Raspberry Pi Sega Mega Drive/Genesis II Case

I received my Raspberry Pi and decided I needed a case. I didn't have much available to me in terms of laser cutters, 3D printers or woodwork skills etc. so I thought laterally. I'd previously had the idea of using the Pi as an emulator so I thought, "why wouldn't a Pi fit in a Mega Drive case?". About an hour and half later of taking my old Mega Drive II apart and thinking about the best ways of keeping everything tied down I had a very neat case for my Pi with (sort of) integrated USB hub.

For this Instructable you will need:

A Raspberry Pi with SD card inserted and OS installed (if you want to be pre-emptive with your case a credit card will help you see how it all goes together in place of the Pi),

A Sega Mega Drive/Genesis II (See the second picture if you're unsure which version you have),

A screwdriver that can undo all of the screws on the console (they're all the same size),

Some sticky tape,

A micro USB cable and power adapter for your Pi,

An HDMI cable, the thinner the better (or an RCA connector cable would work too),

(Optional, although highly recommended) A 4 port USB hub which is no wider than 105mm (about 4 inches), no taller than about 9mm (0.35 inches) and ideally no more than 30mm deep (1.2 inches). I used an old Kensington one. If it has a short USB cable attached, like mine, you may also want a USB extender cable.

USB Mouse and Keyboard (or any other connection type that you can get to work),

(Optional) Ethernet Cable.

Step 1: Dismantle your Mega Drive/Genesis

For this step you need to remove every screw you can see from your console (see video below for help), inside and out except the ones holding the cartridge bay to the top of the case (see picture 1),unless you want to of course.

Keep all the screws safe (see picture 2; I unscrewed 9 in total but the number and type may vary slightly by model).

I used this video to help me take apart my Mega Drive as it shows you where to look for all the hard-to-find screws. Ignore the bit after 2:40 where he starts soldering; this is unneeded.

In the end you should end up with (see picture 3):
2 pieces of metal,
1 motherboard,
2 shells of plastic,
a plastic bar and
a load of screws.

Comments

[doglitbug]

Any thoughts on connecting original Mega Drive 2 controllers using the GPIO ports, or do we need to use USB controllers? I've not been able to find any instructions online

[osholt]

I bought a special USB thing to do this for me but in theory it should be quite easy to connect a mega drive controller to the Pi. As Mega rive controllers use standard 11pin serial connectors if you found a serial library which works with the GPIO pins you could wire your controller straight on. The only difficult bit would be actually wiring the controller onto the GPIOs and possibly figuring out how to make the library trigger key presses when a button is pressed on the controller so you might have to brush up on your Python/C to do that bit. Best of luck!

[nerd7473]

cool

[sonicdude10]

Now for the Sega Genesis emulator script for the Pi.

[osholt]

I looked into doing that at the time but because hardware acceleration was no where to be found then I gave up when I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog at 6FPS. I think I saw somewhere that someone got a Mega Drive emulator up and running pretty well (with instructions but I can't find it atm).

[bigme]

jabujavi-
Got mine ordered and delivered to the Dallas, TX for $43 US. The order confirmation showed $35 for the Pi, and $8 Standard Delivery (which was DHL I think).

[jabujavi]

How many dollars have you paid for the Raspberry? (If we can know it...)

[osholt]

I payed the standard launch day price from Element 14 on launch day which here in the UK, including VAT and postage was £29 which works out at about US$35 + VAT as it is everywhere else in the world.