The Blog

Toaplan's Zero Wing Demo on the XRGB-mini Framemeister

Nix McRetro // 27th February 2013 // Categories: Gaming, Sega, YouTube

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

Sega TeraDrive XTIDE EEPROM Upgrade: AT28C64B to AT28C256

Nix McRetro // 27th February 2013 // Categories: Hacks, Sega

Sega TeraDrive XTIDE EEPROM Upgrade: AT28C64B to AT28C256

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

Micomsoft XRGB-mini Framemeister Arrival

Nix McRetro // 18th February 2013 // Categories: Gaming, Hacks

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

Disk on Modules and the XTIDE BIOS on the Sega TeraDrive

Nix McRetro // 17th February 2013 // Categories: IBM PC, Repairs, Sega

Disk on Modules and the XTIDE BIOS on the Sega TeraDrive

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

Accolade Code Monkeys Dev Cart for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis

Nix McRetro // 15th February 2013 // Categories: Devkit, Gaming, Sega

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