What type of Meag Drive is this?

[Yakumo]

Bought this Mega Drive today with some games but what I didn't notice at the time was that it's actually got English on the box plus the Meag Drive it's self looks odd.

Asian Mega Drives normally have a sticker on them but this one doesn't. THe English part is as follows


The Actual hardware is missing the white text that should be around the main circle of the machine which should read "Audio and visual interlligent terminal high grade multipurpose use"


Finally it has no R.F. Output on it. How the hell do you connect it to a TV without AV soccets? I'm sure my Japanese Mega Drive from years back had a R.F. on it.


I'm thinking that this is some sort of half arsed Asian model by Sega which later they decided on making official. It also says on the box that it's for sale in japan, Taiwan and the Philippines only with a code number of HAA-2500

Yakumo

[haljordan]

My Mega Drive is exactly like that, except that it has the text on it, but it is in red. Its serial is HAA-2510.
It came with an RF adaptor and A/V(RCA) cables.

[Calpis]

I've never seen a Japanese Mega Drive 1 with RF out but never seen one without the text either

[Zilog Jones]

The later models of the PAL version didn't have the text at the top (they seemed to still make MD1s after the MD2 came out - I got a new MD1 in xmas 1995!). I think the Japanese ones were the same in this aspect - I've seen a few on eBay like this too.

The lack of RF out is kinda weird - all the PAL MD1s had them (though it's possible ones sold in SECAM regions didn't, like the French SMSII which had RGB only, but what you have ain't French!), but since it's probably a later model they probably did without the RF modulator to cut down on costs. It's plausible, and assuming the AV out does composite out and some line voltage (+5V or something), it is possible that Sega may have sold separate RF adaptors that plugged into that (like with the MD2, SS, DC, etc.).

Would you be willing to open it up? There should be date stamps on the inside of the plastic. And fortunately Sega use *normal* screws, unliek Nintendo...

[Segafreak_NL]

Probably an Asian model.

[Calpis]

It's not necessarily an asian model, I'm almost positive no Japanese MD1 has RF out, I've had 3 different MD1J revisions and none have.

[sayin999]

this actually might be correct, since i do know that the genesis/mega drive was notoriuosu for having some of the worst rf output out of all the 16bit consoles, im guessing they did it to save on cost as well as for quality reason, cause belive me from experiance, once i go the av cables for my genesis,i never used rf for it ever again.