Due to concerns regarding the availability of the smaller zip DRAM chips, two adapter boards have been created to allow the use of the SOJ part found on the 837-8952 with earlier revisions. The footprints are tailored to the reproduction boards but should also be usable on originals.

Installation is reasonably self-explanatory; fit the SOJ RAM to the adapter board and use header pins or similar to install this in place of the original zip chips. Capacitor C2 may benefit from bending the legs 90 degrees so it sits to the side of the board, depending on its physical size. On both boards, it may also be useful/necessary to desolder FR5 and orient this parallel to the PCB to improve clearance. It should be fine to remove/leave off the decoupling capacitors for the zip RAM (C10, C11, C12, C13) from the main board too if this helps.

Many pins are common to all the zip chips so not all pins need to be connected to the adapter. The required pins are circled on the board. It should not harm anything to connect the others (e.g. to improve structural stability) but this may introduce some additional noise.

These reproductions have been tested and verified as working, there is no warranty or support offered so you need to have suitable debugging experience if a problem arises.

NOTE: In order to use these PCBs sucessfully you will need to be proficient in:

• Soldering fine-pitched surface mount components.
• In most cases, desoldering said components to obtain these from a donor board.
• Troubleshooting any issues that may arise.

These PCB's are 2 layer boards and have been produced in RED with HASL PLATING.

BOM & Build Instructions:

https://github.com/Board-Folk/MegaCD-Main-BD#modifications

Credits (The Awesome "Board-Folk")

• Simon "Aergan" Lock (@Aergan) for your insights, advice, support and expert testing of the first boards.

• Chrissy (@chris-jh) for the connect board reproduction project, support and testing.

• Aaron Lavery (@ayyyyyyyron) for building/testing the Export/MCE2 combination.

• Adrian Soh (@klin1309) for verifying the 837-8015/MCE1 combination.

• Zaxour, @PointerFunction, Leo Oliveira and the rest of the Board Folk for their support and general coolness.

• 240p Test Suite by @ArtemioUrbina was indispensible for testing and troubleshooting the boards.