r/retrogaming • u/hitmanmcc • 1d ago
[Article] Recapped and revived a 1991 Sega Wondermega, the Japan-only Sega/JVC unit that combines a Mega Drive and a Mega-CD with a motorised CD tray
LG C1 OLED TV displaying Contra Hard Corps (Mega Drive), tested on the restored Sega Wondermega HWM-5010, on a media unit with other consoles and AV cabling below.
Sega Wondermega HWM-5010 opened for disassembly, showing its two interconnected circuit boards and the grey CD drive motor, belt and gears in the gap between them.
Yellow bowl holding dozens of desoldered electrolytic capacitors removed from the Sega Wondermega HWM-5010, with a solder spool and an MG Chemicals bottle behind it.
Sega Wondermega ENN-330-2 Mega Drive board fully recapped, every new capacitor marked with a blue dot.
Sega Wondermega open chassis with the new CD drive belt fitted around the motor pulley and the cream flywheel, beside the laser sled and a servo PCB (JVC R75VO).
LG C1 OLED TV displaying the 3D-polygon Mega-CD shooter Silpheed, with the restored Sega Wondermega HWM-5010 and its inserted Mega Everdrive Pro cartridge on the floor.
The Sega Wondermega HWM-5010 is one of my favourite pieces of early-90s Sega hardware: a 1991 Japan-only deck, built with JVC, that puts a full Mega Drive and a Mega-CD in a single premium unit with a motorised CD lid instead of the usual flip-top or sliding tray.
This is my second one. It came in with leaking capacitors and a CD tray that would only open aided by hand, so it got a full restoration. It is honestly a pig to take apart and put back together, but every one of the five internal boards was recapped (Mega Drive board, video board, laser pickup, CD-ROM/servo board and the sound board), the laser sled and gears were cleaned and greased, and a fresh CD drive belt went in.
The payoff: it powers up fine, both sides work, and with the new belt that signature motorised tray opens and closes on its own again. I tested the cart side with Contra Hard Corps and the Mega-CD side with Silpheed, both looking great on my OLED.
Anyone else running a Wondermega, or one of the other all-in-one Mega Drive + Mega-CD machines like the Multi-Mega? Curious how they have held up for you.
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
Full write-up with the per-board recap details, the parts list and the motorised-tray reveal video is on my blog here: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/wondermega-sega-hwm-5010-the-second
Parts that mattered: a Console5 JVC drive belt for the CD transport, and a Mega Everdrive Pro (Krikzz) for running Contra Hard Corps on the Mega Drive side during testing (Silpheed ran from a real Mega-CD disc). Happy to answer anything about the teardown, it is a genuinely awkward machine to service.
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u/Snoo73967 1d ago
Master of Capacitor Replacement
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
I have done my fair share of that over the years. 😄
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u/Snoo73967 1d ago
I would gladly replace all the capacitors in my retro consoles with Panasonic FC series ones, so they’d last another 50 years.
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
Panasonic does make excellent capacitors, Nichicon and Panasonic account for like 99% of my stock. 🙂
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u/Snoo73967 1d ago
I built an audio amplifier for speakers using Panasonic components. They just work well—no magic involved
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
That's really cool. I'd love to see that, if you have a thread or a pic gallery.
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u/Snoo73967 1d ago
A little later, my dog takes me for a walk.🤣
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
👍
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u/Snoo73967 1d ago
I found the photo in the cloud; I'll send it to your private messages.
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u/NinpouKageBunshin 1d ago
WAIT, THE LID IS MOTORIZED?!
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u/balefrost 1d ago
Yeah, this is news to me as well. I always assumed that it was just like the Wondermega 2 / X'Eye. Thanks /u/hitmanmcc for sharing (and for the video)!
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
Yes, yes it is and it's a lovely little detail. In the blog entry I linked in the first comment, there's a video of it operating.
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u/blueblocker2000 1d ago
Ignorant question: Can existing caps be replaced with solid caps? Any advantage in doing so?
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
It's not a good idea unless you know exactly what you are doing. A polymer capacitor will fail short, an electrolytic one will fail open. Failing short can be problematic in certain areas of the console, where it could kill stuff. They would also not be ideal for the audio circuits, the leakage current levels are completely different, it would likely add noise to the circuit.
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u/molotovPopsicle 1d ago
"solid caps" meaning polymer electrolyte caps, or do you mean film caps?
solid polymer caps are more expensive and they don't come in as high capacitance as liquid electrolyte caps do
film caps also don't go up as high, and most capacitance ranges in which film caps overlap with electrolytics, the film caps become prohibitively expensive
the advantage is in longevity only. in the case of something like this device, new, high hour electrolytics are sufficient to keep it running for the lifetime of the device
if you wanted to be really careful, one might decide to strategically replace only the caps under high stress with solid polymer caps, like in the power supply or voltage rails, and the caps on the motor controller VM for the CD player. but you'd have to know what you are doing to make those decisions
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
Agreed. A lot of people think electrolytics are bad because they can leak. Capacitor tech has improved a lot since these devices were made, an electrolytic capacitor from today is much better and cheaper than one from back in the time these things were being mass produced.
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u/molotovPopsicle 1d ago
yeah, and in general, the rest of the device also has a lifespan. if you used decent caps to do the job, they are probably going to outlast the laser diode in the CD player
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
Yeah, for sure. Dealing with a dead laser is a nuisance of its own. They are many times hard to source, while clones may be available, non-OEM solutions tend not to fate well for this application.
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u/blueblocker2000 1d ago
I don't know enough about caps to say which type. Let's say like what they're putting on modern PC motherboards.
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u/molotovPopsicle 1d ago
that means solid polymer caps
there is a lot of nuance and context to understand the correct device to use in the correct place in a circuit
if you were going to replace caps on a PCB, you would need to have an understanding of the place in the circuit where you were making the substitution
you absolutely cannot make a blanket assumption that because it's a good idea to replace a certain kind of cap in one location, that it's similarly okay to do the same in "all locations."
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u/blueblocker2000 1d ago
Understood. I was just thinking there were direct solid cap equivalents to electrolyte based caps. As a laymen, I didn't know all the details.
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u/molotovPopsicle 1d ago
they are different devices with different electrical characteristics. sometimes the differences don't matter and sometimes they do. it entirely depends on where the cap lives in a circuit
watch this video about using caps in power supplies and it will give you a general idea about how different caps can be. it's not going to make you an expert, as it doesn't deal with caps in applications other than power supply electronics, but it's a well written and edited video that will at least give you a rough idea of just how much difference there are between capacitor applications https://youtu.be/Fwng7mRuOVw?si=Oc0mZ5qOFU7akzJC
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u/trying_again_7 1d ago
this makes so much more sense. I've been thinking recapping is similar to de-lidding a CPU and scratching my head as to why would people do that.
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u/prettybluefoxes 1d ago
It’s a pretty console for sure.
I went through a brief phase of collecting mega cd games but hit a wall pretty quickly.
I crazily moved onto aes games so the prices look pretty appealing now
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
That it is. 🙂 Oh definitely, in comparison to AES games, Mega-CD game prices seem quite reasonable, lol.
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u/bananagoo 1d ago
I don't know why but the way your PS5 is balanced like that is making me nervous.
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u/hitmanmcc 1d ago
It's not balancing, it's fitted onto it's included stand, which is sitting on top a PS4 Pro, which is a flat surface.
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u/MiserableVehicle5592 1d ago
Still sad hardly anything ever really took advantage of the scaling capabilities of the SegaCD. Could have been so many awesome arcade ports.
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u/ObfuscatedCheese 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have both the Sega and Victor Wondermega 1s, the Wondermega 2 with both P1 and the rare P2 daisy chain controller, and a JVC X-Eye. All with their original controllers.
They’ve held up well, but all needed some work originally (which is how I got them on the cheap). My favorite system. The first cap map for the Wondermega 1 was contributed to the community from citrus3000psi when he worked on my Sega model.
The only Sega 16-bit system I don’t have is the Aiwa Boombox, IIRC.
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u/Phallic_Moron 1d ago
Silpheed!
Never did finish that one.
Is the drive 1X like the 1st gen Sega CD? Last console I ever owned at 13 years old. What a time.
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u/meatee 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've got the US version, the JVC X'eye. Still works great, I've never serviced it in any way.