Here’s the latest addition to the collection. It cost me a pretty penny, but it’s certainly one of the highlights now. This is a Cross Products SNASM Mega-CD development unit, and I’ve finally managed to have a quick play with it. The good news is that it appears to work!

I put it alongside an ordinary Mega Drive and Mega-CD combination to see what was different. For starters, the development unit is a little taller than the retail hardware. You probably wouldn’t notice until the two were sitting side by side, but the cases certainly aren’t identical.

There are also a whole collection of switches and connectors that the ordinary Mega Drive doesn’t have. I’ve set the DIP switches to off for the moment so the unit will boot, although I haven’t worked out all the different configurations yet. Cross Products built the SNASM Mega-CD around modified Mega Drive and Mega-CD hardware, with additional electronics for PC-based development.

The system also evolved into the SNASM2 environment, which is the PC-side hardware I eventually ended up using with this unit. Dedicated CD-emulation equipment could supply development data from the PC without having to keep producing physical discs.

The casing has some familiar retail-hardware shapes and cut-outs in unusual places, including a volume-control opening that’s no longer where you’d expect it. The rear is much more interesting, with SCSI and emulator connections for the development equipment. There’s even a cooling fan on the side with some lovely red detailing. Everyone knows red bits make a machine faster!

This particular unit appears to have some connection with Code Monkeys, and it arrived with paperwork and several floppy disks. Some were labelled for Mega-CD and 32X development work, so those will need examining and archiving. The unit also carries Cross Products markings from 1992, and the BIOS reports version 1.10.

I haven’t received all the PC interface boards yet, which means I can’t explore the complete development setup. There are still some interesting identification labels and numbers to investigate as well. For now, I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied: power-up tests, disassembly, photographs, and figuring out exactly what survived inside.

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