Anyone bought a Sega Nano Arcade? (MD clone)

Spotted a Nano Arcade AR8102. Comes with built in games and is pretty tiny.



Has anyone opened one of these up yet?


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/110773954...X:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_1426wt_1185

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arcade-Na...ltDomain_3&hash=item19c879f40f#ht_1453wt_1185

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arcade-Na...ltDomain_3&hash=item19c87a89af#ht_1448wt_1185

 

Looks pretty cute, maybe I get all of them. :thumbsup:

But I dont have good experiences with those plug n play consoles. (Sega Handheld that the supermarkets sold, anyone?) Maybe I'll wait for experiences of users. :redface:

 

I have bought one, intend to open it up before I even use it lol.

Hoping there is an accessible flash chip or way to patch one in, rather than a blob on the board.

Will post pics when it arrives.

 

Saw these on HUKD earlier. A nice novelty but annoyingly fiddly by the looks of them.

 

Guy at work gave me the link. I assume that's why the sonic one had its price increase and loads of them sold today.

Yeah I agree it looks fiddly. Plan is to take it a part and see if I can get more games on it... Probably put it in a different casing and run a pad to it.... Basically something to mess with

 

Arrived today.

Games run slow, almost as if the speed difference between a 60hz and 50hz rom was applied to a 50hz rom.

There is a TSOP inside (yay, hacking!). But I cant get any results from the chip part number.

DMC D30N16008
2U680300
1031SIT

Im guessing the part I want is "D30N16008" which points to a 2MB chip (16mb). Also sounds about right for the size of the roms.

I will try lifting the chip and see if my programmer can at least get a ID from it.

 

Any scans/pics of teh guts?

 

Ill post pics tomorrow.

Chip identified by its device ID direct from the chip.

Its actually a Macronix MX29LV640B.

8MB and I have dumped it.

Edit:

Upon looking in the dump, it looks easy enough to replace the roms with ones of my choice. Menu strings are also in plain text, so possibly mess with that too.


I dont know how this site will see me posting the dump.... the games are just roms (as been available for years). Could any staff chime in?

 

Looks cheap (but not very cheerful).

 

Build quality is actually much better than I expected.

I will get pics up tomorrow, been out all day and dont intend to mess with anything tonight.

 

I split out all the individual roms from the dump and they all run at the correct speed. so that points to hardware being the issue.

maybe change the crystal...

also going to put a new rom of my choosing on and see if i can load that

 

It's been a few days, anything new to add?

I don't think I'd get one but (like many) I keep my eye on clone development.

 

any update ad?

 

That cable looks like mini-USB, is it?

 

Yes, there has been progress!

Christer-swe - Yes, its a mini USB jack - but it is not USB, they have just used the connector rather than using a custom jack.

First, hardware pics:






Second, dump of the flash:
http://www.mediafire.com/?lo0d8ppt32xvbn7

I have byte swapped it back, as its programmed byte swapped for big endian.

roms from dump split up:
http://www.mediafire.com/?peuv6eu8qrbb2uz

Third, slow down issue:

The roms are USA 60hz and the console runs PAL 50hz. So I just need to replace all the roms with Euro 50hz versions and it should work fine.

Not sure if there is a way to make it run at 60hz or not yet tho.


I intend to look at it some more this weekend and hopefully have everything running "properly" (if you can call pal 50hz that)

 

It actually looks like the crystal was replaced manually. Maybe it was initially build for 60Hz and then just quickly converted to 50Hz for the european market.

 

Ignore what it looks like. Those pics were taken after I'd removed and refitted the flash chip and the crystal.

 

Thanks for the teardown and pics!

 

Let us know if you progress any further in hacking this thing. I just ordered one after seeing your post and the flash dump. I ordered from the US so we will see if it turn out to be a 60Hz version and the game play full speed on this one as the seller's feedback were mentioning that the device was working great. I would expect ebay buyer to mention in feedback if there was any speed issue.

 

I just got mine this week. The sound emulation is terrible! The rest of the emulation is pretty good but having sound and music play like that is killing it for me. You can check youtube footage of Sonic to understand.