Fixing a problem at 40 that stumped me as a 10 year old
A few months ago my parents gave me a box of my stuff they’ve had variously in attics and storage since I moved out in my early twenties.
One of the things in it was my Sega Mega Drive (called the Genesis in America) — boxed, and with games and accessories. Unfortunately, I didn't have a TV that I could connect it to! The only connector packaged with it was designed to plug into the aerial socket of a CRT television.
In the last week however, I've gotten hold of a CRT television after a bit of digging around[1]. I hooked it up to the Mega Drive, and incredibly, it worked! Now, I did had to read the manual to figure out how to dial the receiver channel in 🥲
Channel 36! UHF scan! This is not how I'm used to thinking about screens anymore.
I'd plugged in one of the Mega Games cartridges that originally came with the console, with Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Revenge of Shinobi. It was amazing to watch the menu come into focus as the channel dialled in, turning first from the noise of the CMB to jagged lines, then resolving into the blinking menu.
Initially though it was a little temperamental — if the controller wire pulled at it, or if it was nudged at all, the console would reset. I eventually remembered that I stopped playing it when I was a kid partly out of frustration at this exact problem. The Mega Drive does not come with any built in storage, so game cartridges themselves had to support that functionality. At ten years old, there was nothing quite so frustrating spending an hour playing a game and have a nudge reset you to zero.
Thirty years later and with various gadget repairs and upgrades under my belt, I don't feel so helpless 🙂 I opened up the Mega Drive – at ten it probably didn't even occurred to me as something I could do – and immediately spotted the problem: the solder connecting the power socket to the motherboard had cracked. All I needed to fix it was to resolder the joints, and now it’s as good as new!
I was honestly just a teensy bit emotional. It's not the most astounding technical achievement, and it's not going to make a difference to anyone else, but it feels a little like I've been able to help that ten year old version of me.
On the other hand, thirty years has not made me any better at Revenge of Shinobi.
#Footnotes
- The difficultly of getting hold of a CRT television in 2025 was a real surprise to me!
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