No screen picture on Megadrive - all thoughts welcome

obsidianclock

Hi all,

Would like to ask your thoughts.

I bought a second hand Megadrive from ebay, tried to wire it up yesterday but can't get any kind of picture to appear on my Panasonic TV.

The Megadrive came with two cables for the TV, one was a coaxial cable which I duly plugged into my aerial slot and tried to fine tune. The most I can get is a plain black screen.

The other cable is a component one (with yellow, red and white connectors). I tried connecting this to the relevant ports on the back of the telly but when switching to "component" input, the screen is just black.

My girl kindly obtained a SCART adapter for the above cable and we plugged this in with high hopes but once again whenever we changed to the AV inputs we see nothing on the screen.

I've tried switching the SCART leads and trying another SCART device (a DVD player), which seems to work.

The light comes on, on the Megadrive and I've tried several different games to make sure it loads up.

It seems to me there must be an issue with the Megadrive or the connector cables.

I've decided to buy another Megadrive on eBay and test with the same cables, so if I need to request a refund, then I'll have a watertight case.

However if there's something obvious I missed, any retro gamers out there, I'd be happy for your thoughts!

o1s1n

Sounds like a dirty cartridge/cart slot. Have you tried giving it a clean?

By the way, the yellow/red/white cable is composite and it's really awful. Pick up a proper RGB scart cable on ebay

obsidianclock

o1s1n wrote: »

Sounds like a dirty cartridge/cart slot. Have you tried giving it a clean?

By the way, the yellow/red/white cable is composite and it's really awful. Pick up a proper RGB scart cable on ebay

Good tip, thanks buddy I'll give it a try and also blow into the slot!

o1s1n

Yeah the oul blow trick is a good way of quickly seeing if that's the issue.

Try to pick up some isopropyl alcohol though and some cotton swabs. Give both the edge connector on the cart and the slot on the Megadrive a good clean. (good way of cleaning the cart slot is with cloth, a credit card and the above mentioned Isopropyl)

obsidianclock

o1s1n wrote: »

Yeah the oul blow trick is a good way of quickly seeing if that's the issue.

Try to pick up some isopropyl alcohol though and some cotton swabs. Give both the edge connector on the cart and the slot on the Megadrive a good clean. (good way of cleaning the cart slot is with cloth, a credit card and the above mentioned Isopropyl)

Sounds good buddy, I am a little nervous about sticking swabs in there, maybe a cotton bud would do? I'm terrified I'll do more harm than good.

I do have some alcohol and swabs in first aid kit though will have a look.

o1s1n

The only thing to be conscious of with swabs or cotton buds are pieces breaking off. You'd have better luck with a thin cloth (bit of a sock even) over something thin like a credit card and just slot it in.

Keep in mind though that it's usually the carts that are dirty really, as they're far more exposed. So try cleaning that with a swab first.

Chris_Heilong

If it is an MK1 megadrive then stick some head phones in the front and see if the game is actually starting or not.

BGOllie

I had a dodgy megadrive with weird distorted graphics once. I fixed it by replacing one of the ram chips but after replacing the graphic compression one and the 68000 too... which ended up costing more than a new MD ...ah well .