ChaoticBiker

Hello @EvilDragon17, doing some archeology here - but I have an exactly same issue! Atari Lynx II. Has BennVenn screen and has been recapped. Was working fine, then laid up with a cartridge inserted. Now it powers up immediatelly when batteries put in or adapter plugged in. Can be switched off, but won't switch back on unless unplugged, then needs half a minute, then plug in and boom it's back on again. Have you managed to find out what was the exact issue?

Hi, Just wanted to update - it's all finally working! While the port remains dodgy with a very crude repair to a broken pin - it works. The actual offender was a damaged resistor R151 - it got damaged during recap, but I measured it then and it seemed OK. Well, checked it again and it wasn't OK anymore. Just received my replacement smd resistors (a whole 100 of them, lol) and replaced - and it works no issue at the moment

Thank you for responding so quickly. If I let it sit it will sit at RetroHQ logo and not move any further If I press OPTION it will all slide down and sit at a black screen. Sometimes it "hangs" on the press option for firmware and does not react to any input other times it won't even bring up the prompt And finally, occasionally it will bring up the prompt only for it to slide down after a second or two The RetroHQ logo in all cases above stays on. Same behaviour with or without an SD card and with or without joystick plugged in I am not using Jaglink, just a generic SCART cable from cool-novelties on ebay (been using them for most of my SCART needs) Apart from that I have a replacement PSU Jaguar has been very recently re-capped and does not have caps C93 and C45 as it did not have them before recap Could a dodgy cart slot pin connection could be the cause of such behaviour?

Hi All, Having this issue on my Jaguar Gamedrive brand new, first time use. Goes into RetroHQ logo, and asks to press option for firmware update. Once option pressed, logo and notification slide down, and screen remains black. Same behaviour with or without SD card in. Any advice?

Hi, 256mb is the limit. when you get the stuff from masteries, he gives you 2 images. One won't work correctly with tos 1.02. He gives you a second link which is a 1gb image, and this works flawessly. I'd recomment putting it into a emulator like hatari, and adding any extra software you wish, and also adding extra partitions to suit your SD card. Then just write image to SD and you're ready to go! I found that even a 2gb sd card is slightlyoverkill for games, software, mods and midis hope this helps!

Received my hard disk unit today All working now with a taiwanese Y16GE30 (only marking I could find on it as otherwise a noname) 16Gb MicroSD HC U1 / now using a Samsung 2GB as it's all that's needed really. Atari 520 STFM, TOS 1.02 Card formatted and image deployed no issues using built in SD card slot in an old MSI CX61 series laptop (windows 10) Power supplies that DID NOT WORK (using the same old and cheap cable) Lenovo USB-C HUB model C611 Sony charger UCH12 1300-7140.1 Power supply that DOES WORK Primark USB Travel Charger Model: MDUSB3BKMPRM 3 USB ports into side cart slot - Atari ST STE USB Power Cartridge Dongle

yeah that is indeed weird which is why I started this thread. I have never seen a bootleg quite like this. And I have seen a few, even still have some for comparison, some dating back to late 90's - none are like this particular one... Also all my bootlegs (really only have 5 of them or so atm) are PAL region case, and this one is JAP region case.. an interesting oddity And yeah - not even sure whether it is programmable or just a ROM. Which doesn't make sense for a bootleg I tried looking up anything similar, and digging deep through internets you can find other carts similar to this one released in Asian PAL region. Not sure what to make of that. Would not surprise me at all if bootlegs of this kind in that region were the absolute norm. But not enough data to draw any such conclusion.

Hey thanks for the info! I've actually managed to open the case without furhher damaging the label. Indeed inside is what looks like a vintage bootleg eeprom - see picture. Also the lack of copyright on title screen indicates this is a bootleg. I've never seen one like this before, as bootlegs usually have cheap/poor quality plastics and pcb's and this one is quite solid. And the label is proper thick paper sticker with coating - even the PCB and eeprom looks as close to the real thing as possible - except again Sega TM's are missing and the chip appears to be slightly lighter gray than original. I personally found this quite interesting.

A lot of you guys make very good points. Shops using eBay prices as an excuse to charge ridiculous amounts. Ebay getting severely out of hand and beyond reach of the average collector - seems like it's only youtubers buying all this stuff to make that one video and then either put it on a shelf or sell it on for yet even more inflated price to their community (huge props when proceeds go to charity though) I've, like many, started collecting when most of the stuff I have was considered just worthless old junk. And so happy that I did - I would absolutely not be able to have a quarter of the hardware/games if I had to pay today's prices Which brings me to the conclusion... I stopped buying retro games completely. Just bought an everdrive or any other SD based drive for every console or computer I have. It is the best and most cost effective way to keep your old hardware alive, enjoy your favourite games and also play about with home brew (new games for old hardware are so much cheaper when purchased as ROM instead of physical media!) and demoscene plus all the fun hacks. So this is the way I am pursuing now. Yes occasionally I will still bid on something from ebay, but only if I think there's a reasonable chance of getting it cheap And as a final note re Ebay Noticed more recently, BIN prices are usually starting at x2 the usual sale price of an average auction for similar item - And if people stopped bidding crazy money then maybe there's still hope the craze is slowly coming to an end - whether it's because too many people gave up, became disillusioned, or whether simply as world moves on and so many modern, easy to use offerings to play Retro (all them mini consoles, retro games packages on PSN or Nintendo Switch, ever cade or Mister) I think there's still long term hope

The reason it's like that is to allow easy addition/removal of components without having to lift and turn it around each time. I kind of expected it to not work the first time around. Also, the total cost of my mod as it stands, with all the extra replacement capacitors etc was less than £15 in total. The education and experience gained though! And still got enough leftover components to make a couple more, just need to buy transistors as only had one. Migh attempt to AV mod that 2600 clone I have as well

LOL. That worked. seriously. As suspected, I am an idiot. ? Perhaps need to add a bit of background at this point: I had very few original carts, with a P on it, assuming this means PAL. Then I came into possession of a larger library which someone was throwing out - carts which do not have a P on them. I assume they're all NTSC then. This was what prompted me to do the AV mod in the first place - so I can enjoy playing these. Well I guess it's back to the Uno Cart I will check all of them and yeah basically everything that throws the odd colour I'll put aside as NTSC. Luckily there's a retro convention happening next weekend in Glasgow, might try to sell them off there. I actually believed it was an NTSC console. How do I tell by looking at it? there's nothing immediately on either the box or on/inside the console that would tell one way or the other. Thank you all for your contributions. I do not consider all these capacitors and resistors replaced as wasted - the picture is indeed much improved and overall I hope I extended the life of my system. Also, the more you know ? lessons learned!

Thank you, yes I though about that and tried it - no difference whether I use pins next to AV mod or the points on the board. Plus the way they're placed, little chance of them connecting to anything they shouldn't have However, once I get to soldering back the original resistors (which should be hopefully end of this week), I'll clean up and remove the excessive wires, as there's no longer any need for them. I'll update what happens then.

yes sorry I missed that. The 3rd pin on the transistor is attached to line 7 - that's +5v the markings on this transistor appear to say it's 2N 3904 -A25 Was hoping this would be the case, but no. Screenshots roughly show variations of pallette I am able to get using the potentiometer. There's a momentary B/W between each of them, and each pallette has a slight variation as the range goes by, but not enough to warrant additional screenshots. It's almost like it cannot strike the balance between the three main colours... RGB... like one has not enough red, the other not enough green, and third not enough blue.. I wonder if I now re-attach the 75ohm resistor, which would go between GND and VIDEO OUT, would it change anything... Initially removed as it was making the pic very dim, at the very start of troubleshooting, but then I also replaced a lot of things so maybe now it will make a difference

Please accept my apologies if any of my previous posts came as abrupt or rude. They were not meant to be to be perceived as such. I do value and consider every suggestion given, and am very thankful for the engagement on these forums, as it is always very helpful to have more experienced people sharing their knowledge. I have replaced the .22k 100v green cap I mentioned in my previous post, as it looked quite dodgy. No change to the picture, unfortunately. Here's the choice of colours I am getting now. Excude the glow, the sun appears to be in full shine today, making it a tad difficult to take photos of the screen. You have to trust me, the picture is very bright and sharp - it's just wrong colours! . In the below examples, the colours are very obviously wrong in every case. This is what happens when I play about with the potentiometer on the board. All of these are obviously ranges, with slight differences on the start of the range to finish. Position 1, which is potentiometer turned almost completely counter clockwise appears to be closest to what it should be. And here's my hackjob of an AV mod. Please note, when it comes to soldering, I have no idea what I'm doing yet somehow my mods work, usually well within the first 15 attempts. It did look a lot nicer when it was first put together, but since then it had numerous resistors added/removed to it. It currently has a 4.7k and a 6.8k resistor, and no 75ohm as if I add one, the picture goes very dim. Current resistors have been purposefully soldered without legs being cut, to allow easy desoldering if/when required. There do not appear to be any unwanted connections /shorts between any of the lines - checked using a multimeter. Oh and don't mind the yellow tape - it's only there to hold the board in place. And the silver 4.7uf cap has been just replaced as well. Instructions for pins I followed from here https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/atari_2600_6_pal I've lost the printout I had for soldering the pins onto the board, but it was pretty straightforward, usually just wires in place of removed components. You might notice there's some extra wires coming out the board - pretty much double the amount. Reason for that is, they were soldered originally into them pins right next to where the original RF module was. Since initially I thought that was the issue, I then soldered them to points on the board - with no change at all. They are currently soldered in both places - pins next to the mod, and points on the board top line - whice wire and then blue is pass through for Audio. no issues there. 2nd line from top is video out. it is connected to 3rd line down 3rd line has the transistor out. It's purposefully shorted to line 2 but not to 4th. (it's Video OUT) 4th line from top with yellow wire going to the board and black to pin 4. It connects to the middle pin of the transistor (video IN) 5th and 6th lines are empty 7th line has the +5v - drawn from two places atm, from the board and from pin 3 next to the av mod. There's the 4.7k resistor connecting line 7 with line 4 8th line is GND and 6.8k to 4th line - middle leg on the transistor / video in Since I started this thread, I solved all issues regarding: brightness and sharpness or colour seep/loss. Mostly thanks to replacing caps and the voltage regulator. All I'm left with, is to get the colours right.

Thanks for the insights, I'll check the voltages - but there's one more thing I feel I need to do. Instructions followed were for hte standard DIY AV mod, which involve removing a few components off the board (I kept all the original components - though if replacing would preferably use new ones) That one thing to do - I noticed the green mylar capacitor 0.22 100v which is right next to the power switch does not look right - it looks bloated, especially when compared against pics of similar boards on the internet. Don't have a replacement at hand, but ordered one and will replace it as after checking around I believe it might responsible for picture and colours. Will update after replacement (which most likely will be after the weekend)

that' some solution, but UAV kits don't seem to be available in the UK, and not wanting to wait months and pay over the odds to have it imported from the US of A. Unless someone points me where to get this in UK? Might eventually go this way, but for now just trying to fiddle with what I have. So far I've replaced another thing on my 2600, the 7805 voltage regulator. It improved picture stability, an issue I thought was related to the TV I was using for testing but now turns out picture is better. Also tested in on the LCD that was losing colour after a minute or so - this does not happen anymore, so yay! Still wrong colours though.

Hi all, welcome to my thread which is ANOTHER one of those where AV mod only made things worse So let me start from the beggining: Atari VCS Heavy Sixer "Sunnyvale edition". Not sure if it's NTSC or PAL.... Before AV mod: unit working fine, or as fine as it could via RF antennae input. Used the DIY mod with a voltage regulator and 2.2k, 3.3k and 75 resitors, kind of like this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133754808637 Also using an aftermarket power supply - 1A. Have also an aftermarket 0.5A. There's hardly any difference in the picture quality when using either. After mod: issue no.1 - NO picture (but sound!) Solution no.1 - fiddled with the onboard potentiometer only to receive a very faint picture (it turned out later, the picture was always there - it was just very, very dim) issue no.2 picture extremely faint, recognised only on some TV's/monitors Solution no.2 - removed the 75 ohm resitor, as advised on the forums here. IMPROVEMENT! Now I can atually see what's on the screen, and even play! issue no.3 is two part. while solution 2 improved the situation and picture is now recognised on almost all my TV's and monitors... 3.a) the colours are wrong. It also looks like there's no yellow? fiddling with the onboard potentiometer only goes through a variety of colour pallets, all of them wrong, with B/W in between. 3.b) the picture is still quite faint. Can see enough to be playable, but nowhere what I'd expect it to be. Also the more modern TV's will only in some cases hold colour for a minute or two, before going greyscale. Older CRT monitors don't display this behaviour. So far no solution to this one... I've tried following some advice on the forum here, with various people reporting AV mod issues, so what I tried so far: replacing the 2.2k and 3.3k resistors with 4.7k and 6.8k - this appear to have changed absolutely nothing. I currently have the 4.7 and 6.8 put in, but happy to experiment if you fine folk recommend this way. I have replaced two caps in my Atari, the big 2200uF one, and C201 - it did not change anything. Suggestions what else I might need to replace? Adding back the 75ohm resistor only makes the picture go completely dark, but from what I can see - the colours are still wrong. Running out of ideas here, and if it's going to be like that, I'm just going to revert back to the RF modulator (which I very much like to avoid) To reiterate, the atari worked fine, correct colours etc. through RF before the mod.

I'm sorry but I don't think that's correct. According to Sega Retrom, there's no European version of the game. There are both USA and JP versions, as I posted in my first post with links to labels. Also, the ASIAN PAL megadrive does take JAP carts without any mod - the cart slot does not have these notches like in USA or EU versions - it's more alike of JP megadrive -don't have one at hand to show, but they can be found on google. Note I do have an Asian PAL megaCD - it outputs PAL and connects with a PAL system - but will only play JP region games. Also - I believe this is EXACTLY what ASIAN PAL carts look like - they are just like the JP versions, take a look for example at this ebay listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mega-Games-1-Video-Game-Sega-Mega-Drive-ASIAN-PAL-TESTED-/174693073413?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338268676&toolid=10044&customid=Cj0KCQjwlOmLBhCHARIsAGiJg7mM10oa4vQ2HhIX9K8SkiWBzHNUOSqk93k_Opym0EFoLNJl2BzCpSgaAtrREALw_wcB And finally, while so far I've decided against opening the cart, having had a peek inside through the slot I can see full-size chips inside, none of them black blobs you'd expect in a bootleg. Tried to take a photo but it's difficult to show.

Not sure about bootleg. The cart is good quality, none of this modern day made cheap bendy plastic that feels like it's about to fall apart in your hands type. Also, I had to take the top off my MD, and it works both on PAL and NTSC the MD I'm running is region-switch modded Here's with switch in the PAL position: And here's with switch in the NTSC (same results for USA/JAP NTSC): And yes, it's black/white as this little TV doesn't like NTSC signal - I'm sure if I plug this to another TV it would be full-colour. So it appears to be region-free. And like I said before - when I initially got it, it did come with an ASIAN PAL system - that's why I'm wondering. Also all the bootlegs I've seen so far, were in Europe/USA style cases - I've never seen one in a JAP case (not saying they don't exist tho) Given the cartridge is made of good quality material just as you would expect a JAP version to be, and "feels right" to touch and also in terms of weight - I do have some bootleg cartridges and the first giveaway is they are LIGHT! (and flimsy), not to mention the pins - they just look right and you know what I'm talking about if you've ever seen a bootleg/cheap chinese cart Oh well guess on to try and carefully remove the back label and unscrew to see what's inside...

Hey all, it's me again So going through my collection, I've found a cartridge I've previously dismissed as a famiclone fake. But as I took a closer look, it appears to be a Sega Mega Drive game. The thing is, I'm struggling to identify what version it is Game is Street Smart, and is already categorised as "uncommon" by rarityguide. Here's the pic of USA version cover off Sega Retro site: https://segaretro.org/File:StreetSmart_MD_US_Cart.jpg and here's the JP version: https://segaretro.org/File:StreetSmart_MD_JP_Cart.jpg and here's what I have: Now it can be clearly seen, it has the JP style cart, but the art is a cut out and stretch of the original (or possibly the JP is a squeezed version?) I was not able to fit this into my PAL MD as the cart physically doesn't fit. Don't want to take the board out to try, at least not yet. Judging by what system this came with (an ASIAN PAL) I will take a guess this is exactly this - an ASIAN PAL version of the game. Anyone know anything about this? I have a region-switch modded MD2, should I remove the PCB from the cart and try it out? Any thoughts on this are appreciated

Adding more photos, as for whatever reason wasn't able to edit my post here -admin feel free to merge: Screen showing the message, when connected to an NTSC system And here it is running Night Striker, connected with a PAL system

Hi all, I was wondering if any fix has been found here? I too have a heavy sixer which I done an EV mod on and similar issues - removed the 75ohm resistor seems to improved the situation enough for it to become playable, but still not nearly as good as one would want. Second try is gonna try to replace the other resistors as per advice in another thread, but wondering if anyone got any other suggestions? Also, is there a readily available recap kit for the heavy sixer anywhere?

Hey all, Just wondering if anyone got any idea about them Sega MegaCD ASIAN PAL systems. There appears to be very little information about them online, all I found was some pictures of a box on Sega Retro https://segaretro.org/File:MCD2_PAL_AS_Box_Front.jpg and recently and auction with quite the price stuck on it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/274748036207 (and yes, don't rub your eyes, it is really priced like that) And that's about it. The info is - they exists. Reason I am asking is as I seem to have one of those systems. It is MK-4102-07 model, which is matching both what's on the box and in that auction. It works perfectly fine with a PAL system, but only plays asian/Japan region games (with PAL video output). It refuses to play USA or EU region games only seeing the CD's as sudio tracks (will work if you run a region-free BIOS via everdrive). Just trying to find out as much information about this as I possibly can - who, when, why, what was the point. And possibly how did they make their way into UK as this is where I got mine. Here's my observations so far, for anyone else looking out for these things in the future, when comparing to a standard Mega CD2 - the body is two tone. Bottom half is lighter blue-ish tone rather than black. Stickers also are placed differently (notably it's missing the "Class 1 Laser Product" yellow sticker. The metal support for MD2 from a PAL megaCD does not fit here as the ASIAN PAL does not have the holes underneath the slot where it would normally go. Does not prevent one form plugging any megadrive and using it without it. When plugged into a NTSC system it will display a message stating "ERROR! THIS IS A PAL-COMPATIBLE MEGA-CD FOR EXCLUSIVE USE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA."

It's been a while, but hey ho, while the situation around the world relaxed, I've took the car and traveled a wee distance (1200 miles one way) to visit my parents. The mission was not only to finally see them in person after years apart, but also to collect whatever remained of my collection back there. And lo and behold, I found the actual box for this Atari clone seems it says 208 games on it.

A wee update, sorry it's taking so long I seem to be struggling to get an exact count of how many games are built in on the clone... the listing certainly doesn't match the 32-in-1 cartridge and there's way more than 32 games - in fact it's way over 100. Had a google around and I suspect it might be the 224-in-1, which would make sense with the amount of games the system appears to be going through. The games do not have names displayed which makes it even harder as unless you know your Atari catalogue and can name a game just by looking at - I can't so won't be able to list them all without spending much time researching quite a few of them.