Mega Drive Switchless guide

no responsibility is taken for any damage to your console

Based on Motherboard revision IC BD M5 PAL as shown below

Cut the tracks on JP2 & JP3

turn the motherboard over and cut the track coming from the reset button

On the top of the motherboard you will need to scrape a small section of solder mask so that it is easy to solder. Refresh the solder on the bottom leg of the reset button, don't hold to long on the leg as the heat can damage your button.

Connect a wire from the scraped point to the multichip pad 8

Connect the wire from the reset leg to the multichip pad 13

The next connections you need to make are shown below,

The left hand pad of JP2 connects to multichip pad 10

The left hand pad of JP3 connects to multichip pad 9

The right hand pad of JP1 connects to multichip pad14

The right had pad of JP4 connects to multichip pad 1

You can fit the chip where you like but I usually sit it at the edge of the board as shown below

For the LED

cut the legs shorter, to about 1cm,

attach a wire to each leg.

The red and blue wire will go back to the multichip, one to pad 5 and one to pad 6.

The ground leg there are a few connection points, 1, connect to the original LED ground wire (white wire), 2, directly to the ground plane around the edge of the motherboard, 3, all the way back to pad 14 on the multichip

you will need to cut the heatshrink down so you can use at least 3 pieces to use over the LED legs once soldered.

To fit the LED, pop of the led cover and drill out the hole so we can push through out new three leg LED

You will need to glue your new LED on the rear of the case, I used a bit of hot glue.

That should be the mod completed, please check all connections and reassemble your console before testing.

Quick operation

hold the reset button,

the power light will cycle

Solid colour 1 – Purple – solid colour 2

solid colour 1 is 50hz English

Purple is 60hz English

solid colour 2 is 60hz Japanese

The solid colour will be red or blue depending on which way round you wire the LED.

Purple is always the setting in the middle of the other two colours

you can still reset the console by tapping the button