest bit.

Now we need to cut 2 wires, strip the ends and tin them. The wires want to be just long enough to reach the back of the case.

This is the most direct and shortest route for the wires to go. We need to keep the wires as short as possible but still able to reach our Double Pole / Double Throw switch so that we can still switch between the stock speed of 7.6mhz and 10mhz. This way we can still use the Mega CD and 32x because we can revert back to stock speeds.

(7) -- Now we carefully solder 1 wire to the solder pad under Pin 15. Be very careful not to tug this wire too much or too hard. You could still pull the solder point up and that would be a pain.

(8) -- Next we solder the other wire to the leg of Pin 15. Add a little solder to the leg first so that all you need to do is gently press the wire against the leg using your soldering iron to get them to melt together.

(9) -- Now we are at a stage where we can follow the rest of Damomonster's overclocking video BUT FIRST we need to know where to tap the +5v and the Ground from as these are going to be different to the ones in the video as that is a Model 1.

In the above photo you can see 3 capacitors. There are 2 to the side of the processor, 1 to the left and 1 to the right. These 2 are the ones we will use to get our +5v and Ground from. They are really close which keeps our wires short and very convenient.

Again Sega have made it easy for use because they have marked the + side of the capacitor so we know which side to get +5V from (the + side) and the none marked side is Ground.

Here is the second part of Damo's overclock video to follow :



The main thing to follow from this video is the Double Pole / Double Throw (DP/DT) switch set up and the LED wiring.

(10) -- Now you've followed his video you should end up with a switch looking like this :

 In this photo its the overclock wiring you can see on the top. Blue = 10Mhz, Orange = Pin 15 and Green = 7.6Mhz Stock speed. The row of pins below are Orange = Red LED colour, White / Blue = +5v from the Overclock package, White / Orange = Green LED colour.

(11) -- In the photos you can see that I've just electrical taped everything in place to test it out. You should now have something that looks like this :

(Ignore the mass of wires on the left, that is from my A/V port retro-fit)

Now we can go and test that the overclock works. :-D

Below is a video of my Mega Drive 2 showing the overclock mod and it working on Sonic 2. It was tough to film as I used my phone and I couldn't mount the phone so you can see me playing Sonic 2 (which might be a good thing haha) and excuse the sniffing and coughing as I have a cold ;-)



(12) -- Now you've tested its worked you can squeeze some hot glue over the Pin 15 area. This will make sure that the wires will not get tugged and pull the leg off the processor or pull the soldering pad up. You do this stage once you've tested it as this is a perminant step. Also squeeze some hot glue onto the top of the processor and stick the overclock package on-top. this will stop it ever moving around.

AND WE'RE DONE! :-D Your Sega Mega Drive 2 / Genesis 2 is now overclocked! You can enjoy Sonic 2 in all its none slow down glory as well as a whole host of games that push the stock clock speed a bit too much passed its limit of 7Mhz.


So there you go. I haven't been able to find any real guides on how to do this to a Mega Drive 2 especially one with photos and video of it working. So I decided to make one if this mod worked out, which it did, so I did. :-)

I hope you get it to work out if you give it a try. Just take your time lifting that leg up and you'll be fine. If you have any problems leave me a comment and I'll try to help you out.

Cheers

Porl''

SEGA NEPTUNE - CASE CONTINUED...

Howdy pardnurs,

A quick Neptune update for ya'll...

Well I'm back of my holiday to sunny bournemouth and got a bit more inspired to try and finish off my Neptune case. Before we went on hols I'd sprayed up the case as it was in matt black to get an idea of how it will look in Sega Black plastic and when I looked at it earlier I thought "dang! it looks pretty cool!".

So I've got my pen and paper out and carried on trying to figure out how to sort the buttons out as they are relocated further up the case now. Once they are working and clicking away it will be in its final stages I'm sure. :-)

Here are a few photos of the Sega Holy Trinity I took earlier in the garden. I've got some more filling and sanding to do on the case too. That seems to be a bit of a never ending job with this case. The end is hopefully in sight though.

Catch you later

Porl''