Shawn and I dug up a sweet Sega CD in some of the electronics we have! The only problem is…. just that. It was only the console: no power supply, no A/V cables, no enhanced abilities, no physical mutations, no nothing! Being the hackers we are, we immediately went forth performing some electronics wizbiz.
The power cable on the side of the machine is a simple barrel jack connector, and it wasn’t too hard to find a plug that fit. The output voltage on the adapter wasn’t quite right, however, so we chopped it up and attached it to the bench supply.
The A/V connector was pretty straightforward once we found the pinout diagram online.
The speakers were pretty simple, especially since we have a bunch of junker PC speakers awaiting their final fate. We chopped up a set and connected it to the left and right channels using a breadboard.
The video was a bit trickier: at first we tried hooking up to a VGA monitor, but we couldn’t quite figure out how to deal with syncing the clocks between the console and the monitor. We then realized, oh dang, there’s a composite video out just waiting for us right there, so we busted out the projector and connected it straight to the RCA jack on the back.
The results? See for yourself in the video below!
Now all we need to do is build a controller and burn a disc and we’ll be on our way to classic video game style!