Any other console, I probably wouldn’t bother mentioning this, but since it is Sophia, she gets a mention. My 171-6692B SH-2 CPU cards are not quite the same as the better-documented 171-6692D boards. Most importantly for this particular problem, they are missing the second power header used by the usual Sophia Programming Box arrangement.

The 171-6692B boards do have another header available, but its pin pitch is 2.0 mm rather than the 2.54 mm pitch commonly found on PC-style connectors. So I made a short adapter cable to connect the Sophia’s power lead to the available headers on these CPU boards. A little heatshrink around my fantastic solder job and she works a charm.

Visually, the differences between the 171-6692B and 171-6692D are easy to spot. The B revision lacks the second power header and the two jumper blocks normally seen beside the processors on the D revision.

More Sophia devkit photos can be found in the Photo Gallery.