Have just done a single switch (PAL50hz/NTSC60hz/ASIAN50hz/JPN60hz) mod on my Asian PAL Megadrive one console. As i was making sure everything was working as it should do before i put the lid back on the console, i left a game running for about 45 minutes i noticed that the heatsink plate in the top left corner of the PCB was super hot, so hot i couldn't touch it for more than a second. Is this Heatsink plate supposed to get this hot as it seems extreme so much so the shielding plate was super warm around that area too???
Hmm, it does get hot but never that hot. I have a few JPN Mega Drive one units. If you pay for shipping you can have one for free. It's just the console and the shells aren't mint but you can't go wrong with a free MD.
Mine (Model 1 PAL - High Definition Audio Model) gets ridiculously hot in the same place, so much so that I've burnt myself on it once before. Thing is I don't know if it was like that before the mods or not. Either way it's been in service for nearly 2 years now and it's still going strong.
MegaDrive / Genesis consoles with the old Signetics 68000 or with the old Motorola 68000 chips do get quite hot. That's normal. Units with the Hitachi CMOS version (HD680HC000P8) the heatsink gets just warm to the touch. Also units with the newer 315-5413 VDP (FC1001) will want a 220 ohm in series resistor on /AS pin and a jumper to GND on a certain pin of the 68000 I can't remember right now. If the CPU is the Hitachi one, no need for these patches.
