I’ve been playing around with a Mega-CD II and one of my partially modified Mega Drive II consoles. It’s been sitting around for quite some time with its region and video-mode switches hanging out of the case, so I thought I’d finally see what happens when I connect everything together.

Unfortunately, the first attempt isn’t particularly encouraging. The Mega-CD throws up an error, apparently deciding that whatever region the Mega Drive thinks it’s from isn’t one it particularly wants to deal with. Wonderful!

Fortunately, that’s what the switches are for. After a bit of experimenting, I managed to change the configuration and get things moving again. One of the switches also changes the console over to 60 Hz, which makes everything run rather differently from the usual PAL setup.

There’s a noticeable change in the speed, although the audio and video don’t appear to be keeping up with one another quite as nicely as I’d hoped. Since the music is coming from the CD, I’m wondering whether that has something to do with the strange pauses and timing differences I’m seeing.

I haven’t quite worked out everything that’s going on yet, but it’s interesting watching the Mega-CD respond to the different settings. At least the switches are doing something, even if I keep forgetting which one controls what!

Speaking of switches, they’re currently attached to some ridiculously long wires. I’ll need to shorten those and work out where they’re actually going to fit inside the case. Perhaps even drill a few neat holes instead of leaving the whole lot hanging out the side.

So that’s another little Mega-CD experiment. A few successes, a few strange results and plenty more fiddling to do. That’s half the fun!

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