SC-3000

Had long wanted to verify the operation of some cartridges ordered in Japan, a month ago, for my beautiful SEGA SG-1000 Mark II, and finally I was able to arrange.
The precarious situation of my bolognese camp didn't assisted me. In fact, here I haven't a decent TV to connect devices like this, very special and exotic, and I resorted to an old portable LCD TV that I had from my house, in deep southern Italy…
In addition to the small TV I proceeded to pack a AC/AC converter, that allows to plug devices operating at 110V on Italian's mains, within a certain power limit.
The tolerance of this transformer widely covers requests for ballasts designed for computers, consoles and small appliances in general.

The mini TV that I brought with me, can display different TV standards, including PAL, NTSC and SECAM. After entering the first cartridge into the console, I proceeded to switch power on and I started the automatic channel search. After three rounds for the various bands covered by the tuner (actually took only the UHF) and about 5 minutes of spasmodic wait… nothingness! Continue Reading →

After years of unbridled desire and extensive research on markets and online auctions, I finally filled a big gap in my collection (and in retro-collector affections of mines), getting myself a Sega SC-3000, although it shows with a different brand. Yeno was a French company that handled the distribution of the SC-3000 on its territory, a deal with Sega to sell computers under its own brand, reserving the name of the original manufacturer to the upper right corner of the case, labeled white “Manufactured by Sega”.

The Yeno SC-3000 is in all respects identical to the Sega design, with the exception of a very good quality RGB video output , thanks to an additional card installed inside the case, mounted in piggyback mode, and connected to different pins, with obscene flying cables, to the motherboard.
The R/F module originally present in almost all manufacturer's machines, is absent in all specimens distributed by Yeno on French soil, which show a sort of rubber cap in place of the R/F output. Continue Reading →

All people of my age, when it comes to hear of SEGA or to see the distinctive blue logo, are led to remember the countless creations, both hardware and software, of this prolific Japanese manufacturer, exclusively devoted to video game market. Particularly, the arcade rooms were full of legendary video games produced by this very active organization.

Among the different creatures came from the SEGA factories, detaches the console I am going to talk about: the SG-1000, Mark II version, i.e. revision 2 of the machine originally sold in 1983, marketed the following year.

This object was not very popular in Europe, where people widely preferred the computer variant, namely that the SEGA SC-3000, in substance, was identical to the console, except for the addition of a membrane keyboard with rubber keys, such as those of the most famous and popular ZX Spectrum. In fact, the software ran identically on both Hardware incarnations. Continue Reading →