New Mini Sega Power Base Converter - Play SMS Games on Your Genesis/Mega Drive

[burningdoom]

I didn't know the original went up... I got mine boxed cheaper than that. It would be worth checking out though, the original seems to have problems with a couple games

Which ones, out of curiosity? I haven't run into any problems with mine, yet. I'll know which games not to get.

The only one that won't work is F-16 Fighting Falcon. This is a result of it actually running in the legacy SG-1000 video mode. Due largely, to the game being an MSX game. The architecture allowed for a direct port to the SG-1000 minus some RAM and memory limitations. However, it could be run on the SMS's more powerful architecture using the video processor for the SG-1000. Made for a very quick and accurate port from the MSX. As a consequence, it is not able to run on the Mega Drive/Genesis. The system is unable to read SG-1000 code at all.

I thought I had read somewhere that the Sega Cards are basically SG-1000 games.

[dashv]

Replacing caps is really easy (just tedious and time consuming). By easy I mean I can do it and I don't consider myself to be a soldering iron/electronics wizard or anything even close.

Does look easy enough. I've seen it done before. Never tried it myself. But how easy is it to identify, and locate the spare capacitors? I would imagine with the age of some of them it could be hard.

The caps themselves are easy to spot. Guides online can tell you what to replace them with. You don't have to match the replacement part perfectly to the original either. You can used higher rated caps to replace lesser rated ones without issues.

[sin2beta]

I didn't know the original went up... I got mine boxed cheaper than that. It would be worth checking out though, the original seems to have problems with a couple games

Which ones, out of curiosity? I haven't run into any problems with mine, yet. I'll know which games not to get.

The only one that won't work is F-16 Fighting Falcon. This is a result of it actually running in the legacy SG-1000 video mode. Due largely, to the game being an MSX game. The architecture allowed for a direct port to the SG-1000 minus some RAM and memory limitations. However, it could be run on the SMS's more powerful architecture using the video processor for the SG-1000. Made for a very quick and accurate port from the MSX. As a consequence, it is not able to run on the Mega Drive/Genesis. The system is unable to read SG-1000 code at all.

I thought I had read somewhere that the Sega Cards are basically SG-1000 games.

No, there were just a budget format. Most of the card games were early on in the lifespan of the mark iii / SMS though. The card format was very popular with the SG-1000, so I think there was some bleed over in cart design.

Mainly, they just held less space and were cheaper.