Sega Menacer power supply mod

Bought a Menacer light gun for the Megadrive some weeks ago.. Can’t say I’m too happy about the battery operation, six triple-A batteries worth of W-T-F! I’d rather have it running on a separate power supply vs. keeping the option of ducking behind the sofa for a reload, so time for a power supply mod then! Figured I’ll go for that default 9VDC wall-wart (like with my Megadrive)..

Hot glue, the (not-so) secret weapon of the tinkerer..

Dear me, what a neat hole!

Amazing display of plug’n play.

Now if only this mod would improve the quality of the bundled games.. :)

Megadrive cart

This one is based on the design by Raphaël Assénat.

I wanted to draw a board of my own even though Raphaël has everything needed to etch a board. My design was supposed to have both PLCC and DIP sockets on the same board but I didn’t manage to fit them within a reasonable sized PCB. :/

As some demoparties (like Breakpoint) require you to demonstrate that your compo entry runs on real hardware, having this cart would’ve allowed me to enter music made on/for Megadrive to such parties.

(Click the picture to download the pdf, etching mask is here)

Board is not tested, so if you decide to try this please let me know how it turned out!

Megadrive modding

I got my hands on a Sega Megadrive 2 about a month ago. As it came with nothing else than a single controller, I had to “fill in the blanks”. PSU and RGB cable were a must at least, but figured I’ll mod it while I’m at it.

Initial maintenance/repairs

The motherboard and case interior were covered with something greasy so I washed the board with some PCB cleaning liquid and dried it carefully with compressed air. Several washes were needed because grease stuck under the ICs started coming out only when drying the board. After that I replaced the missing case fastening screws and resoldered all connector solder pads (some had visible cracks). Reset switch measured around 6kOhm when pressed; probably not working really well so better replace that one as well. The new switch was slightly taller than the original, so I had to file it shorter.