Pico Plug-in adapter
crazy2001 over on the www.arcadezentrum.com forums has been hard at work. Knowing that the Sega Pico was based on the Megadrive, he set out to make a plug-in adapter to read the Pico ‘books’ on his Retrode. He was kind enough to send over some instructions on how to build one:
Retrode Sega PICO Plug-in adapter
A Sega “PICO” to “MEGADRIVE” Adapter is pretty easy, as both Systems are basically the same! The Cartridges only have a different PIN-Layout! The Retrode even recognize the RomSize and the RomName…as it would be with a Megadrive-cartridge!
So for an adapter you need the following stuff:
- A PICO console (the Pinout of the PICO-Cartridges is unique), where you can de-solder the Cartridge-SLOT
- A Megadrive cartridge (I used SONIC – THE HEDGEHOG)
- Wires
- Solder
- Electrical tape
- A Multimeter (not really needed, but nice to have sometimes)
Instructions:
- Open the Sega PICO console and desolder the cartridge-slot. I used a hotair-gun for that!
- Open the Megadrive cartridge, desolder everything from the PCB (Eeproms,…)
- Now solder some wires between the pins of the megadrive-cartridge and the pins of the Pico-cartridge-slot as you see below!
-
PICO - Megadrive      | Description ------------------------------------ 01  - A16            | A17 02  - A14            | A16 03  - A12            | A15 04  - A10            | A14 05  - A08            | A13 06  - A06            | A12 07  - A04            | A11 08  - B05            | A10 09  - B04            | A9 10  - B08            | A20 11  - B09            | A21 12  - B07            | A19 13  - B06            | A18 14  - A03            | A8 15  - A05            | A7 16  - A07            | A6 17  - A09            | A5 18  - A11            | A4 19  - A13            | A3 20  - A15            | A2 21  - A17            | A1 22  - B17            | CE (CAS0) 23  - A01            | GND 24  - A18            | GND 25  - B16            | OE(IC11#8*) 26  - A20            | D0 27  - A21            | D8 28  - A23            | D1 29  - A24            | D9 30  - A26            | D2 31  - A27            | D10 32  - A29            | D3 33  - A30            | D11 34  - A31            | VCC 35  - A28            | D4 36  - B25            | D12 37  - A25            | D5 38  - B24            | D13 39  - A22            | D6 40  - B23            | D14 41 - A19            | D7 42 - B22            | D15 43 - A32            | GND 44 - A32            | GND 45 - B19            | CLK 46 - A02            | VCC 47 - Not Connected  | SRAM(IC17#7*) 48 - Not Connected  | LWR 49 - Not Connected  | MRES 50 - A02            | VCC
- Put everything back, as good as possible, into the Megadrive-cartridge and use some electrical tape to fix everything!
- Have fun with playing the games!
Pictures:
Source: www.arcadezentrum.com forums [German].
→ Got a story? Let us know at editors@retrode.org.
Nice! I also note that, according to the forum (with a little help from Google Translate ;)), there aren’t actually dumps of most Pico books, which makes it even better.
If that’s true then this could lead to a complete set of dumps! Hooray!