Genesis Model 1 maintenance (maybe this will help someone).

[Howard_Casto]

Ok so my genesis was acting screwy the past couple of days and I looked into it and the most likely culprit seemed to be the power adapter.  I got a humming in the audio when it first started and it had to warm up before I could play.  I looked into getting a new ac adaptor and for every comment about a generic replacement working just fine there were two that said they don't work... giving the same problems I just mentioned.  I also looked into buying an original adaptor.... 20 dollars.... yeah that's dumb, I could practically just buy a new genesis. 

So plan C.  I whipped out a star security bit and opened the ac adaptor.... inside was a large cap that was on the verge of busting.  16v 3300uf.  I ordered that, it came in today and that seems to have solved the issue. 

No big deal right? 

Well the thing is it seems to cause a ton of problems that people might not equate to the power supply.  The aforementioned audio issue.... many sights suggest replacing all the caps on the audio amp of the genesis... that might nto be necessary.  My everdrive clone.....  It was having issues writing roms just before the ac adaptor went out sometimes even refusing to boot.  This is long before the genesis stopped working, and now it works perfectly.  My point is I think a lot of generic genesis related issues (for the model 1 anyway) can be attributed to this lone cap, which doesn't necessarily have to be completely blown to start effecting stuff. 

This might just be random rambling on my part and maybe it won't help some of the old hats, but I thought I would post anyway just in case.

[nexusmtz]

I've gotten into the habit of suspecting caps whenever weird things start happening. They're cheap and easy to replace, and like you noted, you can find many bad ones with just your eyes.

I recall reading a lot of posts about power supplies when I was investigating my Mega Everdrive purchase. My takeaway was that a marginal power supply wasn't going to cut it with the addition of an Everdrive. I haven't tested the extra draw, but it does make sense that your Genesis would work until the Everdrive upped the ante.

Thanks for posting the symptoms. It's a good reminder that these carts can have costs beyond their purchase price when we're stuffing them into 25 year old pieces of our past. Still, I think they're easier on the system than shoving/yanking carts for the next 25 years.

[Howard_Casto]

Well I hate to restart a 20+ year old console war, but this issue seems to be more prevalent on sega hardware.  I'm not used to having to check bad caps because I always bought Nintendo consoles, and they'll run on anything and are impossible to kill.  I have to order a cap kit for my game gear as well.   

The everdrives are definitely pulling some juice.  I expected this when writing to the eprom, but I didn't expect it reading the SD card.  The thing would hang and print random characters on the screen. 

I'm just glad my caps came in super quick.

[ChadTower]

Mostly I'm surprised that you could open up the wall wart like that.  Most of them aren't closed up with fasteners.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah it's kind of weird, like the rest of the console.  You open the model 1s up and it almost looks like they could have been assembled by hand.  The inside of the wall wart was the same way..... super huge traces, even for the 90's.  I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of it though because what genesis games I did play I didn't get to play for long periods back in the day so it's hundreds of "new" games. 

[ChadTower]

You could also just get a random wall wart that's the same rating and swap the cord or plug.  I've done that with a few consoles.

[Howard_Casto]

Well it's a really weird amperage/voltage and as I said, people have complained that even adaptors designed to work with the model 1 genesis cause issues.  It's 10 volts with 1200ma if I remember correctly.  I tried every adaptor I had in the house in that general range as well as a couple universal adaptors.... I kept at least getting the audio issues and with most the genesis wouldn't even boot properly.  Giving the thing too much power seemed to cause issues as well. 

[thomas_surles]

Get yourself a sexy model 2 Genesis 

[ChadTower]

Well it's a really weird amperage/voltage and as I said, people have complained that even adaptors designed to work with the model 1 genesis cause issues.  It's 10 volts with 1200ma if I remember correctly.  I tried every adaptor I had in the house in that general range as well as a couple universal adaptors.... I kept at least getting the audio issues and with most the genesis wouldn't even boot properly.  Giving the thing too much power seemed to cause issues as well.

Sounds like additional issues beyond the power supply.  I haven't worked on a Gen1 in a while but never found them to be that finicky about the power supply. 

[Howard_Casto]

No, it works perfectly now.  Also read the discussion above.... flash carts add additional worries.