Sega CD BIOS: Now Region-Free!

I did a swap with a FB group friend, my extra gray N64 for some burned EPROMs of the region free BIOS for the Sega CD.

The first batch that he burned for me didn't work right. The second, however, worked perfectly!

Several hiccups though. First off, the Model 1 Sega CD is already socketed, so it was a matter of just removing the original BIOS from the socket and putting the RF BIOS in. Usually an easy process, but I got too impatient last night and after removing it, I managed to break one of the pins on the IC off. I didn't worry about it (I live under "where there's a will, there's a way" thing) since I could probably solder something to the broken leg to get it to work again...if needed, of course.

The Model 2, om the other hand, was harder. I had to desolder the old BIOS from the board, fit a socket on there, solder that, then install the RF BIOS. Of course, me being of the impatient kind yet again, I managed to destroy the BIOS legs on this one (3 of the legs wouldn't come out, I just cut them off). In the carnage of it all, I also managed to destroy a solder pad. Ugh...

I got to the point where I just said "F**k it" and tried to do a trace fix; soldering a wire to the broken point to another point where it was supposed to connect to. Holding it up to the light, I saw this:

The circled part is where the pad was where the pad was destroyed (pin 39). As you can see here, that thick line from that pin going left (pin 40) connects to pin 38. To confirm this, I went to the NG forums and asked. I got confirmation from one of the tech gurus there that those 2 pins connected.

So, I soldered those 2 points together with a little wire. Got things put back together and tested it out.

...well, sorry for the lack of pictures this time, but yeah, it worked. There were some curious moments (freezing on a couple of games), but I attributed that to the burned CD I was using.

So yeah, super excited about it! The RF BIOS is based off the Japanese BIOS, so there's the only drawback to it. Fairly easy to figure it out, though, with what little Japanese I remember.

Some pics of the mangled BIOS's:
*pic placeholder for original BIOS's mangled*