Sega Megadrive Project Update

Back in April of this year I did a project with a Japanese Megadrive. You can see more about that project here.  
 

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Some time has passed and I wanted to go back and fix a few things that have been nagging me about the finished console.

The region and language switches I had installed, are  unfortunately in the way of the expansion slot. Now, I don't intend on ever hooking this console to a Mega CD, still it's a bit of a shame.

Here you can see the switches, not great if you want to use the Mega CD .

The now removed, red Over-clock switch.

Originally the clock switch had been installed so that a Mega CD or 32x accessories could get the original clock signal if needed, as they would not function correctly (if at all) with the 10Mhz over-clock. This and the fact that not all games work great with an overclock and not all Motorola 68000 CPUs are up for it. I decided to remove the overclock mod.
 

I have more then one Megadrive. So I can always use another if I ever want to use a MegaCD. So basically I removed the overclock mod and I added  a nice new blue power LED.

If I'm ever doing this MOD again on another Megadrive, I'll locate all the switches on the other side. Even better again, I'll use an IC like the AT tiny, to control every thing rather then switches. 

It's running great, considering this poor old girl has been through the wars. Who ever had it before me was anything but nice to it, with their MODing attempts. Ripping pads, damaging control port connections and leaving flux all over the main board. I've done my best to undo some of the botched stuff. Re-flowing dry damaged joints, fixing pads and cleaning all the old flux off. I don't want to do too much more with the old girl. She's had enough Moding and abuse over the years. As it is now it should continue to play games for a long time to come, or until the capacitors fail many years from now.

My next Electronics Project Will BE!

Game Gear LCD Screen Mod (McWill)

Well I finally got finished with the LCD mod. I would rate this as a tough one. Many tricky steps in the mod. From de-soldering tiny surface mount components to soldering the connections to the old LCD ribbon cable pads.No doubt this one was hard.

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I had some trouble tinning the ground solder point on the LCD mod. After scraping the solder pad with my sharpest tweezers, cleaning & adding some flux I was finally able to get the solder to take. It didn't help that a component ( don't know what one) was drawing the heat away. With allot of patience and more then a few tries I got it done.

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I used AWG 26 wire for all the data lines. I used AWG 22 for VCC 5V and AWG 26for GND. I highly recommend using AWG 26 – 28 for this mod. It's just not going to happen with larger wire gauges.

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Double check all your solder joints when your done. Looking for shorts or cold  joints. Clean the entire board with IPA as you go along. The last thing you need is a small bit of shrapnel or dust from your soldering work causing a short. I had one on the old ribbon connection. After rewiring the data lines to the screen twice, I noticed a very tiny bridge from some shrapnel and dry flux across two pads. I was barley able to see it at first and had been freaking out that I had broken the new screen.

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After all desoldering & a cleanup with IPA
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On the last attempt at soldering the LCD ribbon points, I discovered a neat way of soldering the data lines. I never bin the ends of leads from new caps or resistors. I always put the small bits I trim off into a little plastic container. If you rap your wire around an old lead making a T and solder the junction, then cut off one side of the T, you'll have L shaped end that's a perfect fit for these tiny solder points. You can hook them around the board and solder them on . It's still tricky but not as tricky as with just wire. This trick was a life saver but I still had to strain my eyes and take my time making sure I was soldering to the right pad. ( think I might have seen Ben Heck doing this in one of his videos).

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Old ribbon solder pads trick.
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 finished wiring (front)
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finished wiring (back)
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2mm  Neoprene Seal strip for the LCD Screen

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Reassembled GG
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The difference between the old screen and the new one is like night and day. McWill's LCD Mod is a great bit of Kit. I''ll be holding on to both the modified and the original Game Gear consoles. In the end I didn't do the VGA out. If I want to play on a bigger screen then I'll just use an emulator. I have enough spare parts left however, to fix up a few more Game Gears. These fixed consoles I'll sell to help cover the cost of my next project and perhaps get an Everdrive GG. So I'll be keeping an eye open for some old Game Gears that need a bit of TLC and new home. 

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 Old ( VA1 1xASIC )
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New ( VA0 2xASIC )
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This was by far the most difficult project I've taken on to date. I learnt allot from it and feel more confident with my soldering. I'm already hatching plans for my next electronics project around Christmas. For now It's time to get back to work. Alas, my short holiday is over. I sort of feel like I'm becoming a shelter for old and abused consoles & computers. If your into retro console and computers, then it helps if your able to use a soldering iron and a multimeter. Curating these awesome devices and trouble shooting the problems that develop with old age, gives you a new found admiration for them. Ensuring that they continue to work and play games for years to come. Till next time.

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A big thanks to the following youtubers for their great videos on the Game Gear and the McWill GG LCD mod. Great help in doing the mod.

StigsWorld has some great videos on repairing the Game Gear


GadgetUK164 has a great videos on the McWill LCD Mod


Terence Chan also has a great video covering McWill LCD Mod +VGA

SMSPOWER.ORG had loads of great info on their forums.

Thanks to everyone for their help!!!

I purchased my McWill LCD MOD from DragonBox. I have no trouble in recommending them, fast dispatch and a fair price. I also picked up a capacitor kit and GG screen cover/glass. They also offer mod installation and repair  services, so if your not comfortable with the soldering work I'm sure they'll help you out.

Sega Game Gear audio amplifier fix

So after recaping the faulty Gamegear, I noticed that the sound on the first working console was very low. So i did a recap on the audio amplifier board.

Recaping this small audio board is not that easy. I de-soldered some of the caps. For most however, I got out my flush cutters and sniped them off the board. The base of the capacitors is a soft plastic. Once cut away you can snip the old leads. Cleaning the solder points with wick and contact cleaner after. If you don't have flush cutters then I wouldn't do it this way. 

I replaced the capacitors one by one. De-soldering and soldering one at a time on the main board. For the audio board I recommend removing all the caps first. It makes things a little bit easier as this is a small finicky board.

The LCD screen is on the way. Just got my tracking number for it so I should be starting the screen mod some time next week. For now I'm going to clean some of the games cartridges and play some childhood classics.

Sega Game Gear Capacitor Replacement

It's Alive! Finished replacing all the capacitors on the main board of the Sega Game Gear. Went slow, adding flux and whicking the contacts clean. Making sure to use contact cleaner before soldering the new caps on.

The main board was OK. Didn't find it too difficult. The audio board however was allot harder. In the end I replaced only one cap on it. C7. This one fails most of the time & as the audio was working fine before recaping, I figured I'd get away with it. With more practice and a better way to hold the PCB in place when working on it,  I'll come back and do the others.

Cheers to StigsWorld for the great video covering recaping the Game Gear sound board.

Once the new Screen arrives I'll re-access which console is best to use for the mod. No blue smoke or pops so far, all's going good.

SEGA Game Gear Project - Recap & LCD mod

Been working hard recently, without any break since March. So I've decided to take the next week or so off  work. So in my spare time I've decided to work on another Console MOD. This time on a Sega Game Gear.

I picked up 3 Game Gears for a fare price from a nice chap, that just  arrived today with a bunch of games.

1 fully working
1 needs a recap ( mod candidate ?)
1 just for spares.

I'll be working on the one that needs the recap. Once I've done that and its working again, I'll move on to the the Mod. If the boards an early revision, VA1 or VA2 it should be suitable. From checking up the serial it looks fine.

LCD replacement Mod (mcwill)
McWill Game Gear LCD upgrade


Allot of people have done this mod, so I'll be following their video tutorials and examples.I'll make sure to post and accredit any I use.

This is a slightly more complex project. I'll be working with the removal of some surface mount components. So I'll have to practise this on some old network cards and broken pcb's I have knocking about. I've made up a bill of goods for the recap and once it arrives in the next day or so, I'll get started. 

Check out  GadgetUK164's video on the his mod on youtube.