Power Mods

[undamned]

Anybody do any cool power mods to their consoles?  I always thought it would be cool to replace the 7805's in my retro systems w/ power efficient switchers...
-ud

[Tiido Priimägi]

By soldering a single wire in a MCD, you only need 1 (powerful) AC brick to run your MD+MCD combo. When I get my cam next week, I can take a picture of it.

[duo_r]

OH that's sooo bad ass! I love those kind of mods! I did a power mod to a PS2 once, tapped a 7808 and built a jack that powered a PS1 LCD that had a custom stand.

Love more details on the powerbrick for the MD / MCD

By soldering a single wire in a MCD, you only need 1 (powerful) AC brick to run your MD+MCD combo. When I get my cam next week, I can take a picture of it.

[Tiido Priimägi]

Right now I'm using an European MD2 brick, which is barely enough. When I have the VFD tubes in my MD2 turned off, everything is fine... if not, then on any motor activity the VFDs get dim and you can hear loud humm in sound.

[RobIvy64]

I wish I had more time to get back into any sort of console modding.

[Tiido Priimägi]

The pic I've forgotten about MCD2 single AC brick mod. BTW, unless you install a diode or 2 into MD2, you cannot have 2 AC bricks plugged in as the same time. No problems in MD1, they have 2 diodes present in them on the 12V line going to MCD connector. There's no point in using a AC brick on MCD anymore.

And Rob, you need to show yourself more

[l_oliveira]

Just to mention, I fried an Mega Drive several years ago doing that mod ...  It was so brutal.
It fried the main CPU and the VDP+it's video RAM (d'oh)
I fixed the unit a year or two ago, after I got some dead japanese megadrive (oxidized motherboard) for the 68000 and the 315-5413 (VDP) chip.

[Tiido Priimägi]

the 12V line is soooo close to some other nice signals and the 5V line... I always fear 12V going into anything else when messing around that area......

[horror77]

so this bypasses power to the SegaCD? If so awesome!!! Does it work with NTSC Genny? Hellz yeah it would be so nice..

[Tiido Priimägi]

there is not reason it should not work on NTSC machines, afterall, they're all near identical

[horror77]

yeah, i figrued as much. What kind of single (powerful) AC brick should I use? Any write up on this anywhere else cause the picture is swell but would like more info seeing my Sega CD players are like my bling bling..

cheers

[GUTS]

Damn that's cool, you should put that up on the wiki. I second the request for a write up, I'd love to do that to my model 1 genesis/sega cd combo.

[duo_r]

How did you fry the MD? So this mod is done on the MD system itself? More details would be great. Also what power brick do you use?

Just to mention, I fried an Mega Drive several years ago doing that mod ...  It was so brutal.
It fried the main CPU and the VDP+it's video RAM (d'oh)
I fixed the unit a year or two ago, after I got some dead japanese megadrive (oxidized motherboard) for the 68000 and the 315-5413 (VDP) chip.

[l_oliveira]

I don't know exactly how it happened. But you know that the 1st gen Mega Drive/Genesis has two 7805 and two power rails...  All the chips on one of the power rails fried...

It took me a long time to get the unit fully working again. And man at the time it was my "main" Mega Drive

At first (after replacing all blown chips) it would play only Master System games with the adapter (68000 bus was stuck for some reason)
In the end I replaced the 68000 RAMs too and it started working again.