June 2013

Who would have thought that it would be so easy? Just a simple rejigger of the reset switch and we have video and sound - loud and clear! I’ll replace the caps anyway in this unit after all these years. That is a separate maintenance plan: capacitor life depends on... Continue reading

One Yellow Light of Death (YLOD) best served shaken, not stirred. A repair kit is on order, hopefully, it just needs a new pair of shims or a brand new hard drive. Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell. That was the troubleshooting plan at the time. YLOD... Continue reading

Ladies and jellyfish, here’s another project for the workbench! I’ve got about four or five repairs happening at the moment, and now there’s a Microsoft Xbox 360 to add to the collection. This one has the infamous Red Ring of Death, although it’s not really much of a ring when... Continue reading

Lucky last! Here’s Super Nintendo number three, serial UP17548016, and this one has managed to develop an even more exciting collection of faults than the other two. The good news is that it powers on. The bad news is that there’s no picture and no sound, which doesn’t leave us... Continue reading

Up next is Super Nintendo number two, serial UP15971140, and this one has some rather impressive video distortion. It was originally reported as having no power, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. It actually turns on and produces a purple screen, which is more than I was expecting!... Continue reading

Here’s the first of three faulty Super Nintendo consoles I’ve come across recently. This one is serial UP17388130, and although the picture looks perfectly fine, there’s absolutely no sound coming out of it. Not ideal when you’re trying to enjoy a bit of John Madden Football ‘93! I’ve hooked it... Continue reading

Three faulty Super Nintendo consoles. The first step is assessing the damage: look for obvious corrosion or damaged components, then test each unit to see its current state. After that? Replace all capacitors, right? No one likes old SMD electrolytic caps! Replacing deteriorated capacitors can help, but age alone does... Continue reading

Something has gone horribly wrong with the Western Technologies Sega Development Card. Could be a poor connection to the Mega Drive, perhaps an issue with transferring the game from the PC, or something else entirely. Whatever the cause, Sonic the Hedgehog is having a rather interesting day! Each time I... Continue reading

Here’s a quick look at some demo code. There’s also source code, so once I work out how to compile the code… I’ll be able to alter the text… that’s about it though, I’m no programmer! ;) The software includes an example program and its corresponding source files, which is... Continue reading

More on the Western Technologies Sega Development Card and the software used to run it. SEGALOAD.EXE is the PC-side object-code downloader for the SegaDev hardware, sending a compiled image from the development PC into SRAM on the cartridge attached to the Mega Drive. After trying out the SegaDev RAM test,... Continue reading

Let us have a look at the Western Technologies Development Card functioning with a simple Sonic binary file. Uploaded (they call it downloading) from the PC to the Mega Drive through the PC’s parallel port, with the image held in SRAM on the development cartridge. I’ve got the Mega Drive... Continue reading

Here’s a look at the software running behind the Western Technologies Development Card. I’ve got the retro PC set up with DOS and Windows, although Windows for Workgroups 3.11 seems particularly appropriate for something of this vintage. The program itself is called SegaDev, and rather surprisingly I managed to get... Continue reading

Just a quick peek at some Black Mesa madness! I’ve only recently come across it, and already I’ve found something that absolutely had to go on the internet. Any game with an Office Space reference earns instant respect points, especially when people start talking about TPS reports and coming in... Continue reading

Another weekend frittered away getting the SNASM2 development card working! I’ve dragged out the Pentium system again, mostly because I was getting rather tired of swapping expansion cards around in the 486. There never seem to be enough suitable slots when you need them. Well, after going through what felt... Continue reading

Good to see I got nowhere with this, another dead video card is all I ever seem to have! :D I’d picked up another old video card for the princely sum of $1, with postage costing about eight times as much. Unfortunately, it was producing some rather interesting graphical rubbish,... Continue reading

Credit goes out to id Software for making such a great shooter! Also, my video card doesn’t seem to be doing such a good job… but when the music is this good, who needs video! Sound effects were muted so the pure joy of these two cards could be enjoyed.... Continue reading

What parts are currently inside? Let’s have a peek! This IntelDX4 OverDrive is running at 100 MHz, with the ISA development cards and Gravis UltraSound making it the PC side of my Sega Mega-CD setup. The problem with putting together a computer like this is deciding what deserves the limited... Continue reading

What are we rocking today? Have a look at this beautiful PC! I’ve finally managed to put together a machine that seems rather happy running the SNASM2 development card and Sega Mega-CD emulation hardware. After all the trouble I’ve had with newer computers, that’s a rather nice change! The machine... Continue reading

This video was more or less put together for my own reference while trying to get the Sega Mega-CD development cards working on a Pentium III 800 MHz system. Electrically, the setup appeared compatible as far as I could tell. Physically, I simply did not have a PC case large... Continue reading

Here we have a beautiful 17-inch MacBook Pro from the mid-2007 to early-2008 era, and unfortunately it has developed a rather serious problem. The machine powers on, the optical drive resets and the front indicator lights up, but there is no display or startup chime. The caps lock key doesn’t... Continue reading

Two units, no properly working transformers, cracked circuit boards, a sea of likely bad capacitors and one relatively determined repairer. Much more to come on this one. I picked up both Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 units in faulty condition, which is generally how I prefer to acquire things, but these have... Continue reading

Just some film from the cutting-room floor. I thought it never hurts to see what is inside a SCART-style connector and how the wiring is actually arranged, especially when you’ve had a few wires come loose and you’re trying to work out where they belonged. Not that anything like that... Continue reading

I think we’ve finally got it worked out! After all the messing around with CompactFlash cards and Microdrives, I’ve discovered that the size of the partitions is rather important when trying to use larger storage devices on the LC 475. That 8 GB CompactFlash card might be overkill, but I’m... Continue reading

I’ve got Hangman Plus running on the Macintosh LC 475, and it’s bringing back a few memories. This is one of the earliest Macintosh games I remember playing, although I don’t think it was on an LC 475 back then. Naturally, I thought I’d give it another go and see... Continue reading

More storage adventures with the little LC 475! I’ve already had some success replacing the original mechanical SCSI hard drive with a CompactFlash card, but naturally I couldn’t leave things alone. What happens when we try something a little larger? Say, an 8 GB CompactFlash card! I’m still using the... Continue reading

Here’s a test of the SIMM CART switch on SW2 at the front of the Sega Saturn Sophia Programming Box. My first interpretation was that it simply selected between the internal SIMM memory and the Saturn cartridge slot. Sega’s development documentation shows that it is more complicated than that. I’ve... Continue reading

The LC 475 is back for another round of experimentation! Remember that supposedly full 68040 processor I bought to replace the original 68LC040? The whole point was to gain the floating-point unit missing from the original processor, but things haven’t been going quite according to plan. This time I’m using... Continue reading

Remember that Seagate hard drive from the Amstrad Mega PC that decided to catch fire? Well, it’s finally back on the workbench! The culprit was a tantalum capacitor that managed to turn itself into a rather crispy mess, and I’ve been meaning to repair it for quite some time. Thankfully... Continue reading