The Blog

Circuit Bending VRAM on a Sega Mega Drive / Genesis 2

Nix McRetro // 27th March 2016 // Guides, Hacks, Sega

Circuit Bending VRAM on a Sega Mega Drive / Genesis 2

After actually reading the RAM datasheet properly, I realised that disturbing the power pins might explain some of my earlier random resets. On the 40-pin SOJ pinout shown here, VCC is on pins 11 and 20, and VSS on pins 30 and 40. Those are not pins I want to... Continue reading

Sega TeraDrive Model 3 - Faulty Power Supply (Part 2)

Nix McRetro // 27th March 2016 // IBM PC, Repairs, Sega

Part two reveals an interesting bit of information. I think we’ve found the symptom. Now we have to find where the disease is originating from. Is it a capacitor? Is it a FET? Is it an insert component here? We still don’t know. We’ll find out one day soon! ;)... Continue reading

The Sega Dreamcast HKT-0120 Development Box Teaser

Nix McRetro // 22nd March 2016 // Devkit, Sega, YouTube

We’ll be taking a proper look into Sega Dreamcast development hardware. I did not actually own a retail Dreamcast at this point. I did, however, own an HKT-0120 Dreamcast / Katana development box. Curious. The HKT-0120 belongs to Sega’s later Set 5 development hardware and was designed to work with... Continue reading

Configuring an XTIDE / XT-CF-Lite for the Sega TeraDrive

Nix McRetro // 20th March 2016 // Gaming, IBM PC, Sega

This is quite a long video. Some things that just didn’t go the right way caused it to drag on and on and on. Never mind, that’s generally what this channel is for. Uncut, lazy recording with a splash of actually achieving the goal! And below we have another silly... Continue reading

Sega TeraDrive Model 3 - Faulty Power Supply (Part 1)

Nix McRetro // 18th March 2016 // IBM PC, Repairs, Sega

Today we start a journey of TeraDrive power-supply repair. As you can see, the current (ha!) power supply is not working quite right. Let’s see if we can get this repaired and back up and running. If we fail, well… let’s not think about that! :) This is fault-finding rather... Continue reading