I like to take things apart and put them back together again.  Always have.  My parents would come home from running a few errands and would find any number of electronics items from throughout the house disassembled on the dining room table.  VCR, Computer, Stereo, anything I could get my hands on.  Oddly enough, I never took apart a video game system when I was young.  I was so afraid that it wouldn't work after I put everything back together and I didn't want to deal with the emotional turmoil of not being able to play RBI Baseball or Blades of Steel.  Flash forward a few years and I have no issues taking a game console apart.  So imagine my surprise when I do a little searching online for a Sega 32X teardown so I know what I'm getting into and I can't find one.  I'm sure there a few out there, but if I search for something on the internet and what I'm looking for isn't in the top 4 or 5 returned pages, it might as well not exist. 

Here we go,  I'm sacrificing this 32X just to get a closer look at all of the little bits.



Just 4 screws separate you from the inside of this little beauty. Grab a philips and go to town.


 After the 4 screws on the bottom are gone, there are 10 philips screws holding the RF (Generation) shield down.  Once we remove those, we are in for a surprise...


Huh.  That's a bit of a surprise...Not really much goin on here.  We can see the cartridge slot right on top and a bunch of capacitors, resistors, a few ICs but not much else.  We have to dig deeper.  We must find where the power of this machine is stored.

While we are here, let's point out one of the common points of failure on a 32X: The ribbon cables connecting the upper cart slot to the lower part of the system.

[img width=640 height=424]http://i.imgur.com/zKwgyAgl.jpg[/img]

2 ribbon cables connect the cart slot on the top of the system to the guts on the bottom.  The cables can appear to be fully inserted but the system doesn't work.  It actually takes a good bit of force to remove these cables so be very careful.  Once they are removed, reconnect them making sure they are even and inserted as far as they can go.  Feel free to test the system before you put the top back on.

Let's move on.

There are just a couple philips screws holding the upper board down.  Once they are removed, you will find a few wires preventing you from lifting the board out. Cut them.  That's right, I said cut them.  Pretend you are diffusing a bomb.  It will also give you a chance to practice your wire soldering skills if you ever want it to work again.


Wait a minute...There seems to be something else lingering down there...

[img width=640 height=424]http://i.imgur.com/gmZul47l.jpg[/img]

A couple of philips screws later and we have freed the Genesis cart that never was!

[img width=640 height=424]http://i.imgur.com/8DJwbitl.jpg[/img]

Gotta get inside there.  Have to see where this ultimate power originates.  Just a few. more. screws.

Eureka!  The source of unlimited power!

[img width=640 height=424]http://i.imgur.com/0fsMHfIl.jpg[/img]

That Sega IC on the right is just an 8 bit 20mhz digital to analog converter, the one in the middle is a custom Sega IC (I don't know what it does) but that IC on the right...what is th..could it be?

[img width=640 height=424]http://i.imgur.com/59Xskikl.jpg[/img]

IT IS!!!  It's a Super H!  Or, a 32-bit Reduced Instruction Instruction Set Computing processor.  WE FOUND THE RISC!  This chip would later be used in the Sega Saturn.  So I guess you could say that the 32X is the father of the Saturn.  I know you won't, but you could say that.

There are a couple other ICs on the board from the regular players like NEC and Toshiba but the Super H is the star of the 32X.   I think it's really interesting that the majority of the power of this system:


Is right here:


Thanks for coming on this little teardown journey with me.

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