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All posts for the month July, 2012

Mission Failure: Mega PC 486 CPU Upgrade

Posted by Shane on Thursday, 26th July 2012
Posted in: Amstrad Mega PC, Modifications, Upgrades. Leave a Comment

We started off with a quick desoldering recap and then went straight for the big guns. 29 minutes of hope and anticipation crushed in the last minute. Not the best result, but it shows that anything is (not) always possible if you put your mind to it. There are usually a lot of pre-requisites and I am sure I missed a few on this one.

Overall the soldering wasn’t a complete failure as it taught me some of the finer points of how to solder QFP chips to a motherboard. It also taught me a fair bit about desoldering things from boards as well.

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At least now I know that the 486SLC board is permanently installed into the Mega PC as there is no reverting back to the old board now… I’ve scrapped the board and plucked off all the possibly useful chips. I took some decent photos of the board and major components before doing this. See below for more.

Pictures of original 386SX motherboard installed.
Pictures of replacement 486SLC motherboard installed.

Sega Mega 32X Photos

Posted by Shane on Tuesday, 17th July 2012
Posted in: General, Sega Mega Drive 32X. Leave a Comment

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The Mega 32X. One small step for man. 50,000 polygons for mankind.

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My 32X thankfully came with the box and is in very good shape.

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Stacks up pretty well on top of a Mega Drive and Mega CD Model 1. While this particular 32X will likely stay boxed up for a bit longer, I do hope to come by another one to fit on top of my display Mega CD / Mega Drive unit. Alongside the Mega CD karaoke machine, it will make the Mega Drive look like an unstoppable killing machine.

I wouldn’t mind modding one together with a Mega Drive 2 to make it a Neptune… But I’d rather slay some American 32X than the seemingly rare European 32Xs.

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I’ve updated some of the photos as well and added a few more tear downs of the Mega Drive 2s. I had to repair the DC-in jack on one of them as the solder had cracked. A few hundred degrees later and it is back up and running. Played a bit of Pier Solar, but was unable to get to the caves! Where are the damn caves! Love the in-game jokes too. Very well done WaterMelon!

Arcade Power Sticks & Mega Drives

Posted by Shane on Monday, 16th July 2012
Posted in: Repairs, Sega Mega Drive. 2 comments

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A rather slow weekend. It was spent mainly looking through what I have and trying to determine what I will part with. I cleaned out a Mega Drive Arcade Power Stick to sell. Cleaned up pretty well!

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I then cleaned out a Mega Drive Arcade Power Stick II. Personally I prefer the original version. None of these fancy wigwams and levers, just simple big buttons. I’ve got another Sega licensed arcade stick. Will need to clean that another weekend.

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Used a better condition top half for this unit. This will become the extremely overmodded, overclocked Mega Drive.

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Also ran into this green screen and rolling horizontal lines on one of my Mega Drive 1 units. This one was going to be modded, overclocked and hacked to pieces. Then I got this green screen. I could not shake it. What had me confused is that it worked fine for hours the day before. Removed all the EMI shielding and hooked in power and video – working fine. A short? Who knows!
I reassembled and let it run for the rest of today with no issues. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys has some damn catchy tunes. I kept getting killed by bats though…