Downing's Basement

So after a few weeks with no posts here, an update for the Genesis portable has come, worthy of posting.

On top of hitting a couple snags which is quite common, I hurt my back lifting an old TV and have been unable to really mod at all because of it. Now that I’m on the mend, I was back to picking up where I left off, even though I left off on a problem.

To make things short and sweet, I couldn’t get the screen to work. After messing with my batteries which I was still scared about after shooting 8.4V up my arm, I hooked everything up to my power switch, hit the button and nothing…

Power was going everywhere it was supposed to, but no image on the screen. So of course I think I fried the damn thing, but it was rated for 12 volts and I only put 8.4 through it. After a bit of thinking and asking on the forums, of course the solution was right under my nose. The Video out line was not grounded. Though I thought didn’t need it because the screens power line was grounded to the Genesis board and there was only one ground coming from the screen, I thought they all shared. Not true. After taking the screens A/V cable apart, I noticed that each RCA input had one signal and one ground and all the grounds met at one junction box midway down the cable and that’s where they merged the ground wires into one.

Simple version, I needed another ground wire and once that was in place, BINGO! First try and the system, screen and game all fired up! Which means I’m good to go with wiring up the audio and controls and with any luck I’ll have this done by this weekend!

I’m actually quite happy with the quality of this screen for it being only composite input, so I’m gonna run with it and not try to RGB mod this. It’s getting close and I’m getting excited!