September 2012

Time for a bit of Space Harrier on the Sega Mega Drive 32X! Space Harrier originally appeared in the arcades back in 1985, and the 32X received a rather impressive conversion in 1994. Sega’s short-lived little add-on might not have had the longest commercial life, but it certainly had some... Continue reading

Here’s Sol-Feace running on one of my repaired Mega-CD setups. My skills at the game are a little rusty, although I’d never actually played it before this recording. That certainly explains a few things! I’ve also been working on a Mega-CD II that arrived as part of a rather inexpensive... Continue reading

Found out that this LC 475 was still running in 24-bit addressing mode. That explains the rather ridiculous memory display. System 7 in 24-bit mode can only make 8 MB of physical RAM available for normal use. Any installed RAM above that gets accounted for as though it belongs to... Continue reading

Look what’s arrived in the mail! My copy of the Geist Force reproduction for Sega Dreamcast has finally made its way here, courtesy of ASSEMbler and the folk involved in the community project. Even the packaging has had an adventure, judging by the rather substantial holes courtesy of the postal... Continue reading

Forgot I uploaded this giant video… This IBM PS/2 Model 30 sure was a fun beast to disassemble and reassemble. Despite wearing the PS/2 badge, this original 8086-based Model 30 is a little unusual within the family because it uses an 8-bit ISA expansion bus rather than Micro Channel. The... Continue reading

Finally got around to installing a clean system on the LC 475 I picked up a few weeks ago. I’ve recorded some video of the installation process. The hard drive sounds as though it is preparing to shatter into several thousand pieces, but for now it is still working. The... Continue reading

Here’s my IBM Personal System/2 Model 30, the original 8086-based machine rather than the later Model 30 286. It’s quite a lovely little computer, with an enormous power switch, a 720 KB floppy drive and a 20 MB hard drive that unfortunately isn’t behaving particularly well. The hard drive has... Continue reading

I’ve been playing around with a Mega-CD II and one of my partially modified Mega Drive II consoles. It’s been sitting around for quite some time with its region and video-mode switches hanging out of the case, so I thought I’d finally see what happens when I connect everything together.... Continue reading

Remember that Japanese Sega Saturn with the completely berserk CD mechanism? Well, it’s still completely berserk. The disc motor and laser assembly are doing all sorts of strange things, although I’ve confirmed that the fault follows the CD deck when swapped into another Saturn. At least that narrows things down.... Continue reading

Another Sega Saturn, another power supply mystery! This time I’m checking the DC output rails on a PAL Saturn power supply with the multimeter, and the readings look reasonably good. The 3.3 V rail is measuring 3.36 V, the 9 V rail is producing 9.25 V, and the 5 V... Continue reading

Success! Replacing the Sony CXA1145P video encoder fixed the yellow and green flickering completely. This was the Mega Drive that behaved badly from a cold start and gradually settled down after warming up. As you can see in the original footage, Knuckles was having something of a disco party before... Continue reading

I’ve been going through my collection of Sega Mega Drive 32X add-ons, and it’s not looking particularly promising. Three of them seem to develop video problems after running for a while, while the fourth one isn’t doing much of anything at all. No picture, no sound. Wonderful! After a bit... Continue reading

I picked up three Sega Mega Drive 32X units from the internet, all sold as-is. Surprisingly, all three work to some degree, although I’ve been getting some rather unpleasant video problems. One of them originally produced no picture at all, but a good clean managed to bring it back to... Continue reading