"You can get to the level select screen by hitting your console, but that might damage it, so here's another way that's probably worse!"

Dude made a legit "Beat-A-Game Button". The AVGN would be proud.

Finally a KZfaqr that has the same level of soldering as me.

As an electronic engineer who dabbles with software, this software engineer dabbling with hardware scares the crap out of me 🤣

Judging from some diagrams I looked up in a sega genesis service manual, I'd say the pins you shorted are both data pins, so don't worry about that. They seem to be either VD10 & VD11 or VA14 & VA15 (depending on the orientation of your genesis compared to the one in the diagram, I'd say probably the former), all of which just feed into the 68000's data bus.

Why did my brain immediately jump to a button that makes something hit the cartridge to trigger the level select

It's been your soldering skills that made me realize youre just a mortal human like the rest of us.

John soldering on top of the console. The real madlad.

John just invented an instant game crash button.

So basically the level select screen was supposed to bypass any errors the game throws and now you're bypassing throwing errors to get the level select screen. That's so weird.

When you said you were doing this to the original Megadrive you made games on I died a little inside. Of course it's yours to do whatever you want with but still 😂.

Was I the only one who just put in the button code? Lol, I even programmed it into a macro button so I could trigger it when I started the game. BARACUDA, remember Jon?

I cannot afford to buy a Megadrive and this guy is soldering silly things on top of the plastic case of an historical console. Respect.

I am proud to inform you that you have successfully channelled your inner Ben Heck in this video. Your certificate is in the post.

4:29 Man, it sure be cool if a developer for a big company like Disney or something added a message to one of their games reading something like: "Oh, this PAL console just became an NTSC console" I wonder if in that case he'd use a switch that he had soldered on for testing.

Kinda hilarious watching you soldering like that, nearly melting a hole in your console. I'm sure you've been aware of this product since literally before I was born, but a "helping hand" tool would have made your life a lot easier (heavy stand with clips to hold items steady for you). Thank you as always for your fascinating insights into these games, hope you have a great weekend!

As a suggestion for anyone doing something similar, try using a 100 ohm resistor instead of a wire. Less likely to damage something (but not unlikely). Or the other option is to use a multimeter in milliamp mode and see the current draw. If the fuse blows in your multimeter, you know you exceeded 400mA, which is way above what you want to see (

I love how everyone watching this that knows a little bit about hardware engineering basically crapped themselves while watching this while I was just watching absolutely amazed that he made a button work

Man literally modded a priceless collectors item for easy access to a single level select screen

I always find it amusing when I find out what KZfaqrs other KZfaqrs watch.

And here I am thinking "Oh he's probably got a bunch of extra consoles lying around, this one is probably just a spare..."

Now I need to see this button in action but in various different games to see what happens to each of them. Might get some fun interesting crash screens with it.

"John, what are you doing?" "I'm modding my Sega Megadrive so I can activate the level select on Sonic 3D Blast." "Sure thing John."

"so this is the mega drive i used to develop games for the system... anyway let me solder a short-circuit button real quick"

I see you really enjoy that little moment of your professional life with this 'secret' menu. I also have a really weird memory about all this. I was a little brat, who really enjoyed Sonic 3D Blast, as it was the first Sonic game that I owned. It was a bit hard for at the time, tho. I've discovered this secret menu purely by chance. My decided to jump down from the top bunk to the table, where my MegaDrive was placed, and landed right on it, activating this menu for me. I was amazed and later successfully repeated this trick my slapping my game console. I was afraid to damage it, of course, so tapped lightly. If only I knew that poking the cart itself was a better idea.

Jon: let's muck about with my Sega mega drive and risk breaking it Me, who's mega drive was stolen 20 years ago: :O Nooooooooo

Jon's going to keep milking this for as long as he can. I didn't say stop.

I like how you just give no shits about soldering in front of the internet. Most are either visibly nervous or constantly reminding you that they're bad at it. You just dove in and did the deed xD

in theory would this button trigger a level warp in Toy Story too?

Can you make a video about the swapping catridge trick? The most comon was remove Altered Beast to get infinite lives in Strider.

Refreshing and humbling to see that soldering isn't as easy as other channels make out and that I'm not the only one terrible at it

Man your channel has been the best recommendation I ever gotten. Keep it up!

"Who knows what that does, I have no idea. Probably putting five volts down a data line or something." Meanwhile, somewhere at Sega: "SIr, someone is trying to hack into our system! Apparently some kind of cheat code appears in all of our terminals at odd intervals."

The whole soldering part was hilarious. But the video itself was very good.

Now all you need to do is find an extra expansion port cover, drill a hole for the button, and use a male edge connector in place of the wires, and you've got yourself the first expansion slot add-on in the past two decades! The "Sonic 3D Blast Cheat Button", if you will.

Can't code....can't solder...also, can't stop watching this guy's videos. Such a great channel

You could try running different game with exception handler, such as Mortal Kombat 3, or Sonic 1 to see what kind of exception is triggered when you press that button that you've used to access the hidden level select... Also, wouldn't these wires get in the way of Sega CD's edge connector?

Ben Heck reference in the thumbnail? Love itttt. Edit: that joke about him singing Jurassic Park theme by now had me absolutely dying. 100% spot on. Love both your channels.

It probably goes without saying, but it's possible to kill the Mega Drive completely when shorting random pins on the expansion slot. lol I believe those two pins (10th and 11th down) are pins "A21" and "A20". Those are the /ROM (Chip Select) and VD15 (Data Bit 15) pins respectively. The second and third pins are the worst to short, as it has +9V (or more) on one of those pins, direct from the PSU. So yeah, the /ROM and VD15 pins are the first which involve any data or address stuff. Most of the others (from the first downwards) are other Chip Select lines for various address ranges... (top) A30 = GND A29 = SR2 (Right Audio channel input?) A28 = +9V ! (direct from PSU, which is unregulated, so can be 12V or more) A27 = nc (no connection / not used) A26 = VCC (+5V) A25 = FRES (one of the /Reset signals) A24 = /FDC (Floppy Drive, used for selecting the Mega CD address range, I think?) A23 = /RAS2 (one of the Row Addr Strobes for RAM select) A22 = /ASEL (can't remember) A21 = /ROM (ROM / Cart chip select) A20 = VD15 (Data bus, bit 15) Shorting /FRES to VCC (5V) probably isn't quite so bad, as the reset signals are almost always active-low. So when the system is running, /FRES will be driven to 5V anyway. Obviously still not ideal to short any pins, though. I just thought somebody might be curious to know. lol

World's dumbest console modification. 10/10, good video

A set of 'helping hands' makes soldering so so much easier.

This was both fascinating and painful to watch. That poor Mega Drive. Thanks for sharing the experiment though.

WHY WOULD YOU DAMAGE THE MACHINE YOU USED TO DEVELOP SONIC3D?! IT SHOULD BE ON A MUSEUM! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

you haven't truly modded a game console or other electronics until you sent the 52v backlight to the cpu dataline

Ok now I feel like dumb for repeatedly reading this as "Ben Heck Hacks" but to be fair this is absolutely something you'd see on his channel, but with even more random singing than mentioned, and perhaps a movie about Port Washington.

Seems more logical to me to put a button on the cartridge instead, as this mod only has its use in this game.

If you didn't want to modify your Genesis/Megadrive, you could also solder your wire and switch (with 100ohm resistor recommended) to those same pins inside the cartridge, then you don't need any modifications to the console itself.

I absolutely love the Ben Heck reference (and his response!) - great stuff

Pretty funny to watch, but I'd really suggest putting a resistor (around 100 ohms at least) inline to limit the current when you're bridging pins like that. It helps protect the circuitry a bit :)

Lol this made me chuckle, There's a full pinout guide for the expansion port, used it when region free modding my Sega CD + sync on bus for 32X + MD + CD mods They are indeed data pins, so you've not got much to worry about doing that. You're probably just causing the memory to scramble for a moment

Of course the best way to trigger the level select is, at the title screen, pressing in sequence: B, A, Right, A, C, Up, Down, A. It should go to the main menu without you pressing Start if you've done it right. From there, selecting "Start Game" will take you to the level select. Putting that here because not enough people seem to know the actual intended way to get to the level select in this game. And because it's intended and uses no hardware exploits, it's completely safe.

Love your videos and they have really helped me learn more about video game programming and game design, so let me help you back - ALWAYS USE FLUX! You sir, either don’t know about the wonders of flux or you are a very brave man not to edit your soldering clumsiness out. Hats off to ya for making the video though. Really cool idea!

oh boy, I can't wait to *destroy my historic developing console* just to cheat in Sonic 3D.

I f'ing love you. This is exactly what makes life worth living. Thank you.

Now this just needs to be added to the Mega Drive emulators (like Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics on Steam), so we can all enjoy it!

Maybe you could sometimes do a video about the transparency issues with Genesis and why it wasn't even done right on the Saturn. Just curious what made it such a big deal, even on a 32-bit plattform.

Holy shit, at least disassemble the console first, man. Seeing that soldering iron that close to beautiful Sega plastic scared the hell outta me.

Sonic 3D is the gift that keeps on giving.

Expansion port is CN2 on the schematic, bottom of the board is pads A1 to A30, front to back. So you're shorting out pads A21 and A20, /ROM and VD15 respectively.

Jon Heck!! More like ElectroBOOM.... ElectroJOON lol.

Its probably Dev intended for QA Testing each level on Retail HW. They probably builded an hardware that connect into this HW port with various Switch or even something that connect into a WorkStation to test thing before the release. But very interesting finding.

That soldering was painful to watch! But great video!

I love this guy i feel so guilty for laughing so hard at the soldering.

That solder job gave me so much anxiety.

I love your videos, but anybody who does anything with electronics would have a "BIG YIKES" moment watching you simply touch 2 connections together at the same time at seemingly random.

You kinda actually made it more historically valuable

Loved the Ben Heck Jurassic Park theme reference.

That soldering skills! 🙃

Good thing this channel is called coding secrets not soldering secrets :P

Today on coding secrets: how not to solder.

As someone that learned to solder badly at like 8 years old... And can now do SMD hand soldering.... FLUX ALL THE THINGS!

That's why I ended up programming software. I always liked electronic devices but I can't solder, I'm horrible at it. So instead of building them, I'm now programming them.

"I can code better than solder"

It's amazing how many modifications can be made to the Mega Drive. The clock speed one is still on my to do list. I wonder what else there is...

I love these videos, keep up the amazing work man

Title sugestion: "Strugling with a soldering iron for 4 minutes"

Looking at my genesis and the schematics, those would be pins A20 and A21 of the CN2 expansion port, which are VD15 and /ROM. Depending on what is going on at the exact time of the crash, you're either driving data bit 15, or more likely driving /ROM and making the ROM or RAM respond when the other is what is intended.

What the Heck, Jon. . . . Thank you I'm here all week.

I just use a screw driver and run it across random solder pads and chips until I get the cheat mode or a purple sonic or crazy sounds... One of the other

I would probably tie the wire around the leg a bit like a hook and also pre-tin the wire end to try to make it as easy as possible to solder together. Good video!

Now I am wondering: Could you do it on the cartridge? I guess you could, since touching the cartridge could trigger the level selection menu. A button attached to the cartridge that would disconnect a connection or something, it might work!

I love this channel. Any plans for some further uploads?

When the answer to “how many ways can you trigger the sonic level select screen” is “yes”

Not a single fucking protection resistor was harmed

But why did you solder the wires to the button on top of the console? WHY?!

Superb Ben Heck impersonation.

Louis Rossmann would love your soldering skills.

as a retro fanatic and gaming history advocate, this video horrified me. great stuff as always, but i was literally having kittens watching you solder directly to the bus after winging it on a hotwire

Soldering onto the switch might be easier if you wrapped the wire round the leg a few times to secure it first. Also might be you could stick a resistor on, so at least whatever torture you're inflicting onto the poor bus will be current-limited. Few hundred ohms maybe to defeat any pullups or pulldowns inside, that would be about the same current that any of the chips would put on the bus.

Amazing. Thank you so much for your poor soldering skills, I feel much better about my own now

Damn, please for the love of god, dont use the sega as a workbench! And also, instead of solering onto the expansion slot, just buy a slot conector and us that instead, you can salvage one from old ISA pc motherboards. Also instead of a direct short circuit you should put a cap (say 10uf) inbetween to limit the short circuit in th case th chip tries to drive the line, you could damage the internal transistors with enough bad luck.

Myes, a crash Button (or in Sonic 3D's case, the Push-to-Win button)

Can’t you try and put a button on the cartridge itself?

I'm surprised you managed to mod in a working button for entering the cheat menu. And on a Genesis you deved your games on no less! When you said you don't know what you're doing, that was the icing on the cake. lol

I destroyed the vram in a megadrive by soldering to it while it was plugged into a crt, I think the ground loop caused voltage from the soldering iron to ground to the video connector. Luckily I was able to buy more vram from an old video card.

I can't imagine the job for the NTSC switch inside LMAO

Perhaps you could place a small capacitor in series with the button, so that, even when you hold the button, only a short pulse is sent.

2:39 Should you really be doing this *on top of the console* ? You have a perfectly good desk there...

One of the more crazy things I've seen someone do to a mega drive. Should use a resistor to reduce chance of doing something fatal. Curious what exception it actually generates, bus error, address error or illegal instruction or something else

hello, epic engineer police? i have an report to make.