Wednesday 21 March 2012

SEGA MEGADRIVE 1 OVERCLOCKED!

Hi Everyone,

I've been a little quiet over the last week with posts. Basically I've not had that much to post about until today really. I've been working away on the Neptune case, adding in more milliput where it still needed smoothing as well as apply layer after layer of primer. I've been working on the buttons which are getting their shapes now as well as the new centre clear light. Its starting to come to shape and again looks pretty kickass in white!

So my new post is about my spare Megadrive 1 and me overclocking the heck out of it :-P

I've been watching a few tutorials on Youtube and came across DamoMonsters video's. Very cool and easy to follow. Check him out : http://www.damomonster.com

I happened to have all the components and a bit of salvaged Vero board that was just big enough to make the overclock circuit so last night I decided to give it a go.

It was really fun and interesting to do as I've not done anything on Vero board or used a crystal. I got it all wired up roughly last night with a large Red/Green LED. This morning I fired the Megadrive up and checked that it loaded up with Sonic both overclocked as well as stock speed.

The trick with the mod I did is that its switchable. If you overclock the Megadrive from its standard speed the Mega CD and 32x won't work, so if you do the overclock mod without a switch you are stuck with the overclocked Megadrive and thats all you can do with it. With the switch you can have the cake AND eat it! Woop!

This morning after checking the Megadrive worked both standard and overclocked I drove over to the nearest Maplins and bought some more Vero board and a 3mm Red/Green LED that will fit in the Megadrive case.

This afternoon I wired up the new LED and got it mounted to the case. I checked the improvement of the overclock on 2 player Sonic 2. When you get hit with more than 40 coins with the standard speed you get some serious slow-down, when switched to 10MHz you get no slow-down what so ever. Pretty nifty!

When you have the 'Drive running in standard clock speed the power LED is Red which is the standard colour for the LED. When its switched over to 10MHz overclock the LED glow's Green.

Im really pleased with the mod as its the first 'Finished' Mod i've done as the Neptune technically isn't finished as it doesn't work yet :-P

So yeah, check the pics out below and catch you soon.

Porl''
The start of the Overclock circuit

The new 10MHz crystal
mounted to the Vera Board
The new 'Beast' taped up
The new 'Power Pack' mounted
on top of the CPU
The LED showing overclocked
speed (10MHz)
The Mod all wired into
the Megadrive
LED showing standard
clock speed (7MHz)