The sega nomad, a proper home system

[Drakon]

Believe me I only wanted to buy a nomad as a last resort as I'm fully aware that they're rare and expensive. So I picked one up today, consolized it (added s-video and a proper audio jack), plugged it in....and....first let's take a look at the technical specs of the nomad

1: All nomads have a built in sony cxa1645 encoder, it's very easy to add s-video to this encoder (4 parts only) and in my opinion this encoder has a better s-video picture than the cxa1145 found in other models of the genesis

2: The nomad audio quality is the same as the good model 1 genesis systems. One instrument sounded a little quieter but the quality of the audio was identical.

Here's a screenshot comparison between my va6 model 1 genesis that I built a cxa1645 inside of compared to the s-video from my consolized nomad....

cxa1645 genesis model 1:

nomad with s-video from the built in cxa1645:

As you can see the rainbow effect is mostly gone. The rainbow issue was the only thing I wasn't able to fix on the model 1 genesis. Model 2 and 3 genesis systems have cruddy audio (and I think the model 2 also has this rainbow effect). So in my personal opinion the nomad is the best model of the genesis / megadrive ever built. With some modding you can turn it into the ultimate home genesis. (Later I'll add a region switch so I can play my imports).

 

[Kickback]

The rainbow banding on Model 1 Genesis is caused by old/bad caps. Recap it and it will be fine.

 

[themadhacker]

I've s-video modded five or six nomads. It works really well on the nomad.

 

[Bibin]

The rainbow banding on Model 1 Genesis is caused by old/bad caps. Recap it and it will be fine.

Not entirely. The first-first-first revisions of the Model 1 will have some banding by the nature of the encoding.

 

[Kickback]

Recapping it can never go amiss, i have a non-TMSS HDG model, european ofc. I run it through RGB and it's essentially like an emulator, I don't know about S-Video & Composite though.

 

[Bibin]

Recapping it can never go amiss, i have a non-TMSS HDG model, european ofc. I run it through RGB and it's essentially like an emulator, I don't know about S-Video & Composite though.

The rainbow banding will never show up on RGB. It had to do with the encoding stage. I'm not even sure if it would affect a PAL unit in the first place. It has to do with (if I recall correctly) the NTSC color subcarrier not being quite on point, though don't quote me on that. Either way you wouldn't see it through SCART.