Scored a couple Model 1s that won't power on. The first one looked clean inside with no obvious sign of damage so probably just the fuse blew. The second one was an awful hack job repair attempt using a 1.5A fuse. Damage to the component to the left (black box with 200 on it) is what concerns me as I don't know what it is (relay?) or if a compatible replacement is available. My brief attempt at searching didn't yield any positive identification so I figured I would ask here. Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: The clean one was just a fuse issue and works flawlessly. The second one you see in the pictures does power on now after a fuse replacement and that burnt black box to the left seems to have happened from the soldering iron used on the hack job. I would still like to know what it is in case anyone knows. The laser and drive mechanism seem to come alive (sled and tray move, disc spins, can hear clicking from laser lens moving up and down) but not detect a disc. This one happens to have a JVC laser which is apparently quite scarce to source. Before I go down that road there was another issue found on the power board where two legs of an IC were bridged but later separated. My working unit has this bridge intact. If anyone can shed some light on what it does I would be grateful. Here's a pic of the IC.
IC2 is a LC7881M, which is a DAC, that is to say it converts digital audio to analogue. I think, but don't quote me on this, that this converts digital audio from the mega drive before it is mixed together with cd audio prior to the output jacks on the Mega cd. If that assumption is correct, this ic is only in use if the mixing cable setup is used.
Iirc the mixing cable just takes the Mega Drive's analog stereo signals and sends it to the RCA jacks on Mega CD. You don't even need to do this as all audio (MD, 32X, MCD, MCD 32X) can be outputted via the Mega Drive itself without any extra cables. If it is an audio DAC, maybe it is for use with the Mega CD's audio instead? I could be mistaken, however.
There are two DACs in the mega cd, one for cd audio and one for mega drive audio. As far as I can tell, the only function the entire SUB board serves (except power related stuff) is to allow for stereo out, without using the headphone amp directly. It's a bit weird.