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.
The Dreamcast Karaoke is probably the most useless Sega add-on. It serves no other purpose than to accompany the Sega Kara software, which is useless as well.
Back in the days you were able to download and sing thousands of songs, then in 2006 the servers were shut down for good.
Without the servers there are no songs – you can still connect microphones to the Dreamcast and listen to your voice with Sega Kara, change the volume and add effects, but that’s about it.
Last year I replaced the broken GD-ROM of my Sega Dreamcast with a GDEMU. While it works great and does everything as it is supposed to do, there is a large open space where SD cards tend to get lost:
An unusual SegaSaturn accessory: The 3RADD – A sound enhancer with SRS psychoacoustic technology, read a review on this japanese blog. A scan of the manual.
The effect with audio sources is quite nice, it boosts the sound and positions it around your head. The technology is used in all kinds of devices and software, e.g. the Windows Media Player (SRS WOW).
Now that I have an extra backup of my Mega CD save files on the Sega CD Ultra Backup RAM cart I can replace the battery of my the old CD BackUp RAM Cart without worrying about data loss.
It is possible to do an open heart surgery to prevent the memory from being erased and replace the battery while the Mega CD is turned on . I went for that procedure to avoid having to copy all files from one cart to another again. Continue reading A new battery for the Sega CD BackUp RAM Cart→
On the next pictures you can see why it is called “mini”, its much smaller than the official Sega Power Base Converters. It fits in a regular Mega Drive cart, you have to cut holes in the top for the connector and the front right for the Pause button though. The JTAG connector isn’t necessary and was added just for fun. Sonic is still looking at you because there is no label available – the only one I’ve found is from Stone Age Gamer and kinda ugly. Continue reading Power Base FM→
The cart on the right-hand side is a new backup RAM cart for Mega CD with 8189 blocks of memory. That’s four times as much memory the original Sega Backup RAM Cart has available for storage (2045 blocks). I’ve bought an used Sega cart in 2003 and am glad that the battery is still good – it’s a matter of time until it’ll lose its charge and my save files. Continue reading Sega CD Ultra Backup RAM→
Today, I’m finally testing the Sega Pri Fun printer that I bought 4-5 years ago. Back then, it was still sealed.
The printer was marketed by Sega in 1995 as an add-on for the Pico and Saturn game consoles. You won’t find much information about it on the WWW except a small article at Sega Retro and a commercial on YouTube.
