Worklog Revisiting an old friend.

[dman762000]

Hello all!
I've been lurking around here for a bit an I like what I see. I used to do the same thing back in the day at the benheck forums. Some of you folks were over there as well, so you know what went on. During my time there, I built one portable. It was a portable genesis built from a Radica supersonic gold. I built it so that the television I used could still function and it could accept input and give output to a tv. I called it the Truant.
Here it is:

Back in those days I never got the cartridge port working the way I wanted and I had to settle for just running the built in games.

These are recent images. It was still functioning well after 17 years. The digital switch in 2009 destroyed the tv ability but all included abilities still function. I've recently pulled it out of storage and believe I will rebuild it and get it the way I want it this time. You know, do a better job this time. I will post works here and may ask for assistance from time to time. I know it's not what most people do these days but it will be a fun build. If you are interested keep watching.

 

[dman762000]

So, I have been gathering supplies for a bit and I know what I want to do with this thing. Bigger screen is a must and I have purchased one of those "back up camera screens" from the jungle store. Good deal, 4.3 in screen for like $6.

They seem pretty simple, and with a little poking around with my electric hot-dog probe, I figured out how to make it run in 5v

So, now I have a working bigger screen. I guess I should show some of the bits I've picked up to do this rebuild. I have a new housing, same as the old housing but gonna do some new stuff with it

A new controller to mangle for this. I used the original sonic gold parts for the build last time so this time I'm going for a full on genesis controller

A few other things. A pushbutton power switch from Pololu

Batteries from an old power bank should run it for a good long time and make it rechargable.

I originally built it using Tycho flex pak batteries but that made it have a big lumpy on its back. That helped as a kick stand when watching tv but was cumbersome otherwise. This time the battery will be internal.

I still need to order a cart slot for it and there are a few things I want to come up with. If anyone knows about circuit board design I could use a little help and if anyone knows of a good stand alone audio board that I could use for this I could use the suggestions. Coming up next is the tear-down of the original.

 

[dman762000]

Ok, so, if I am going to rebuild this, I need to tear it down first. So, here we go.

This is how it looks inside. As you can see, there is a spaghetti mess of wire inside. The Casio tv is front and center. I believe it was a Casio EV- 600. I wired everything directly to the tv board. The switches to the left controlled what inputs worked, power for the radica. That set of controller boards are from a Radica sega. I cut it in half, and direct soldered the leads to the super sonic gold board as remote control.

The inside of the faceplate. This shows where I put the speaker and headphone jack.

Hmmm, spaghetti! Yeah, I know, it's terrible but it was 18 years ago and my first attempt. I know a lot more now than I did then.

As you can see, the supersonic gold is there at the bottom. You can see the connections from the remote control to the main board. You can also see how the input jacks and output jacks are connected. The little blue and white wires coming in through the hole in the back are the main power wires.

The supersonic gold. My crappy soldering wires and how they hooked up.

The whole thing laying on the table. The white card on the right is a piece of plastic that I used as a "shield" to prevent contacts between components.