When I bought a second-hand Sega Pico in 2015, I immediatly noticed that something must be wrong with it. I didn’t expect a lot of interactivity or gameplay, but at least it should let me draw something. It turned out that the pen was registering the position/movement and also made a clicking noise when pressed down, but nothing else happened. The error was quickly found and repaired (broken micro switch), but the photos have been waiting on my hard drive ever since. A short repair instruction was posted on the ASSEMblergames board in the following year, so I didn’t see the need to rush out an article. Well, here we go:
The label of the pen is missing and it seems that somebody tried to open it up before me:
The times are over, when I had to hunt down and modify Sega Pico game cartridges that had been assembled in Mexico. This has just arrived from TeamEurope: Parts to build a real Sega Pico flash cart and more.
Five years ago, I bought my second game for the Bandai Datach: Ultraman Club: Spokon Fight!! (ウルトラマン倶楽部 スポ根ファイト!!). Also five years ago, it became possible to play the Bandai Datach games in MESS and make use of scanned barcodes.
In the meantime, MESS became MAME, and it is still possible to play these games (for instructions see below). It’s time for another batch of scanned cards.
This has arrived today from Ukraine: The new SD2SNES Mk.III aka SD2SNES Pro, designed by ikari_01 and manufactured by Krikzz.
Right now, it seems to have a bug when used in combination with a SuperCIC. As soon as the SuperCIC is enabled in the configuration, there is no picture and sync is lost (also, weird readings on the OSSC display). Upon switching the frequency, the LED of the console turns red and is stuck in that status. According to this thread, a firmware update is needed for one of the SuperCIC chips. I’m looking forward to see if this can be resolved through a SD2SNES firmware update. Otherwise, I’ll have to desolder and flash one of the SuperCIC chips.
