Rubbish to Royalty - The Sega Drive

I bought this Sega Mega Drive on Adverts a good few months back for little or nothing. It was sold as faulty, not powering on…so I said there's usually very little to prevent a Sega Megadrive from powering on, and as such, might be worth a look. What I wasn't expecting though, was this Megadrive was missing its Mega….it's in a very, very sorry state. Lets see if we can give this Sega Drive its Mega back!

^^ On first glance it's not that bad. Obviously the plastic is very dry and in need of some 303 but nothing out of the ordinary….

^^ Until you look closer, it's absolutely filthy dirty. Caked in dirt and grime.

^^ A cart slot pin looks heavily corroded, with some others slightly discoloured…

^^ And both controller ports are beyond repair, pins missing, bent, pushed back and broken.

^^ When I first opened it, both legs of the power led were actually twisted together for some bizarre reason. That'd obviously prevent the LED from turning on, so maybe it was powering up all along but appeared not to be? Anyway, I straighten them out in order to be able to remove the top shell.

^^ The infestation of filth continues under the shell sadly. I don't know how so much dirt can penetrate this far inside of a closed shell so badly.

^^ Yikes. The dirt alone likely isn't a real problem here in terms of preventing anything working (cart slot aside), but there's no way I can work on this in this state. It''ll need a deep clean.

^^ Not much a beauty shot, unless you're into human hair, skin cells, and god only knows what else…

^^ Surprisingly, with the top RF shield removed, it's a little better under there. Dusty, but not particularly dirty per se.

^^ Before I work on it though, I just want to see if it actually does power up and the issue was the LED legs twisted together…

^^ Noice, that's all it was as suspected. I knew that very little little stop these tanks from working. Forgive the awful composite image, it's the only cable I have here at the moment, but from here I can get started on a deep clean and sorting some of these issues out. Amazing it works with the cart slot pin completely caked like that!

^^ Fully removed from the shell, and ready for cleaning.

^^ I had bought a few bits in preparation for this job. New controller ports, a new DC jack, and a new cart connector. Obviously the controller ports are beyond repair so I'll need to swap them out, but ideally I'd love to keep the original cart slot (as the replacements are likely of a lesser quality these days), and the barrel jack isn't required as we've seen the unit is happily powering up.

^^ I reflow all the cart slot pins to begin with, hopefully it's salvageable.

^^ A pic I had to grab later on as I'd forgotten at the time, but the cart slot pin corrosion cleaned off fairly well. There's a small bit that's caked on, but there's more than enough of the pin exposed now to make a proper contact.

^^ One controller port desoldered and ready to fall out…

^^ And fallen out…

^^ The new Ali ones are as you'd expect, not an exact match at all. They lack the retaining tab that'll prevent the port being pushed in too far also. Hopefully they work well enough to at least play/use the console.

^^ Replacement soldered in. We need nice solid joints here, as the port is only strengthened by its solder connections here given there's no locking tab on these new ones.

^^ A quick test fit shows it fits in anyway. It sits slightly back compared to an original, but it should suffice.

^^ Both done.

^^ Time for a warm bath I think…

^^ While the shell is soaking in water, I decide to treat the voltage regulators to some nice fresh new thermal paste. They're 7805's so they do run hot, but with some fresh paste they should be a little happier anyway.

^^ Reassembly begins. Both RF shields were showing notable corrosion, so they got a clean down and then spray painted to prevent any further spread of corrosion. You can see the silver colour of the lower shield here in places…

^^ Top shield got the same treatment, and is back in place here.

^^ Ok it's looking a little better here. I'll need to buy some 303 Protectant to really lift the plastic, but at least it's very clean now.

^^ Controller ports ready for action.

^^ Ok it still works! Always nice to see…you never know what you've forgotten to reconnect etc.

^^ Time to test the controller…they feel a little loose in the controller port it must be said, definitely not a factory feel….but hey, they'll do until I can secure some better quality ones and these should at least work!

^^ I can select and play games perfectly! Looks like a good result here.

^^ Yep, the game is still great - Sorry @CiDeRmAn!

^^ Well there you have it, back working, playing games, and very very clean! Its got its Mega back!

^^ I've a few plans for this machine down the road, here's a hint as to what to expect in its next thread!