Hi there, first post here.
I found a Sega Mega Drive in our basement and am working on restoring it. It turns on, but I have no audio or video.
I never used a cartridge-driven console before, so I want to make sure this is not user error. I need to plug in the cartridge before turning on the console, and then there should be a boot screen and eventually the game.
Is it possible for the contacts to be too dirty to allow reading the cartridges?
And then lastly, I had a peek into the maintenance manual I may need to exchange hardware parts. Should I need to; do you know any trustworthy sellers in the EU that could have parts compatible with the Mega Drive? I have been looking for a 53.2034 MHz +/-20ppm oscillater since it could be faulty, but couldn't find any shop that had one with that odd of a MHz frequency.
Any advice is appreciated. :)
Edit: Thank you all for your comments. On further inspection the contacts on the Mega Drive's cartridge-slot were oxidized. A little bit of sand paper did the trick. :)
The capacitors look okay, and I can't see any cracks (yet). The board and part of it's shroud are however hotglued in place ๐ so it's hard to tell atm. Can hot glue mess with the conductivity of the board? Because there is one nice blob right on the PCB
Hot glue is non conductive so it should not mess anything up. Out of curiosity, what game did you try?
Edit: also if you don't mind what method are you using to connect it to the television?
NHL 95 and Sonic. Will clean the contacts soon, then try again. As for the connection to my pc monitor, I am using RCA, run it into a RCA to HDMI converter and then into my monitor