Megadrive Stuff

[gleavepaul]

Im determined to get every Md varient there is, however im a little con fused at the differance between a Jap Md (which i think i have) and an made in aisa one?

Also could some one tell me exactly how many varients of the md there is

[anagrama]

The Hong Kong/Asian model is universal and will play Japanese, US and European games (all in 50Hz).
These were heavily imported into the UK/Europe (They could be bought new for around £110 [no game], at the same time as the official UK release was still £189 [with Altered Beast as the pack in]), and can be found fairly easily.

The Japanese Megadrive will play Japanese games only [and non-region locked US/European games(?) Not sure if the shape of the cart slot stops this without alteration] and is 60Hz. They're harder to find outside of Japan (duh!) and eBay.

Visually, they're pretty similar. Does yours run at 50 or 60Hz?


How many variations? Depends on how picky you want to get [for example, there's at least 5 revisions of the PAL Megadrive 2 board :evil: ]
Off the top of my head, probably missing a bunch :

Megadrive/Genesis 1: Jap / US (early version) / US (later version) / Euro / Hong Kong / Brazil(?)
Megadrive/Genesis 2: Jap / US / Euro / HK / Brazil
Genesis 3: US
Megadrive 3 (Brazil/Hong Kong? are any of these things official? I haven't really looked.)
Nomad: US
MegaJet: Japan
MultiMega/CDX: Japan / US / Europe
JVC WonderMega/X'Eye: Japan / US
MegaLD module for the LaserActive: Japan / US
TerraDrive: Japan
Amstrad MegaPC: Europe (both 386 and 486 models)
Aiwa CD players (2 different models)

[gleavepaul]

mine play them all so is not a jap one just the asian one. As far as board revisons go im not too fussed im really only after the different casings.

At the mo i have

Md 1 - uk and Asian
Md2 uk
Nomad

so there is a far way to go yet
May go bit on a mega jet now :D

[nothingisttrue]

hmm thats useful information now i dont need to put a switch in my genesis or file it. anybody know a good place to get an asian megadrive ? bare ,loose, dosnt need to be in a box

[anagrama]

hmm thats useful information now i dont need to put a switch in my genesis or file it. anybody know a good place to get an asian megadrive ? bare ,loose, dosnt need to be in a box

They crop up on eBay UK fairly often (often mis-labelled as Japanese models though). I'd expect to pay £15 or so loose.
Whilst they're universal, everything plays in 50Hz (PAL) format, so you may have trouble on a US TV, unless you add a 50/60Hz switch.

The best method for playing everything is the double-switch mod, which can be done on any Genesis/Megadrive 1 to allow 100% compatibility with all games worldwide, and is an extremely straightforward mod aswell. I'm no soldering expert, but I did this one in about 10 minutes, and it's been perfect ever since. It's possible on a Genesis/Megadrive 2 aswell, but can be more complicated, depending on the board revision.

[nothingisttrue]

yea i know right now i got a genesis 2 / sega cd combo thing sega cd has a base the genesis 2 snaps onto and the sega cd is toploading i tried it on that the board is jammed in there with a piece of metal and the jumpers arnt where there suppossed to be . so to do the mod id have to buy a new genesis anyway.