I bought a Sega Titan Video (ST-V) mainboard and a Darksoft multi-cart along with a CPS2 in 2018 for use at home. I’ve rarely used it, and everything I’ve done with it hasn’t been documented here. This is about to change as it seems I have opened Pandora’s box after testing a SuperGun with it.
Introduction
The Sega Titan Video, more commonly known as Sega ST-V or STV is an arcade system based on the Sega Saturn. Not only based on, but actually having the same specifications, which makes it a low-cost arcade system (Nicole Express commented on this here). A lot of information about this system can be found in the usual places, such as Sega Retro, System 16, Arcade Otaku Wiki and most importantly the Arcade-Project Forums which turned out to be an invaluable source over the years to get this thing running. You will find many links to threads of this forum in this article.
This is a follow-up on the Terraonion MegaSD Cartridge article from 2019. In the past two years, I managed to find an MSDEXP adapter and a clamshell case for my MegaSD cartridge.
MSDEXP
Thanks to Mobius Strip Tech, I was able to source an MSDEXP. I can now finally play Mega-CD 32X games with the MegaSD.
The housing from Retro Frog is a high-quality print with a matte look. Inside there are two connectors, some passive components and a lot of tracks:
Last week, I just wanted to quickly test some Famicom carts and realised that the console wasn’t outputting any picture or sound. There was still a reaction on the TV though: black picture and a crackling sound when I switched it off. Fearing the worst, I opened it up and saw my favourite insulation tape. However, as I’ve learned in the past, this stuff disintegrates over the years and sticks to everything, so now I was apparently in for not only a repair but also a clean. I opened the console and plugged it in again. When I removed some of the insulating tape, graphics rubbish suddenly appeared on the TV. On closer inspection, I realised that the NESRGB board was tilted slightly backwards. It must have come loose at some point.
While the Amiga CD³² can play CD-MIDI discs, it lacks a MIDI out port to hand over the data to a MIDI playback device. I’m going to build an adapter with a keyboard pass-through for its AUX port.
CD-MIDI (or CD+MIDI) is an extension of the Red Book Audio CD that allows MIDI data to be stored in the subcode channels, just like CD+G and CD-Text does it with graphics and text data. Only very few devices are known to be able to make use of that information: CD³², CDTV and WonderMega. Even though the Green Book describes a MIDI extension, the Philips CD-i is not among these devices, and so far, no CD-i hardware or software that made use of MIDI has surfaced.
After 2,5 years, TeamEurope updated their Sega Pico Flash Cart / Adapter to v2. Previously, I either modified“Assembled in Mexico” Pico cartridges or used the first version of the flash cart / adapter. Version 2 comes with some new features (e.g., added switches for ROM sizes and memory banks) and is split into two PCBs: FULL and REPRO. Additionally, they have released design files for the back covers.
Sega Pico flash cart / adapter v2 kits and back covers
This has just arrived: A flash cart (multi-cart) by TeamEurope. I’ve been involved in the development in the very beginning and am very excited that it has finally has become reality. This is the kit that I’ve received upon special request:
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:
