Question about Nomad modding

[JAY]

I'm looking to play some PAL Mega Drive games along with the US Genesis ones I have.  Since I don't have my Genesis anymore, I was thinking to buy a Nomad instead.

So, I looked over the modding procedures first, and I'm undecided on which to do.  The switch modding seems easy, but in the other procedure, it says that "if you use MODE you will enter PAL mode every time you turn off the six buttons, and having your screen shrink every time you press B really SUCKS".  On the other hand, the switchless mod lets the START button control the PAL games, and the A button control the US games; will the PAL games I play switch to US mode everytime I press A?  Both seem to have disadvantages.

Some notes:  all the games I have only require 3 buttons.  That might affect which mod I should do.

I hope you can help.

[NFG]

Since you don't need Japanese game support (or at least you didn't mention it) you can safely use the MODE button to switch from PAL to NTSC on bootup.  Note that they don't STAY in this mode, you'll hold it long enough to enter the new mode and then release it, meaning all your games will run at NTSC speeds (the way they're designed, in most cases).  

I'm not aware of any games recoded to run at the proper speed @ 50Hz...

You shouldn't have to use the MODE button to switch to 3-button mode in almost any case, there are very few games that are unhappy in six-button mode, and fewer still that will require 3-button mode AND refuse to boot on a PAL machine.  I wouldn't worry about it, do the mod and worry about a fix if it fails to function.  The chances are slim you'll have trouble, IMO.

[JAY]

Rather than make a new thread, I'll just continue in the topic I already wrote.

I finally got around to trying this mod, but a problem occurred.  I cut the trace between the JP3 pads and soldered onto the specified JP4 pad, but when I was closing up that half of the system, the wire got caught and pulled off, and with it came the copper film underneath the pad.  I tried to see if connecting the the wire to the outside JP4 pad would be okay, but I couldn't see a connection between the JP4 pads, nor where either pad leads to, and thought it'd be safer to ask.  Is there any way to continue with this mod?

[phreak97]

youll have to be really careful, scrape the green from the trace that comes from the broken pad, and very carefully solder to the trace. you may need to buy some thinner wire to do this with. also, i recommend taping it down afterwards, because thie wire will pull off a hundred times more easily than the one you already pulled off.

btw, using the other pad wont work, it's most likely 5v or ground, meaning youll probably kill something when you press the reset button if you connect it that way.

[Vertigo]

I'm not aware of any games recoded to run at the proper speed @ 50Hz...

I know of one that I've tested. Sonic the Hedgehog runs at full speed in 50Hz mode. I've compared two i.e. timed the intros of a PAL one running on a PAL machine and a NTSC one running on a Japanese machine (NOT a modded PAL one) and they both achieve very nearly the same speed i.e. within half a second of each other.
It would seem that Sega were up to their old fairness-to-PAL tricks well before the Dreamcast came along and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Sega's other first-party productions were tweaked to run full speed in PAL. Third-parties would probably be a different matter of course. TF4's music goes out of sync with what's going on when using a PAL cart at 60Hz. I'm taking a wild guess that, unlike the SNES, the MD's sound chips produce audio at a locked speed for either a PAL or NTSC machine and it doesn't matter what speed you run the console at because they seem to be independent of that, probably because they're not integrated into the system in the same way that the SNES' sound circuitry is.
Of course, this does mean that you can use a switched PAL machine running a PAL cart and put it in 60Hz mode for extra speedy Sonic fun

[JAY]

youll have to be really careful, scrape the green from the trace that comes from the broken pad, and very carefully solder to the trace.

You mean the wire going between the JP3 and JP4 pads, right?  Well, my dad was fidgeting with the board to try to find out what to do, and in the process he pulled back that trace towards the JP3 pad, thinking that that was the one I cut, despite me specifically pointing to the spot I cut beforehand.  So now, with this trace being only connected to the JP3 pad (assuming that's how it would be after the JP4 pad got yanked), wouldn't I just be able to solder the wire straight to that JP3 pad?  If this trace is supposed to lead somewhere, then it isn't anymore, and soldering to the wire wouldn't do much good.  I don't really know what these pads are for (or what they do), so correct me if I'm wrong.

Now my dad is suggesting that we drill a hole in the location of the removed pad and set some new copper in to create a new solder point, and connect both the trace and the modding wire to it.  But I won't let him near it until I get some verification from someone who actually knows what to do.  

[phreak97]

both the pads should have traces leading from them other than the short one that went between them. i dont know enough about the nomad mod to tell you which pads to use. but follow the guide exactly. there are no alternative pads. you cannot use the opposite side of a set of pads, it just doesnt work that way.

[JAY]

I only see a trace running from the inner JP3 pad, not from the JP4 pad.  I shone a light behind the pad and couldn't see any wires other than those from the JP3 pad.

From this picture, it doesn't even look like there is one:  http://www.gamesx.com/grafx/gennomadbutton3.jpg

[phreak97]

in that picture, it looks like the trace from the very bottom solder pad leads off to the right, and the two in the middle lead off to the left, towards that capacitor. the top pad is ground it looks like. because the two middle pads are linked together, only one of them needs to be connected anywhere, and it will connect both. the lower one is the one with the trace leading to the left.

[Akir]

coincedentially, what exactically does the MODE button do? I have a Genesis mk. II with a 6-button controller, and MODE does nothing. Not even on games that use the 6-button pads (like Ranger-X).

[NFG]

Holding MODE while powering up the system disables the extra buttons.  In theory - what actually happens is that games unaware of the six button pad like Tengen's MsPacMan still freak out, while most games operate fine either way.