I’ve managed to get the Amstrad Mega PC mostly back together, although the top cover is still off. Here’s a quick demonstration of the 386SX PC and Mega Drive sections, both of which are finally showing some signs of life after all the work I’ve been doing on this machine.

The slider on the front operates a switch between the PC and Mega Drive hardware. Starting in PC mode gives me the usual memory testing, which I’m becoming rather tired of watching. Moving the switch over to the Mega Drive side makes the screen go blank, partly because I haven’t got a cartridge inserted.

There’s a little switch inside the cartridge slot that appears to detect when a game is fitted. With a cartridge in place, I get an out-of-range message on the display I’m using. The Mega Drive side outputs a video signal this monitor can’t handle, so I need the original Amstrad display or another suitable 15 kHz monitor to see what it’s doing.

Switching back to PC mode works nicely, although the system battery is dead and the hard drive is still proving troublesome. I’ve tried two drives, one around 365 MB and another roughly 106 MB, but neither has been recognised. I’ll probably investigate a separate hard-drive controller to help establish whether the problem is with the drives or the onboard interface.

Above is the Mega PC with its original monitor connected. The supplied display can handle the different scan rates used by the PC and Mega Drive sides, which is a big part of what makes the complete setup so interesting. It’s a rather wonderful combination of an Amstrad computer and Sega hardware, even with a few repairs still waiting to be finished.

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