Unnecessary context
So long story short, I was itching to do Bibin's TV hack on a '98 Trinitron in my basement. (No, I'm not stupid enough to blow myself up or fry my atria.) But before I did that, I needed an RGB source. Since the Genesis natively supports RGB, I decided that I would add a VGA port to the back of it (again, not unlike Bibin) instead of dealing which seemed easier than dealing with SCART.
Necessary Context
After de-casing my Model 1 Genesis and testing it I used an unbent Christmas ornament hook and a multimeter to trace the video output. But before I inevitably destroyed the board with a soldering iron (I have a tremor) I decided to test the Genesis once more for posterity.
The symptom
Upon booting the board, I get a black composite output and a bit of noise in the headphone jack that indicates that the system is on. This is normal when there's no cartridge in it, but it doesn't seem to read from the cartridge.
Narrowing down the issue
I've tested half of my Genesis collection, fiddling around with cartridge placement in the slot and gotten nothing. I've tried my best to clean the slot with different methods and improve conductivity however I can. I've determined that all the pins of the connector get to the motherboard alright. I've checked the regulators and the Vin of the CPU and PPU, and all have read 5V. Using deductive reasoning I've determined that it's probably an issue between the CPU, RAM, or cart slot. When I run the Genesis for a long period of time, the heat sink (regulators) gets somewhat hot, the CPU gets warm, the PPU gets warm, but the RAM is ice cold.
Any suggestions? Help me ModRetro, you're my only hope.
So long story short, I was itching to do Bibin's TV hack on a '98 Trinitron in my basement. (No, I'm not stupid enough to blow myself up or fry my atria.) But before I did that, I needed an RGB source. Since the Genesis natively supports RGB, I decided that I would add a VGA port to the back of it (again, not unlike Bibin) instead of dealing which seemed easier than dealing with SCART.
Necessary Context
After de-casing my Model 1 Genesis and testing it I used an unbent Christmas ornament hook and a multimeter to trace the video output. But before I inevitably destroyed the board with a soldering iron (I have a tremor) I decided to test the Genesis once more for posterity.
The symptom
Upon booting the board, I get a black composite output and a bit of noise in the headphone jack that indicates that the system is on. This is normal when there's no cartridge in it, but it doesn't seem to read from the cartridge.
Narrowing down the issue
I've tested half of my Genesis collection, fiddling around with cartridge placement in the slot and gotten nothing. I've tried my best to clean the slot with different methods and improve conductivity however I can. I've determined that all the pins of the connector get to the motherboard alright. I've checked the regulators and the Vin of the CPU and PPU, and all have read 5V. Using deductive reasoning I've determined that it's probably an issue between the CPU, RAM, or cart slot. When I run the Genesis for a long period of time, the heat sink (regulators) gets somewhat hot, the CPU gets warm, the PPU gets warm, but the RAM is ice cold.
Any suggestions? Help me ModRetro, you're my only hope.
