Mega Drive 2 Switchless Mod - simple help needed

Right, so I'm working on doing a switchless mod for a couple of Mega Drives. They're both model 2. The one I'm currently working on is a PAL VA1 board.

Anyway, I assume just following mmmonkey's guide will work fine (although I've heard that the pinouts are different between regions and I know there are some minor differences between board revisions, so I hope that's not a problem. His guide is for a PAL MD2 so that should be fine).

Once I've wired up my circuit (hopefully tomorrow), I'll post a picture so someone can check that I've done it right (I'm soldering the components, including an IC socket, to veroboard instead of soldering them together directly).

I have a few questions. Here's the first: I have these yellow, square-ish capacitors, marked "100nJ100". At least, I assume they're capacitors. I can't for the life of me figure out how to read capacitors. Apparently the type I want, as per what mmmonkey used, is 100nF/104pF/0.1uF (ceramic, of course). Now, I have no idea how it can be rated as both 100nF AND 104pF, but the only kind-of-local electronics store has them listed as 0.1uF and not the other two, so I presume that is correct. Would someone please explain to me what is up with those ratings, and whether or not what I have is suitable? I'm going to hopefully get some ceramic ones tomorrow anyway, but if I can do it tonight with these yellow things instead, I might.
EDIT: I can read capacitor ratings just fine now, but I'm stumped as to what on Earth these things are. They appear to be polyester capacitors but are yellow-caps instead of green-caps. As far as I can tell, the rating would be read as follows: 100 = 10 + 0 zeros, therefore 100 = 10; n I assume is "nano" as in 10^-9; J is the tolerance (5%, in this case); the second 100 would occur after a decimal point, making the entire number 10.1. Then, 10.1x10^-9, which equals 0.0000000101µF, if my maths is correct (it probably isn't because I'm really, really bad at mathematics). Those last two numbers seem completely wrong, though. Can anyone shed some light on this, please? It's off-topic now, but it'd be nice to finally understand how to read these things.

Here's my next question: What do I do if I want composite video in colour? From what I've heard, the switchless mod does not allow colour output in 60Hz over composite. I need to change that. How can it be done? I know my two-switch modded Mega Drive 2 doesn't have this problem and it, of course, uses the 3.579545MHz 4-pin crystal oscillator. I'm assuming that this is my solution and can somehow be added to the mix, but there doesn't seem to be much information on how to do so.
I also want to retain the ability to use RGB in the future, although I have no TVs with SCART connectors, so a good alternative would be nice. I can probably make the cable, but I don't know what cable to make. Correct me if I'm wrong, but s-video (which I plan to add) isn't true RGB either.
The information on the switchless mod seems very scarce. I mean, it's all there, but it's scattered in bite-sized bits across the web, and some of it is very technical (i.e. not suited to stupid people like myself). EDIT: On-going discussion about this particular problem here. May as well forget about this question and just continue this particular discussion in that thread.

Final question: Wiring up the Mega Drive 2 for the 32X (something which I don't have but plan to get) seems like a pain. I've seen two different methods - arguably, the easiest is mmmonkey's method that cuts the mono audio line. The thing is, his mod is on a model 1 which has the headphone jack, so it doesn't matter as much. If I mod it this way, wouldn't I only get one of the two audio channels out of the composite cable (at least via the AV socket), therefore making my "stereo" into mono? Or is pin 1, used for mono audio, separate to the "stereo" pins (actually, from what I've been reading, it seems it outputs mono on two channels or something like that, so ignore my use of "stereo" if it's not correct)? I guess it doesn't REALLY matter if I lose an audio channel, since I have separate AV jacks (and soon-to-be s-video) installed, but it'd be nice to avoid removing any functionality of the unit.

EDIT: Rewrote the whole post to make it more coherent. And shorter (you I wish). And with improved questions for less stupidity.

 

104pf is "10", and four more 0's.... so 100000pf, or 100nf... which is 0.1uF.

http://www.justradios.com/uFnFpF.html

as you said, you need a fixed frequency crystal, there's heaps of information about this on the net...

from my experience, svideo can be almost as good as rgb, or at least it is on my MegaDrive 1. (from memory anyway)

 

I much prefer the switchless mod version dforce3000 came up with:

http://www.dforce3000.de/?uid=12


To retain the colour in 60Hz alongside the switchless mod, you'll need to force the MD2 into PAL colour mode (you'll get PAL50 and PAL60, as opposed to PAL50 and NTSC60). See http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showth...tch-Region-Mod&p=458801&viewfull=1#post458801 for more details - you'll need a 4.433619Mhz 4 pin oscillator though.

edit: Just saw you're in New Zealand... I can supply a couple of the necessary oscillators if you don't have any

 

Ooooh, that makes way more sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

I personally haven't found much information on it, but specifically, I meant that there aren't a lot of diagrams to show you how to wire it up alongside the switchless mod.

I know for sure that I'll be using S-Video, but after doing some reading, it does seem that RGB is a bit better. Still, RGB is a pain in the ass without the right equipment and I think S-Video looks like a big enough improvement over composite that I'm not too worried about RGB, at least for now.

Thanks, I'll check it out soon, when I'm not playing games (I decided I'm bored and want to blow things up. Go figure). I thought the standard switchless mod could do PAL60 anyway, though? I'll let you know if I need any of those oscillators (although I presume I probably need the oscillators I already have for a PAL MD2, wouldn't I?). Cheers!

 

Switchless mod does nothing to restore the colour into the 60HZ signal for composite/svideo. You need to also fiddle the clock going into the video encoder.

There probably is a way to do PAL50/NTSC60 with the switchless mod, but it's easier just to force the colour into PAL colour for both 50Hz and 60Hz.

Generally, if I do a double switch mod (separate 50/60 and language switches), I'll use PAL50/NTSC60 (because I can), but for anything else I'll just go PAL50/PAL60 for simplicity.

 

I'm not a fan of switchless.... I'll often switch between pal and ntsc with the game running, either to speed things up, or slow things down, and also, because some pal games won't start up with the console set to ntsc, but can be switched after the game has started...

 

You can still switch regions on the fly by holding down the reset button.

 

Oh, well, thats alright then

 

This I know, hence my question on how to add the colour fix in, although I seem to be making progress on understanding that thanks to the other thread.

Doesn't that mean you get the PAL colour range and not the NTSC one, though? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that forcing NTSC video to output in PAL colour could cause video glitches and other problems, as well as having a different output range or spectrum or whatever. Anyway, I checked out that mod, but it's not really what I want. Honestly, I'd like to be able to have PAL50, PAL60, NTSC50 (just because) and NTSC60. I want maximum compatibility, is all.

 

RGB is MUCH better than S-Video and all you really need is an RGB SCART cable for the Genesis Model 2/Mega Drive 2 and a SCART to HDMI converter. The plus to RGB is that you don't need the extra circuitry for color in NTSC (or PAL if you're like me and use a Genesis or NTSC Mega Drive). The system's RGB mode gives color no matter if its 50Hz or 60Hz. You need to see it in person to really see how much of an improvement it is. If you need a good SCART cable, an eBay seller by the name of retro_console_accessories made the one I use on my Sega 32X. They tend to go out of stock after a while, but the cables are handmade and they're really good. They usually get back in stock after the vacations the seller takes frequently.

 

Thanks but I specifically want composite compatibility regardless of whether or not I use SCART. Plus, we have no TVs with SCART inputs here, at least I don't own any, but even if there are some NZ TVs with them, they're rare. I'd rather not have to invest in a converter/upscaler, either. I'm sure I eventually will, but that's probably five or ten years off for now.

 

The SCART converter I have was USD$60 on amazon.com but I just found one (there are two options under the pricing and the one on the left is the one I was talking about) that's about USD$45. It doesn't process 240p perfectly but still gets the job done and is a cheaper alternative to the XRGB series. There were some TVs here in the USA that had SCART but they too are rare and it was called "EIA Multiport - Stereo".

 

I'll probably just wait until I can get an xRGB mini or something like that. I don't have even US$45 right now, anyway, unfortunately. I wish I did, but it's not to be.

 

scart to hdmi quality is barely better than composite anyway.

 

I assumed as much. That's why I've avoided all those <something>-to-HDMI converters thus far (except my Elgato HD, since it technically upscales, although it's not a good replacement for a dedicated upscaler).