Hi guys, I bought a working megatech cab a few years ago, in my time i have rebuilt both monitors and replaced the psu when they have died, fantastic buzz when you fix your own machines. I also have managed to collect 42 of the games made for this system, always looking for more. Anyway to the point, I see on other old posts that it is possible to modify a mega tech cartridge into a converter/ adapter. I have found pinout info for megadrive and megatech cart, also some info on the megatech ic. Now i'm lost......... i have all this info but don't know how to put it all together and make a converter, I have a donar megatech cart and some edge connectors coming soon. I think my first step would be to desolder and remove the 40pin ic 1 off the mega tech cart. Can anybody help me?
Good news, I managed to make a working adapter. Using the info above and an image of a home made adapter I found on the web I put one together, when I get some free time I will document how to make it. I have tried 5 megadrive carts and 3 of them worked, FIFA soccer, roadrash and street racer all work well. I can't get alladin or midnight resistance to work, I think midnight resistance is possibly broken and with alladin I get a message on the main monitor saying something like only certain games will work on this system.
I wish I could help with this sort of thing, but it is way over my pay grade! I'm surprised that no one else piped up though!
I tried doing this,but im having no luck,Ive used a world championship soccer cart,ic2 is still present,but ive desoldered ic1 ,here is what pins I connected,have I done something wrong? side A of the megatech cart is the same as side A of the megadrive,so I connected all of the pins to each other,side B I did this with the megadrive cart slot pins: PIN 1 N/C PIN 2 N/C PIN 3 N/C PIN 4 to PIN 40 IC1 PIN 5 to PIN 39 IC1 PIN 6 to PIN 1 IC1 PIN 7 to PIN 7 MT PIN 8 to PIN 8 MT PIN 9 to PIN 9 MT PIN 10 to PIN 10 MT PIN 11 to PIN 11 MT PIN 12 N/C PIN 13 N/C PIN 14 N/C PIN 15 N/C PIN 16 to PIN 12 IC1 PIN 17 to PIN 10 IC1 PIN 18 N/C PIN 19 N/C PIN 20 N/C PIN 21 N/C PIN 22 to PIN 29 IC1 PIN 23 to PIN 27 IC1 PIN 24 to PIN 25 IC1 PIN 25 to PIN 23 IC1 PIN 26 N/C PIN 27 to PIN 17 MT PIN 28 to PIN 28 MT PIN 29 to PIN 29 MT PIN 30 to PIN 30 MT PIN 31 to PIN 31 MT PIN 32 to PIN 32 MT Any idea what ive done wrong?,all my soldering is fine,ive checked . thanks in advance
I didn't see this before, or I would have offered! Would be handy if the OP had stated location, mind you!
Try pin 17 to pin 27 MT Unfortunatly I dropped mine and broke it, i need to check all my wiring again.
I couldn't get my adapter to work, I can only guess that I got a short and damaged the other IC. I made another using the same pinouts as above and it is working fine, (including pin 17 - pin 27) this time I will be more carefull with it until it's safely inside a case.
I made many adapter during last 2 years and I tested many megadrive games with these adapters. These are the games are not working on my megatech system using the adaptor: Streef fighter 2 (any version any region) Super Street fighter (any version any region) NBA Jam 1.00 any region (this is very strange the games starts just fine bus end in a black screen after the Iguana with ball image) NBA Jam 1.01 any region (this is very strange the games starts just fine bus end in a black screen after the Iguana with ball image) There are other games I tested which were not working with the adapter but I managed to set multy-region using a maga drive donor cart and burning the modified game image on eproms, just need to modify the region line to 4A 55 45. This works for many games. If anyone need some help with adapter building I can offer my help If anyone get NBA JAM or Streetfighter working on megatech with adapter please contact me!!!! thanks
Could you list the pinout? I know a couple of guys on Jamma+ who would be very grateful for the information.
Region lockout most likely for lots of the games. The MegaTech is basically a Sega Genesis on crack & steroids. So if you leave the IC2 chip alone and ignore the other 7 slots on the PCB you basically have a Sega Genesis. I had some trouble with a few games on my Genesis consoles and found it was region. My main issue was the game loaded the TMSS then went black screen. Moving to my all region model 3 and setting the region to JAP fixed the issues with all nonfunctioning games. If you haven't already tried it, mess around with the different region settings on the board. There's 4 combinations but only 3 were commonly used. Last one is kinda known as ASIAN. It's just the console set to JAP on language and PAL on video. Shouldn't need that. Can't tell you how to change the region settings for the MegaTech since I don't have one but it sounds like you already know. Try regions modes in this order and see what works: NTSC (english language, NTSC video) PAL (english language, PAL video) JAP (JAP language, NTSC video) If that still doesn't work then try ASIAN. If it still won't work after that and you know the adapter works then the issue might be in the header area of some games.
