The sega 32x, s-video modded

[Drakon]

I recently decided to buy a mega everdrive since krikzz finally started making flash carts that use ram chips therefore the thing will basically last forever. Since the mega everdrive can play 32x roms I bought myself a cheap 32x from ebay (something like 35$ shipped). I didn't get any cables so I was planning on just wiring the system up myself. I asked tiido a lot of questions about what's needed to get it running and it's pretty simple.

After cracking the system open and doing my best to understand the hardware I wired up everything by rgb and externally encoded the outputted rgb to s-video. The picture wasn't bad but it wasn't as good looking as I wanted it to be. I know from experience that re-encoding the rgb over and over will decrease the quality so I decided to see if it's possible to s-video mod a 32x. I found this helpful thread here:

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?16590-32X-S-Video-Mod

Pretty cool thread and it pointed me to where to tap s-video from the system. This thread also mentioned that you need an amp on luma to get a signal. I had a spare luma amp sitting around that I built years ago for the s-video mod on the cxa1145 that's built into my genesis. Here's the amp, just one transistor and I put a custom strength resistor to get the brightness just perfect:

http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/genesismods.html

I can't even remember what strength resistance I'm using I built that thing so long ago. Anyway wiring up this amp made it work so now I had s-video coming from the 32x. The chroma line didn't need any parts I could just straight wire it. However something was causing the luma to be blurry, like composite quality blurry. After talking to tiido and experimenting a bit I managed to fix the blur. Here's a before and after screenshot:





yeah uhh....night and day. For the sake of comparison here's screenshots of the s-video from a cxa1145 and from a cxa2075 circuit.





These are of course from my capture card that picks up EVERYTHING. For some reason when my cxa2075 circuit is plugged into the system the image flickers....even when I'm getting rgb from the cxa1145. As soon as I unplug my cxa2075 circuit the flickering goes away...oh well.

On my tv however the 32x'ified picture looks perfect. The jailbars are 100% gone, and what's left of the rainbow banding is just as strong as it was from my cxa2075 circuit (so weak it's not annoying at all). Also the colours look better for some strange reason. Therefore I like how it looks on my tv more than the image from my cxa2075 circuit. Also to weaken jaiblars on my cxa2075 circuit I had to branch off a long s-video cable to ghetto filter them and it was annoying. With the 32x I don't need to do any tricks it's just jailbar free....and it plays 32x games!

Here's some pictures of my rig







Why buy expensive cables when I can build one out of old IDE cables

[Drakon]

Some 32x s-video gameplay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6m5V5X9I0

[DinnerX]

That video output looks very clear. Most people had very bad luck with S-Video modding the 32x.

I figured I'd need to build an external s-video encoder, but I'll try this instead since it'd be cheaper. Of course, before that, I need to actually get a genesis to go with my cordless 32x.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I was going to say that was some serious rainbow pillar.

Very nice job sir. Looks great.

[Drakon]

That video output looks very clear. Most people had very bad luck with S-Video modding the 32x.

Thanks. People had bad luck s-video modding the 32x because the old s-video modding guide was wrong. I fixed a major flaw in the circuit that changed the s-video from being as blurry as composite into being as sharp as s-video should be.

I forgot to post the schematic



It's very important you desolder that 0 ohm resistor otherwise you'll get a blurry s-video picture. Desoldering that 0 ohm resistor will remove the composite video....but who cares.

This's about as s-video will ever get from this system. Using an external rgb to component video circuit works amazingly too I tried it out yesterday. There's a way to clean up what's left of the jailbars when you go the rgb to component video route but doing that will disable colour in s-video / composite / rf. However if you're fine with just rgb / component video then you'll be fine. And don't worry about losing your ability to use the 32x the 32x uses the rgb from the system so the 32x will still work fine with the jailbar cleanup mod.