Why the Mega Drive 2 Deserves Better Than What Sega Gave It
The first time I plugged a Mega Drive 2 into a proper CRT via SCART and loaded up Sonic the Hedgehog 2, I genuinely sat back and said something unprintable. The colours were vivid, the scanlines were crisp, and Chemical Plant Zone looked like a completely different game to the one I’d been playing through composite for twenty years. That’s not hyperbole. The difference is that dramatic.
Here’s the thing that still baffles me: the Mega Drive’s video chip — the Yamaha YM7101, which handles graphics alongside the VDP — produces a perfectly clean RGB signal natively. It’s already in there. Sega just didn’t wire it to the AV connector properly on the Model 2. The original Model 1 had a proper DIN-style multi-out that passed RGB without issue. The Model 2 switched to a smaller, cheaper proprietary connector and, depending on your revision, either stripped RGB out entirely or delivered it in a degraded state that still needs a few extra components to look right. It’s one of the more frustrating cost-cutting decisions in Sega’s history, and it directly affects millions of consoles sitting in UK lofts right now.
This guide is for the PAL Mega Drive Model 2 specifically — the smaller, lighter one with the oval buttons and the nine-pin AV connector. If you’ve got a Model 1, your situation is different and frankly easier. If you’ve got a 32X attached, take it off for now and deal with that headache another day. We’re going to do this properly: full component list, every solder point explained, what the signals actually do and why, and a real troubleshooting section based on mistakes I’ve personally made and watched other people make in our Discord. Let’s get into it.
What You’re Actually Achieving Here
Before we touch a screwdriver, it’s worth understanding what this mod does at a circuit level — not because you need a degree in electronics, but because knowing why each step matters means you’ll catch your own mistakes rather than wondering why the screen is green.
The Mega Drive 2’s VDP (Video Display Processor) chip — the Sega 315-5660 on most PAL Model 2 boards — outputs separate Red, Green, and Blue analogue signals, plus a Composite Sync (CSYNC) signal that tells your telly when each line starts and ends. On a clean setup, you want to route those four signals (R, G, B, CSYNC) out through a SCART connector with the correct impedance matching resistors on each colour channel, a coupling capacitor on the sync line, and a DC-blocking capacitor on the audio lines. You also need to tell the TV it’s receiving an RGB signal — which is done by supplying a small voltage (around 1–3V) on pin 16 of the SCART connector.
The PAL Model 2 in its stock form either doesn’t output RGB at all from its AV port (on later board revisions like the VA4), or outputs it without the correct buffering and resistors, which gives you a picture that’s too bright, has sync issues, or rolls on certain displays. This mod — using a simple RGB bypass board or a handful of discrete components — corrects all of that for a signal that’s as clean as you’ll get from original hardware short of using a framemeister or HDMI mod.
What Board Revision Do You Have?
This matters. Open your Mega Drive 2 (we’ll get to that) and look at the main board. You’ll find a revision printed on the PCB — common PAL ones are VA0, VA1, VA1.8, VA2, and VA4. The VA0 and VA1 boards are the most friendly: they have RGB available at the VDP with minimal additional work. The VA4 is the most common board found in late-production UK units (often the ones bundled with the Mega CD 2 in the mid-90s) and is the trickiest — it removed the RGB output transistors from the AV section and relies on the composite encoder for everything. If you’ve got a VA4, don’t panic. The RGB signals are still present at the VDP chip pins themselves; you just need to tap them there rather than from the AV connector area. This guide covers both approaches.
To identify your board: look for white or yellow text printed on the green PCB near the cartridge slot area or along one edge. It’ll say something like “VA2” or “837-8520-A2”. The last part of that second number often corresponds to the VA revision. When in doubt, photograph your board and post it in the RetroInHand Discord — someone will know within minutes.
Full Requirements List
I’ve tried to keep this under £40 total, and I’ll give you actual prices as I go. Costs fluctuate on eBay and AliExpress, so treat these as ballpark figures from what I paid in early 2024.
Essential Tools
- Soldering iron or station — Minimum 25W with a fine tip. I use a Hakko FX-888D, which is overkill for this but I use it for everything. A TS100 or a decent Antex will do fine. Don’t use a plumber’s iron from Screwfix. I’ve seen someone try. The board didn’t survive.
- Solder — 60/40 leaded, 0.6mm diameter. I know lead-free is more environmentally responsible, but for rework on old boards with old tin, lead-free solder causes cold joints far more readily. Use leaded for this. Wash your hands afterwards.
- Flux pen or flux paste — Rosin-based. Absolutely non-negotiable. Without flux, you’ll get dry joints that look fine and fail under heat. I use the MG Chemicals 835 pen.
- JIS screwdriver set — The Mega Drive uses JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) screws, not Phillips. They look identical but a Phillips driver will cam out and chew the heads. A set costs about £8 on Amazon. Buy one. Treat it as an investment across every Japanese console you’ll ever open.
- Multimeter — For checking continuity and voltages. A basic one from Amazon for £12 is fine. You’ll use it more than you expect.
- Desoldering pump or braid — You may not need to desolder anything, but have it ready.
- Helping hands or PCB holder — Soldering onto a board that keeps sliding away is how you get bridges and burns. Spend £6 on a PCB vice.
- Isopropyl alcohol (99%) and cotton buds — For cleaning flux residue afterwards. Don’t skip this; flux left on a board can cause corrosion over time.
- Kapton tape — Heat-resistant polyimide tape. For insulating any traces you need to protect.
Components and Materials
- RGB SCART cable for Mega Drive 2 — Specifically one wired for RGB, not composite. Retro Gaming Cables UK (Retro Access) sell excellent ones for around £15–18. Don’t buy a cheapo one off eBay — I’ll explain why shortly.
- 75 ohm resistors × 3 — One per colour channel (R, G, B). These set the correct impedance for your display. Use 1% tolerance metal film, not carbon. A bag of 100 from Mouser or CPC costs pennies.
- 220 µF electrolytic capacitor × 2 — For DC-blocking on the audio lines. Rated 16V minimum. Make sure polarity is correct.
- 100nF ceramic capacitor × 1 — For the sync line. Sometimes listed as 0.1µF.
- 470 ohm resistor × 1 — For the RGB blanking/switching voltage on SCART pin 16.
- Optional: RGB amp board (such as the THS7374-based amp) — If your board revision is VA4 or you want the absolute cleanest signal, a small pre-built amp board from eBay or Aliexpress (around £4–8) does the buffering for you. I’ll show you where to use it.
- Wire — 28AWG single-core hookup wire in red, green, blue, yellow/white (for audio), and black. Silicone-insulated is better because it doesn’t melt when the iron touches it accidentally. We’ve all touched it accidentally.
- Heatshrink tubing — 2mm and 4mm diameter. For tidying wire joints.
Total cost: If you buy the SCART cable new (~£17), resistors/caps from CPC (~£3), wire (~£4), and already own a soldering iron, you’re comfortably under £40. If you need to buy an iron as well, spend £30–35 on a decent TS100 clone and treat the iron as a one-time tool investment, not part of the mod cost.
Opening the Console — Step by Step
Before anything touches the inside of your Mega Drive, make sure it’s unplugged. Completely. Not just switched off — power lead out of the wall. I’ll say this once because it should be obvious, but I’ve had to say it to more people than I’d like to admit.
- Remove any cartridge and controllers. Clear the top and sides so you can work freely.
- Place the console upside-down on a soft cloth or anti-static mat. The plastic is brittle on older units — especially around the corners. Don’t put it directly on a hard desk.
- Locate the seven JIS screws on the base of the console. There are typically six standard-length screws and one longer one near the cartridge slot — they’re not all the same length. I cannot stress this enough: note which screw came from which hole, or lay them out in the same pattern as the board. Using the wrong-length screw during reassembly can crack the PCB mounting posts. This happened to me on my second Mega Drive 2. Genuinely gutting.
- Remove all seven screws and set them aside in order. A piece of masking tape with the positions drawn on it works brilliantly for this.
- Carefully lift the bottom shell away. There are a few internal plastic clips near the front edge. If it resists, don’t force it — check you haven’t missed a screw. There’s sometimes one hiding under a sticker near the serial number. I’ve been caught by this twice.
- Lift the top shell (with the PCB) gently upward. The RF shielding is attached to the top shell. The main PCB sits in the bottom half on the VA0–VA2 boards, or may be attached to the top shell on some variants. Don’t yank. On some units there’s a wire connecting the RF modulator to the board — leave that alone; we’re not touching the RF side.
- Unscrew the RF shielding if it’s obscuring the board. This is usually two or four small Phillips screws (actual Phillips this time, not JIS) holding a metal plate over the board. Remove it and set it aside. This gives you access to the main PCB.
- Identify your board revision now. Look for the VA number printed on the PCB. Take a photo. This is your reference for the entire rest of the procedure.
Identifying the Test Points and Solder Points
This is the section most guides rush through, and it’s where most mistakes happen. I’m going to be specific about what you’re looking for, because the board layout varies between revisions and if you solder to the wrong point you’ll either get no signal or, in one memorable case from our Discord, you’ll send 5V into your television’s RGB input and have a very bad day.
For VA0, VA1, and VA1.8 Boards
On these earlier revisions, Sega actually included most of the RGB output circuitry on the board, and the signals are accessible relatively easily near the AV output connector area. Look for three via points or component pads labelled (or identifiable by tracing) R_OUT, G_OUT, and B_OUT near the video output section — usually in the lower-right area of the board when viewed with the cartridge slot at the top.
The CSYNC signal on these boards is available at the AV connector itself — specifically at pin 3 of the 9-pin proprietary connector, or you can tap it from the VDP chip directly at pin 8 (on the 315-5660 VDP). Tapping at the VDP gives you the cleanest possible sync before any internal processing degrades it. For VA0/VA1 boards, the VDP is the large 64 or 80-pin IC, usually centrally located. Pin numbering starts at the notch/dot on the chip and counts anti-clockwise when viewed from above. Double-check this with your multimeter: CSYNC should show a 5V square wave when the console is running.
Audio is taken from the two audio filter capacitors near the audio section — again, right side of the board when oriented with cart slot up. Look for two electrolytics in a line; the junction between them and the output trace is your tap point.
For VA2 Boards
Similar to VA1, but Sega started removing some of the discrete transistors from the output stage on some VA2 boards. Check whether R201, R202, and R203 (the RGB output resistors) are populated. If they’re missing (you’ll see empty pads), you’ll need to add your own resistors in circuit — which is exactly what we’re doing with our 75 ohm resistors anyway, so this is fine. The RGB output transistors (Q201, Q202, Q203) should still be present. Tap your RGB signals from the collector side of those transistors.
For VA4 Boards
The VA4 is a different animal. Sega stripped the output transistors completely and redesigned the output stage around the Sony CXA1145 composite encoder chip. RGB is not available at the AV connector on a stock VA4 at all — you’ll just get composite and, if you’re lucky, S-Video quality output. The good news: the VDP is still producing RGB. You just need to tap it directly from the VDP chip pins.
On the VA4, the VDP is the 315-5660 or 315-5313 (the later revision). Identify it — it’s the largest chip on the board. You want pins 34, 35, and 36 (Red, Green, Blue) on the 315-5660, or verify against a pinout diagram for your specific chip revision. I recommend the SpritesMind forums’ Mega Drive hardware documentation, which is the most accurate reference I’ve found. These pins are tiny — we’re talking 0.5mm–0.8mm pitch — and this is where the job gets genuinely tricky. Take your time. Use a magnifying glass. For VA4, I strongly recommend using the THS7374-based RGB amp board as a buffer between the VDP pins and your SCART cable, because the VDP pins alone don’t have sufficient drive strength to reliably push signal down a 1.5m SCART cable.
The Soldering Work — Full Step by Step
Right. Iron on, tip tinned, flux pen ready. Let’s do this.
- Tin your iron tip. Melt a small blob of solder onto the tip, then wipe it on your brass wool cleaner. The tip should be shiny silver. A dirty, oxidised tip transfers heat poorly and causes cold joints. Retip if necessary — tips are cheap.
- Apply flux to every solder point before you touch it with the iron. This is non-negotiable. A thin smear from the flux pen directly onto the pad or pin. Flux cleans the oxide layer and allows solder to flow properly. Without it, you’ll get balled-up joints that appear connected but aren’t.
- Pre-tin your wires. Cut your lengths of hookup wire — I work in roughly 10cm lengths and trim to fit once routed. Strip about 3mm of insulation. Twist the strands. Apply a tiny amount of flux, then touch solder to the wire while the iron heats it from below. The solder should flow in smoothly and coat every strand. This pre-tinning means when you go to solder the wire to the board, you only need to apply heat briefly — reducing the risk of lifting a pad.
- Solder the Red channel wire first. Place the pre-tinned wire end onto the RGB Red output point (see previous section for your board revision). Hold it in place — this is where a helping hand or a bit of Blu Tack on a non-critical area helps. Touch the iron to the joint for no more than 2–3 seconds. The solder on both the wire and the pad should reflow and merge. Remove the iron, hold the wire still for another 2–3 seconds while it cools. Don’t blow on it. Don’t wobble it. A good joint will look smooth and slightly shiny. A cold joint looks dull and grainy.
- Repeat for Green and Blue channels. Same method. Same patience. If the pad lifts — which can happen on old, heat-stressed boards — stop immediately. A lifted pad means the copper trace has separated from the board substrate. It’s not the end of the world, but you’ll need to trace the signal back and find another point to solder to. Don’t keep heating a lifted pad hoping it’ll go back down. It won’t.
- Solder the CSYNC wire. From the appropriate source for your board revision (AV connector pin 3 or VDP pin 8). The sync signal is more sensitive to interference than the colour signals, so run this wire away from the audio wiring if possible. Keep it short.
- Solder the audio wires. Left and right audio channels from the tap points identified earlier. These go through your 220µF DC-blocking capacitors before reaching the SCART connector — positive leg of the cap connects toward the board, negative leg toward the SCART end. Get polarity wrong here and you’ll either get no audio or very distorted audio. The negative leg of an electrolytic cap is marked with a stripe and shorter lead. If you’re using surface-mount caps salvaged from elsewhere, you’ll need to check the datasheet for polarity markings.
- Add the 75 ohm resistors on the R, G, B lines. These go in series between your RGB tap points and the SCART connector — meaning you solder one leg to the wire coming from the board, one leg to the wire going to the SCART, and heatshrink over the joint. These resistors match the output impedance to the 75 ohm input impedance that SCART TVs expect. Without them, the image will be too bright, colours will bleed, and you’ll likely get ringing artefacts — bright objects on dark backgrounds will have a ghostly echo to the right of them. I forgot these on my first attempt and spent an hour convinced something else was wrong.
- Add the 100nF ceramic capacitor on the CSYNC line. Again, in series. This blocks any DC offset on the sync signal, which can cause some TVs to fail to lock, or to flicker constantly. It’s a small component but it makes a big difference on finicky displays.
- Wire the SCART pin 16 (RGB switching/blanking) voltage. This is the pin that tells your TV “I’m sending RGB, switch to that mode.” You need to supply around 1–3V DC here. The simplest method: tap the 5V supply from a convenient point on the board (there are several — look for the 5V pad near the VDP decoupling capacitors, or use the 5V pin on the cartridge connector area). Run that through a 470 ohm resistor to bring the voltage down to approximately 1–1.8V, which falls within spec for all SCART TVs I’ve tested. Wire this to pin 16 of your SCART cable.
- Connect the ground wire. Run a short wire from a ground point on the board (any ground via, the metal shield mounting screw hole, or the ground leg of any capacitor) to the SCART ground pins (pins 5, 9, 13, 17, and 21 on a SCART connector — if you’re wiring your own plug, connect at least pins 17 and 21). A floating ground is the single most common cause of “everything looks connected but there’s no picture.”
- For VA4 boards: wire through the THS7374 amp board. The amp board sits between your VDP tap wires and the 75 ohm resistors. It needs a 5V supply and a ground connection (pads are labelled on every version I’ve seen). The RGB signals go into the IN pads and come out the OUT pads, already buffered to the correct drive strength. It’s a tiny board — roughly 20mm × 15mm — and you can stick it to the inside of the case with a small piece of double-sided foam tape once everything is tested.
- Clean all joints with isopropyl alcohol and a cotton bud. Work gently across all your new solder points. You’ll see the flux residue dissolve and the joints will look clean. Let it dry for five minutes before applying power.
Routing Wires and Reassembly
The inside of a Mega Drive 2 is not exactly roomy, and poor wire routing is the number-one cause of problems that show up three months after a successful mod when you move the console and something shorts or pulls free. Do this part with the same care as the soldering itself.
- Route your wiring bundle along the edges of the PCB, away from the RF modulator and the power section. The power circuitry can induce noise on nearby wires, and you absolutely don’t want ripple on your RGB signal — it shows up as horizontal bands scrolling through the picture, worse in games with large colour fills (think the sky in Streets of Rage 2). I route along the back edge, away from the voltage regulator.
- Secure the wire bundle with small cable ties or loops of Kapton tape every 3–4cm. The wires should not be under any tension. Any strain near a solder joint will eventually cause a cold joint to fail entirely. The first time I skipped this step I had an intermittent green channel drop-out that only happened when the console was warm. Took me two evenings to find it.
- The SCART cable itself — how does it exit the console? There are a few approaches. The cleanest is to use a panel-mount SCART socket and cut a slot in the rear of the shell, mounting the socket so a standard SCART cable plugs in from outside. This requires some careful Dremel work. The simpler approach — and what I do for clients’ consoles when I’m not permanently modding my own — is to route a captive SCART cable out through a small notch filed in the rear edge of the shell near the existing AV out, or to replace the original AV connector footprint with a neater bracket. The captive cable approach is reversible and costs nothing extra. The panel-mount socket is the professional finish and well worth the extra hour of work.
- If routing a captive cable, protect it at the exit point with a rubber grommet. The shell edge will eventually cut through the cable’s outer insulation if it’s rubbing against bare plastic. Grommets cost 50p in packs of 20 from CPC.
- Before fully reassembling, do a partial test. Lay the board flat, connect the SCART cable, plug in a controller and cartridge, and power up. You want to verify the picture before the shell goes back together. More on what to look for in the testing section.
- Once tested and confirmed working, replace the RF shield, reassemble the shell, and replace the screws in their correct holes. Tighten gently — snug is enough. Overtightening on aged plastic posts will crack them. When you tighten the last screw and the console clicks solidly back together, that is a genuinely satisfying feeling.
Testing and First Boot
This is the moment. Everything up to this point has been preparation. Now we find out if it worked.
- Connect your SCART cable to a SCART-equipped CRT or a SCART-to-HDMI adapter if you’re on a flatscreen. If you’re using a modern TV with a SCART adapter, be aware that cheap adapters capture composite from the SCART, not RGB, which entirely defeats the purpose of this mod. Use an adapter that explicitly states it captures the RGB lines — the ones from OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) dealers or the decent Aliexpress units marked “RGB SCART to HDMI” are fine. The £4 ones from random eBay sellers generally aren’t.
- Load a cartridge you know works. I use Sonic the Hedgehog because it boots fast, the title screen has a wide colour range, and the gameplay is easy to evaluate visually. If you don’t have a cartridge, power it up without one — you’ll still see the BIOS screen and can evaluate the sync.
- Power on and check for the following in order:
- Does the TV detect a signal? (It should switch to the SCART input automatically if pin 8 — which carries the 12V AV signal to trigger switching — is wired. Some SCART cables include this; some don’t. If your TV doesn’t auto-switch, switch it manually to AV/SCART.)
- Is there a stable picture with no rolling or tearing? Rolling means your CSYNC is wrong — either missing, too noisy, or the polarity is inverted. Some displays need CSYNC with a specific polarity; try connecting through a simple sync stripper if you have one (the LM1881-based ones work well).
- Are all three colours correct? Load the title screen of Sonic and check that Sonic is blue, the logo is the right shade, and the background gradient is clean. If everything has an odd colour cast — magenta instead of blue, etc. — one of your RGB channels is either missing or crossed with another.
- Is audio present on both channels? Listen for mono vs stereo. The Mega Drive outputs genuine stereo — Sonic 2‘s Chemical Plant Zone sounds different in each ear. If you’re getting mono only, one of your audio capacitors may have reversed polarity or a cold joint.
- Is the image the correct brightness? With your 75 ohm resistors in place, the image should be vibrant but not blown out. If it’s too bright and colours are washing out, check your resistors — you may have grabbed the wrong value. Resistors have colour bands; check them with a multimeter on resistance mode.
- Let it run for fifteen minutes. Some faults only appear under heat. Sit with Streets of Rage 2 running (it’s a good thermal stress test because it’s demanding) and watch for anything that appears after warm-up. Intermittent faults are almost always cold joints. If something develops, touch each joint gently with a wooden cocktail stick while the console runs to try to identify the culprit.
Troubleshooting — The Real Stuff
I’ve done this mod on seven Mega Drive 2 consoles across three different board revisions. Here are the faults I’ve actually encountered and how I fixed them.
No Picture at All
First check: is the SCART cable seated firmly? I’ve lost count of how many “the mod failed” messages in our Discord turned out to be a loose cable. Firmly push it in.
If the cable is fine: check your ground wire first. Disconnect the console, use your multimeter on continuity mode, and confirm that the ground point on your board has continuity to the ground pins of the SCART connector. No continuity = broken ground wire or a cold solder joint at one end. This is the most common cause of no picture.
If ground is fine: check pin 16 of the SCART. With the console running, use your multimeter on DC voltage mode and probe pin 16 of the SCART connector (the plug end, not the board end). You should see roughly 1–1.8V. If you’re seeing 0V, your 5V tap or your 470 ohm resistor connection is broken. If you’re seeing 5V, your resistor isn’t in circuit — which won’t damage anything, but some TVs don’t like 5V on that pin and will refuse to display RGB.
Picture Rolls or Won’t Sync
This is a sync issue. Most likely causes: cold joint on the CSYNC wire, or the 100nF capacitor is in the wrong orientation (it’s non-polar, so orientation doesn’t matter — but check it’s actually in circuit and not bridging accidentally to ground). Also check that you’re tapping CSYNC from the correct pin. On some VA2 boards I’ve seen the CSYNC and audio pins near the AV connector are labelled ambiguously — verify with a multimeter set to AC voltage mode. CSYNC will show a measurable AC signal; audio will show a much smaller AC voltage when a game is running.
If sync is present but the picture still rolls on your specific display, try adding a 470 ohm resistor to ground on the CSYNC line (forming a voltage divider). Some TVs and scalers expect a lower sync voltage. The OSSC in particular can be fussy about sync voltage. The LM1881-based sync stripper module I mentioned earlier solves this outright for around £3 from AliExpress.
One Colour Channel Missing
If Sonic is magenta instead of blue, you’ve lost the green channel. If everything’s green-tinted, you’ve lost red. If it’s a yellow image, you’ve lost blue. Work out which channel is missing, go back to the solder joint for that channel, and reflow it with fresh flux. Nine times out of ten it’s a cold joint. The tenth time, you’ve got the wrong wire connected to the wrong pad — double-check your routing against the tap points for your board revision.
Picture Too Bright / Colours Blown Out
Your 75 ohm resistors aren’t in circuit. Either they have a cold joint, or you’ve accidentally bypassed them by routing a wire around them. Check each one with your multimeter in resistance mode — disconnect the console, probe across the resistor, you should read approximately 75 ohms. If you’re reading 0 ohms, the resistor is shorted. If you’re reading OL (open loop), the resistor is not connected on one side.
Horizontal Bands / Interference on Screen
This is usually power supply noise coupling onto your RGB lines. It appears as subtle or not-so-subtle horizontal dark bands that move slowly upward — similar to what you see on a TV when a lamp dimmer switch is nearby. First, check that your RGB wires are routed away from the power section and the voltage regulator. If routing is fine, try adding a 100nF ceramic decoupling cap from each RGB line to ground, as close to the SCART end as possible. Also check that your 5V tap point is clean — ideally it should be taken from a decoupled supply rail, not directly from the regulator output. The capacitor pads near the VDP are a good source because they’re already decoupled.
No Audio or Distorted Audio
Check capacitor polarity first. Reverse polarity on an electrolytic doesn’t always kill it immediately — sometimes it just passes very distorted audio before failing. If the audio is present but low, your tap point might not be post-amplifier — make sure you’re tapping from the output side of the audio circuit, not an intermediate stage. If you’re getting audio in one channel only, check the cold joint on the other channel’s capacitor. If you’re getting a loud hum alongside the audio, your audio ground isn’t connected properly.
Pro Tips From the Bench
Tip 1: Photograph everything before you touch it. Before your first solder joint, photograph the board from above in good light. If you need to retrace a wire or identify a component later, your own photos are worth more than any schematic.
Tip 2: Do a continuity check before powering on. Every wire you’ve added: check continuity from source to destination. Then check that no wire has continuity to ground unless it should. This takes ten minutes and will save you from a dead display input.
Tip 3: Test the SCART cable before the mod, not after. Plug your RGB SCART cable into a console that you know works (a PAL SNES, a PAL Saturn) and confirm it displays correctly. A faulty cable will look exactly like a faulty mod, and I’ve wasted an afternoon doubting my own soldering because of a dodgy cable.
Tip 4: Don’t cheap out on the SCART cable. The cheap cables from eBay — the ones sold as “AV cables” for £3.99 — are often wired for composite only, with the RGB pins not connected inside the SCART plug. They look identical to a proper RGB cable. Always buy from Retro Gaming Cables UK or Retro Access if you’re in Europe. Yes, they’re more expensive. Yes, it matters.
Tip 5: The VA4 really does need the amp board. I tried running a VA4 directly into a SCART cable without a buffer on the VDP pins. The picture was faint, colours were washed, and the sync was unstable on anything longer than a 1.5m cable. A THS7374 board fixed all of it instantly. Don’t try to skip it on a VA4 to save £6.
How Good Does It Actually Look?
Genuinely excellent. I want to be specific about this because “better than composite” is a low bar and doesn’t tell you anything useful. Via RGB SCART into a Sony Trinitron KV-series CRT, the Mega Drive 2 picture is among the best you’ll see from any fourth-generation console. Compared to the SNES RGB output — which is often held up as the gold standard — the Mega Drive is slightly different rather than worse. The palette is more saturated, the blacks are deeper, and the dithering the VDP uses for transparency effects (notably in Sonic 3 and Shinobi III) looks intentional and attractive rather than like compression artefacts, because it’s being rendered at the full pixel resolution the VDP intended.
Games that particularly benefit: anything with large colour fills — Thunder Force IV‘s space backgrounds go from a fuzzy composite mess to something genuinely jaw-dropping. Gunstar Heroes, which pushes the hardware harder than almost anything else on the platform, becomes markedly easier to read because the RGB output preserves the colour separation that composite was smearing together. Phantasy Star IV‘s dialogue portraits — which on composite looked like they’d been photographed through wax paper — become crisp, expressive, properly coloured art.
On a modern flat panel via a decent SCART-to-HDMI adapter (I use the Open Source Scan Converter for critical work and a Retrotink 2X for casual play), the image is clean, sharp, and absolutely faithful to what the hardware is producing. The Mega Drive’s characteristic pixel-perfect sharpness — which the Model 1’s composite output partially obscures and the Model 2’s makes even worse — comes through exactly as intended. For a console first released in the UK in 1990, it looks remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
I should mention: if you want the absolute pinnacle, there are HDMI mods available (the Mega Drive HDMI kit from various modders, or the Fenrir-based solutions) that output digitally at the VDP level and bypass the analogue chain entirely. Those cost significantly more — often £60–100 for the board plus installation. For most people, RGB SCART into a CRT or a quality upscaler is the right answer, and it’s the answer that preserves the authentic display characteristics the games were designed around. The HDMI mods are brilliant, but that’s a different article.
Is the Under-£40 Budget Realistic?
Yes, but let’s be honest about where the money goes. The SCART cable is the biggest single cost and there’s no sensible way to cut it — buy a good one. The components (resistors, caps) are genuinely pennies from CPC Farnell or Mouser if you’re ordering a batch. If you’re buying components individually from eBay, you’ll pay more per item than they’re worth; order a small assorted kit instead.
The soldering equipment is the elephant in the room. If you don’t own a soldering iron, add that to the budget — but also understand that a decent iron will last you fifteen years and pay for itself on the second mod you do. A Pinecil (the RISC-V powered USB-C iron from Pine64) costs about £25 and performs like something twice its price. I’ve used one at game fairs when I didn’t want to cart my Hakko, and it’s genuinely impressive for the money.
If you want to keep costs lowest possible and you have some soldering experience: skip the THS7374 amp board if your console isn’t a VA4, source your resistors and caps from a mixed kit on Amazon, and make the captive cable exit rather than a panel-mount socket. Done that way, with a £17 Retro Access cable and about £5 in components, you’re at £22 plus whatever your soldering iron cost. Under £40 is entirely achievable, and the result — proper RGB from a console that has produced rubbish composite for thirty years — is worth every penny of it.
Final Thoughts
The PAL Mega Drive Model 2 is a flawed machine in some specific ways — the inferior AV output is the most fixable, and this mod is the fix. It’s not the most complex modification in retro gaming (Game Boy IPS installs with OSD boards are fiddlier; MiSTer FPGA VGA-to-SCART wiring is more involved; anything touching the 32X connector is basically an act of faith). But it rewards the work with one of the most dramatic visible improvements you can make to any retro console for this kind of money.
If you’ve been playing Mega Drive games through composite for years — or worse, through the RF modulator — you genuinely don’t know what you’ve been missing. The platform has an identity through RGB that composite actively destroys: that particular Sega palette, the clean pixel edges, the way the dithering resolves into something that actually looks intentional. It’s a different console when you see it properly. And once you’ve seen it, you’ll never go back.
Take your time with this. Don’t rush the soldering. Read your board before you touch it. And if something doesn’t work first time, go through the troubleshooting section methodically before you assume the worst. Every fault I’ve ever encountered on this mod had a rational cause and a fixable solution. Same will be true for yours.
If you get stuck, post photos in the RetroInHand Discord and tag me. I’ll have a look. That’s what the community is there for.