Winning The Console Wars – An In-Depth Architectural Study

November 6, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 78 Comments

From time to time, we at Hackaday like to publish a few engineering war stories – the tales of bravery and intrigue in getting a product to market, getting a product cancelled, and why one technology won out over another. Today’s war story is from the most brutal and savage conflicts of our time, the console wars.

The thing most people don’t realize about the console wars is that it was never really about the consoles at all. While the war was divided along the Genesis / Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo fronts, the battles were between games. Mortal Kombat was a bloody battle, but in the end, Sega won that one. The 3D graphics campaign was hard, and the Starfox offensive would be compared to the Desert Fox’s success at the Kasserine Pass. In either case, only Sega’s 32X and the British 7th Armoured Division entering Tunis would bring hostilities to an end.

In any event, these pitched battles are consigned to be interpreted and reinterpreted by historians evermore. I can only offer my war story of the console wars, and that means a deconstruction of the hardware.

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It’s A Sega It’s A Nintendo! It’s… Unique!

June 17, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 23 Comments

Before the days of the RetroPie project, video game clones were all the rage. Early video game systems were relatively easy to duplicate and, as a result, many third-party consoles that could play official games were fairly common. [19RSN007] was recently handed one of these clones, and he took some pretty great strides to get this device working again.

The device in question looks like a Sega Genesis, at least until you look closely. The cartridge slot isn’t quite right and the buttons are also a little bit amiss. It turns out this is a Famicom (NES) clone that just looks like a Sega… and it’s in a terrible state. After a little bit of cleaning, the device still wasn’t producing any good video, and a closer inspection revealed that the NOAC (NES-on-a-Chip) wasn’t working.

Luckily, [19RSN007] had a spare chip and was able to swap it out. The fun didn’t stop there though, as he had to go about reverse-engineering this chip pin-by-pin until he got everything sorted out. His work has paid off though, and now he has a video game system that will thoroughly confuse anyone who happens to glance at it. He’s done a few other clone repairs as well which are worth checking out, and if you need to make your own NES cartridges as well, we’ve got you covered there, too.

Fixing Sega Cartridges With Old BIOS Chips

February 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 34 Comments

For one reason or another, [Dragao] has an old Sonic The Hedgehog cartridge that throws an illegal instruction somewhere in the Marble Zone stage. While the cause of this illegal instruction is probably cosmic rays, how to repair this cartridge isn’t quite as clear. It can be done, though, using BIOS chips from an old computer.

[Dragao] got the idea of repairing this cartridge from Game Boy flash carts. These cartridges use chips that are a simple parallel interface to the address and data lines of the Game Boy’s CPU, and Sega Genesis / Mega Drive flash cart would work the same way. The problem was finding old DIP flash chips that would work. He eventually found some 8-bit wide chips on the motherboard of an old computer, and by stacking the chips, he had a 16-bit wide Flash chip.

To program the chips, [Dragao] wired everything up to an Arduino Mega, put a ROM on the chip, and wired it up to the old Sega cartridge. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, everything worked, and now [Dragao] has a fully functioning copy of Sonic The Hedgehog.

Genezap Improves Your Video Game Skills Using Corporal Punishment

August 2, 2012 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

genezap

As if getting your ass handed to you while playing video games wasn’t annoying enough, [furrtek] decided that the best way to help improve his skills was by inflicting physical pain each time his on-screen character died.

While perusing the Internet looking for something to break through the doldrums of the day, he came upon a video in which someone decided to try on a dog shock collar just for kicks. This sparked [furrtek’s] imagination, and he started to think that it would be pretty cool to use the same sort of device to make dying in a video game that much more unpleasant.

After ordering a set of collars online, he tore them apart to see how they functioned, and to measure just how big of a jolt they were able to deliver. [furrtek] then modified two Genesis controllers with a pair of ATtiny 25s, which let him send the fire signal to the collars. Unfortunately, stock Genesis games don’t allow you to send signals to the controllers, so [furrtek] had to spend some time hacking ROM images to trigger events when players are injured or lose a life.

We think the project is pretty slick, and if you don’t mind fiddling with your old controllers, you too can have a merciless trainer strapped around your neck. For those slightly more averse to pain, you can watch [furrtek] and his friend [Dyak] suffer the consequences of poor gameplay for your amusement.

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Reading Sega Carts Off A Breadboard

July 24, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

Golden Axe is great, and the Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles combo is one of the highest works of art from the 16-bit era, but for those of us without a working Genesis or Megadrive, we’ve had to make due with the ROMs others provide. [Lee] figured out an easy way to read the data off these old Sega cartridges using easily scavenged parts and an Arduino Mega, paving the way for an Arduino-based ROM dumper.

The connector on the bottom of a Sega Genesis cartridge has a 2×32 pinout, normally requiring 64 connections to actually read the card. These connectors aren’t readily available, but [Lee] did manage to find a few 2×31 pin connectors lying around in the form of old ISA sockets. The outer pins of a Genesis cart are used for grounds and a ‘cartridge insert’ slot, and after filing away the end of an old ISA connector, [Lee] found he could actually read the data on these old game cartridges.

There are 49 data and address pins on these old Sega carts, so an Arduino Mega needed to be brought into the mix to actually read some of the data on the ROM chip. As of now, [Lee] can read data from the cart but has only gotten so far as to read the licensing data stored at 0x80. Still, very cool and the first step towards an Arduinofied Sega cart dumper.

When Console Modders Face Off, Only Good Things Happen

March 20, 2012 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

sega-multi-gen

We really love when friendly competition leads to excellent hacking. Not too long ago, we showed you a nicely done Sega Genesis portable put together by console hacker [Downing] who challenged fellow hacker [EVIL NOD] to a build off. The two were hacking Sega consoles, [Downing’s] for personal use, while [EVIL NOD] was working on a commissioned build.

As you might have guessed, [Downing] finished first, but that doesn’t mean [EVIL NOD’s] console is anything but spectacular. His Sega Multi Gen is a portable Genesis console modified to play both NTSC and PAL games. It features a large 5” PSOne screen as well as the guts from an official 6-button Genesis game pad. The case was vacuum formed by [Downing], and is another example of his fine workmanship. The console looks as if it’s had the controller melted right into its face – a design that is sure to give you the authentic feel of sitting in front of your TV mashing away at the buttons.

Check out the video below to see an unboxing video that [EVIL NOD] put together before sending the console out to its new owner.

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GeneBoy Is The Portable Sega Genesis You’ve Always Wanted

March 11, 2012 by Mike Nathan 31 Comments

There’s something about portable gaming systems that just doesn’t get old. Perhaps its the nostalgia, or the unique cases and form factors the modders come up with. Whatever it might be, we think they’re great.

[Downing] wrote in to share a portable system he just wrapped up, called the GeneBoy. He broke down a Sega Genesis console to the bare necessities, then attached a 3.5” backup camera screen to serve as the display. A 3rd party Genesis controller donated its buttons to the GeneBoy, while his D-Pad was salvaged from an original Playstation controller.

The case was built from vacuum formed plastic, which made it easy to get just the size and shape he needed to hold everything together perfectly. Even though he says that the outside of the case got a bit roughed up during final assembly, we think it looks great. I would certainly enjoy having all the fun of [Sonic the Hedgehog] or Road Rash in the palm of my hand any day!

Continue reading to see the GeneBoy in action, and be sure to check out [Downing’s] blog along with the Modded by Bacteria forum thread where he discusses the finer details of its assembly.

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