Hi there, first post here.

I found a Sega Mega Drive in our basement and am working on restoring it. It turns on, but I have no audio or video.

I never used a cartridge-driven console before, so I want to make sure this is not user error. I need to plug in the cartridge before turning on the console, and then there should be a boot screen and eventually the game.

Is it possible for the contacts to be too dirty to allow reading the cartridges?

And then lastly, I had a peek into the maintenance manual I may need to exchange hardware parts. Should I need to; do you know any trustworthy sellers in the EU that could have parts compatible with the Mega Drive? I have been looking for a 53.2034 MHz +/-20ppm oscillater since it could be faulty, but couldn’t find any shop that had one with that odd of a MHz frequency.

Any advice is appreciated. :)

Edit: Thank you all for your comments. On further inspection the contacts on the Mega Drive’s cartridge-slot were oxidized. A little bit of sand paper did the trick. :)

  • thallamabond@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    Probably would not hurt to pop it open and look for obvious problems. Capacitors can bulge on top or leak electrolytic fluid on the circuit board.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor?origin=serp_auto

    Look for cracks in the motherboard under where the plugs go in on the back, or any parts where somebody might push into.

    Also if there’s a bunch of crud in there you can clean it out.

    Edit: yes you are doing it right. Put the cartridge in, turn it on.

    • KokusnussRitterOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      The capacitors look okay, and I can’t see any cracks (yet). The board and part of it’s shroud are however hotglued in place 🎉 so it’s hard to tell atm. Can hot glue mess with the conductivity of the board? Because there is one nice blob right on the PCB

      • thallamabond@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Hot glue is non conductive so it should not mess anything up. Out of curiosity, what game did you try?

        Edit: also if you don’t mind what method are you using to connect it to the television?

        • KokusnussRitterOPEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          NHL 95 and Sonic. Will clean the contacts soon, then try again. As for the connection to my pc monitor, I am using RCA, run it into a RCA to HDMI converter and then into my monitor

    • kerobaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      No, the original versions of the Mega Drive had no built-in games. They will display nothing but a black screen if a) there is no cartridge inserted or b) the console can’t read the cartridge.