mmmonkey

Mega Drive 2 Scart Lead (Continued)

Now onto the soldering, it's a bit fiddly compared to the Master System and Mega Drive 1 cable, but not too difficult.  As well as the 9 pin mini-din, you'll need a Scart plug, a length of at least 8 core cable (about 1.5 - 2 metres), 1 100 ohm resistor, 3 75 ohm resistors and some short pieces of small wire (can just cut them out of the main cable if you haven't got any small bits spare).

These diagrams show the pin numbering of both the 9 pin mini-din and Scart plugs, both are as viewed from inside the plugs, i.e. the side you solder the wires onto.

 

9 pin mini-din pinout

 

Signal 9 Pin Mini-Din pin Resistor Scart Plug pin Wire Colour
Ground Metal Barrel None 4, 17 and 21 Black
Composite Video 4 None 20 Yellow
Red 7 75 ohm 15 Red
Green 3 75 ohm 11 Green
Blue 1 75 ohm 7 Blue
AV Switch 2 - 8 Brown
RGB Switch - 100 ohm From 8 to 16 -
Right Audio 9 None 2 Purple
Left Audio 8 - 6 Orange
Not Used 5 - - -
Not Used 6 - - -

Start by stripping the cable, on the Scart plug end strip back the outer cable by about 1.5 inches, then strip back each inner wire by just a few millimetres.  On the 9 pin din end strip back the outer cable by an inch, then each inner wire by a few millimetres,  for the shielding wire, twist all the bare wire together so it's neat.  Tin all of the exposed wires ready for soldering.

Din wires Scart wires

Now prepare the 3 75 ohm Resistors, trim the legs so they are only a couple of millimetres long, then tin them, if you've got some heat shrink tubing the right size to go round an resistor tightly, then cut 3 pieces so that it is a little bit longer than each Resistor (this photo shows the 100 ohm resistor as well, ignore this - do not trim it short).

For the 100 ohm resistor, bend it so that it reaches from Scart pin 8 to 16, if you can - insulate the resistor to prevent any possibility of a short circuit.

Bent and insulated 100 ohm resistor

Prepare the Scart plug, melt some solder into each of the contacts that we need to solder a wire or resistor onto (that's pins 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21) for pin 21 (ground) we have to solder a wire to the outer surround of the Scart plug, the easiest position is as shown below. 

Before we solder the wires into place, start with the resistors, solder the three 75 ohm resistors to the necessary pins (7, 11 and 15).  It doesn't matter which way the resistors goes in.

Now we can solder some ground wires, first from pin 4 to pin 17, then from pin 17 to pin 21 (the outer shielding).

The first 2 photo's below show the incorrect way of fitting the 100 ohm resistor, please solder it from pin 8 to pin 16 as shown in the third photo.

This is pin 21

To finish the Scart plug, simply solder the wires to the necessary pins and resistors.  Use the table above to make sure you're soldering the wires to in the correct places, for ground just solder the wire to pin 4 as we've already linked the other's up.  Don't worry if your wires are a different colour, just substitute mmmonkey's colour for your colours, just make sure you've got them written down/printed out as it makes soldering the other plug much easier  Remember to put your heat shrink tubing on the wires before soldering them, then gentle heat them to insulate the wire/resistor join.  Then assemble the Scart plug, as you've finished with it.

Then assemble the Scart plug, as you've finished with it.  The photo above is slightly incorrect, it shows a brown wire going to a resistor which then goes to pin 16, this should have gone to pin 8, which should now be linked by a 100 ohm resistor.

Continued...

 !! H E L P !!

Game console modifications