February 2013

All your base are belong to us. That’s right, it’s Zero Wing on the Sega Mega Drive, running through the XRGB-mini Framemeister. I wanted to show off the scanlines, but the footage also provides a fairly convincing demonstration of why I spend more time fixing hardware than playing shoot-‘em-ups. I’m... Continue reading

Time for a little more room in the XTIDE BIOS department. Both of my cards currently use Atmel AT28C64B EEPROMs. The AT28C64B stores 64 Kbit as 8K x 8, which gives me 8 KiB of ROM space. I’m replacing them with AT28C256 devices, which provide 32 KiB. Why the upgrade?... Continue reading

Received my XRGB-mini Framemeister today and had no suitable cable to connect it! The connector looked just like SCART, so I went looking for a wiring guide and ended up hacking together an adapter from another cable I had lying around. After switching a bunch of pins, I had lovely... Continue reading

So many types of Disk on Module, so little time! I’ve been trying to find a suitable solid-state storage solution for my Sega TeraDrive, and what sounded like a fairly simple exercise has turned into another adventure in hardware compatibility. While digging through the XTIDE Universal BIOS documentation, I found... Continue reading

This development cartridge seems to have been used by The Code Monkeys and was made by Accolade. Quite an interesting piece of Mega Drive history! I haven’t worked out exactly what it’s supposed to do yet. When I insert it into a Mega Drive, it displays the Code Monkeys introduction,... Continue reading

The Cross Products SNASM Mega-CD development unit, serial MCD01/0174, is our next target for disassembly and photography. This is one beefy devkit! I’ve spent a bit of time experimenting with the software side of the system, and now it’s time to see what’s actually inside. The SNASM Mega-CD was built... Continue reading

I finally found enough bench space to power up the Cross Products SNASM Mega-CD development unit. It’s not like I have a degree in programming games or the time at the moment to learn, but I’d certainly like to see whether all this hardware I’ve acquired can communicate with a... Continue reading

Here’s the faster version of a little musical mystery that I still haven’t managed to solve. I first uploaded the tune in August 2012, then wondered in February 2013 whether it might sound different if it came from an old game running at PAL 50Hz or NTSC 60Hz. Some older... Continue reading

Here’s a brief video of Sophia going back together. Well, halfway. The mainboard is back in, but the RAM board is still out because I need to photograph it properly first. Sophia has been sitting in pieces for months while I’ve been documenting the internals, cleaning the boards, and working... Continue reading