December 2013

Happy Christmas, everyone, and a merry New Year from the land down under! This is just a quick update to explain why I’ve been a little bit AWOL. Things are rather complicated at the moment, and I’m currently between houses. I’ve been sort of forced out of my home by... Continue reading

PICkit 2 is a Microchip programmer/debugger designed primarily for PIC chips. The fun part is that AVRDUDE can also use it as an ISP programmer for supported AVR microcontrollers, including the ATmega328P I’m working with here. That AVR support comes from AVRDUDE rather than Microchip’s PICkit 2 application. Atmel is... Continue reading

Victory is mine! And yours, and the internets! Please enjoy the dump of the Sega Channel BIOS brought to you by Dr. Eggfan and myself. For science! After all those failed attempts, I was beginning to wonder whether we’d ever get a consistent read from this thing. The same chip... Continue reading

Another bad dump on this one too. Multiple dumps, different data each time, and the checksums don’t match! How frustrating. Let’s see if we can get a little closer to the bottom of this mystery. This time I’m working on the other Japanese Sega Channel adapter. The first job is... Continue reading

We’re attempting to dump the good old BIOS from the older of the two Japanese Sega Channel adapters. Unfortunately, getting a readable file and getting a reliable dump aren’t necessarily the same thing. As we’ll soon discover! First up, I pulled the older adapter apart to see what was hiding... Continue reading

We needed to remove the ROM chips to dump them, so why not video it? Enjoy! :D This time I’m working on the newer of the two Japanese Sega Channel adapters. With the owner’s go-ahead, I decided to install sockets so the ROM chips could be removed again without having... Continue reading

A second first look at the Sega Channel adapter. Two first-look videos? They can’t both be first! Never mind, we’ve got two Japanese adapters to investigate, and there are a few differences worth having a closer look at. Both units were sent over by someone from the internet, and I’m... Continue reading

A first look at the features of the Japanese Sega Channel adapter! I’ve got two of these rather interesting devices to investigate, and eventually I’d like to dump their BIOS chips so we can find out a little more about what’s hiding inside. Sega Channel allowed Mega Drive owners to... Continue reading

The final test, dumping Sonic the Hedgehog through controller port 2 on a Mega Drive / Genesis, with the Mega-CD running the transfer software. Incredible, right? Remember that rather questionable cable I made in the first video? Well, I became suspicious of the wiring when the transfers kept failing, so... Continue reading

Dumping carts through controller port 2 on the Mega Drive / Genesis, with the Mega-CD running the transfer software. Incredible, right? Aaaaand with success! This time I managed to dump my PAL copy of Fatal Fury 2. Everything appeared to be working nicely, although the resulting ROM turned out to... Continue reading

Dumping Mega Drive / Genesis cartridges through controller port 2, with a Mega-CD providing the boot environment. Incredible, right? I’ve been looking into the Sega CD Transfer Suite from Mask of Destiny at RetroDev, which makes it possible to read cartridge data without removing any of the ROM chips. I’ve... Continue reading

Water-damaged consoles are the worst of the bunch. Unpredictable and filthy… and then there’s the rust! This little PS one, serial T213259, would power on, but it wouldn’t recognise any discs. There was corrosion around the controller ports, near the power jack, and even underneath the metal shielding. Some of... Continue reading

Back again with those rather questionable replacement PlayStation CD mechanisms! I’ve been experimenting with the spindle assemblies to see whether I can salvage anything useful from them. After all, I’ve got a collection of PlayStations that need good disc-retaining hubs, and it seems a shame to waste all these parts.... Continue reading

Swapping the optical-drive assembly over is pretty easy on these little fellas, but this replacement came with some extra issues. Because apparently replacing a PlayStation laser is never quite as straightforward as I’d like! This time I’m working on a Sony PS one SCPH-102. Rather than replacing the entire mechanism,... Continue reading

Grumble, grumble, grumble! I’ve been having a rather frustrating time with some replacement Sony PlayStation CD mechanisms I picked up from eBay. They looked like they would be just the thing for repairing a collection of faulty PlayStation consoles, but it turns out there’s a fairly significant problem. There are... Continue reading

Rock out to Sega Channel Japan with this fantastic video and slideshow! I recorded the audio directly from the output of a Mega Drive Model 1 HDG into my Canon EOS 600D camera. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and comment! Sega Channel Japan series Japanese Sega Channel Adapter - First... Continue reading