Sega CD power on issue...

[zektor]

Not really a big issue, but I wanted to see if somebody else with a model 1 Sega CD has ever come across this. As some may know, I won a mint condition unit on ebay. The system is new and clean throughout. One thing that was odd however is that when I origianlly hooked up it and turned the Genesis on, the Genesis power light came on and the Sega CD did not. I turned it off, unplugged and re-plugged the Genesis, turned it back on and it worked perfectly.

Fast forward to last night and today. I turned it on last night and the same issue. This time I didn't unplug the Genesis, but rather simply turned it off and back on. Bam, works perfectly. Afterward, I turned it on and off on random occasions throughout the night to see if it would exhibit the issue. It didn't.

I cam home from work today and turned it on to play some Sonic CD. Again, same deal. Genesis power light, no power on the Sega CD. Turn it off and on, and the Sega CD comes on and all works perfectly.

Basically, it seems, if I leave the Sega CD/Genesis powered off for some period of time (hours) and attempt to turn it on, it will not power on (the Sega CD) the first shot. It *will* power on the second shot tho.

That is just odd to me. Why in the world would it do this? Could it be a battery issue or something? I already replaced all of the wiring and power supplies just to see if there was an issue somewhere there. It's not a huge deal as when the Sega CD is powered on it works like it came out of the box yesterday, but it is kind of scary that it doesn't come on first shot as it should (I'm assuming, or as far as I can remember!)

Anybody have a clue as to what this can be? Anybody have this issue as well?

[Jorpho]

I seem to recall that these units do have battery issues. (Or was that fuses?) Methinks opening it up and replacing the battery is not difficult. Perhaps next time you get it to activate, you should check to see if you can save games to the internal RAM?

Here we are:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10375

I've seen old Powermacs with dying batteries that acted the same way, more or less.

[zektor]

I'll have to check that. I did some searches earlier and it seems that only the second model has the fuse issues. I could swear it saved my Sonic CD game, but I could be wrong. If not that, perhaps it is the Genesis itself...dirty contacts on the Sega CD connector. I need some more 91% alcohol and q-tips now :)

[Graham Mitchell]

You know what? I had this problem in 1993 with my Model 1 as well. It was a horrible issue that made playing the machine difficult. Wish I knew how to fix it back then. Sometimes it would take 30 minutes of powering up and resetting for it to start up, and then games would lock up after 5 minutes of play. I think this was part of the reason they redesigned it.