Sega Mega-Tech Restoration

Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair

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mourix:
The Master System cart is a bit more complicated than the Mega Drive. The menu rom is the same 27C256, but the games themselves have special roms with built in mapper logic. This means the only easy way to make a repro is to remove a rom from an original Master System game as eproms won't work.

Hence, the game rom stealing continued:

But the results continued too :)

There is still one mystery left. The original Mega-Tech cart has connections to ground a bunch of rom pins, but the traces are strategically drilled out on the 1M rom cart I had. Interestingly enough they also exist and are drilled out on the 2M Master System console games I own. I've experimented a bit with a cheap sports game rom and it has the same power consumption and behavior no matter if the ground connections existed or not... Does anyone have an idea about this, or is someone able to open up a 2M Mega-Tech cart to verify?

I definitely have some more game making and experimenting to do.

Once I am 100% confident on the design I will make a Github release and forum thread :)

mourix:
The Mega-Tech carts are housed in Japanese Mega Drive shells. To make the repros complete I got this from Aliexpress:

To make it fit, some small studs in these shells had to be cut and the DIP sockets removed. But after putting it in, something was off. It was like the edge connector is too short.

To make sure, I opened the original soccer cart back up. Yup, too short.

But now I put my repro in the original shell. See? My cart is correct:

So now I am in need of input. Do we adjust the PCB design release for these crappy shells? I am a tad unsure.

mourix:
Control panel time.

This is the starting point. Cracked/faded CPO with very crunchy buttons. Definitely needed a refresh.

Now to continue the insane open source project, I got another Canon Lide 110 for €3,50 and followed my own tutorial again.
I put together the scans and made my own reproduction. This came in a week later:

Finally I put the CPO on together with legit IL PSL-H pushbuttons and Cherry D44X switches I had to import from France as Dutch stores only sell Ali imports..
Disassembly was a paint with lock nuts, glued buttons amounts of CPO glue that should be illegal. The results do speak for themselves though :)

The 300DPI print file is attached below.

mourix:
With another Master System game butchered, I also added Fantasy Zone to the working collection. That means both 1Meg and 2Meg games are verified now!

As for what's to come :)

Improved "Redux" versions.

Home console converters.

mourix:
Just placed an order for the 4 shown PCB designs on JLCPCB. Let the two weeks of impatience begin :)

I also found the source of the audio issue: one speaker was wired in reverse polarity...

I'll still replace the speakers but at least it now sounds basic instead of rediculous.

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