The Aiwa Mega-CD (model number CSD-G1M) is an officially licensed Mega Drive and Mega-CD combination console that is housed within an Aiwa portable CD player and cassette deck. Interestingly, the system is made up of 2 components – the Aiwa CD player/radio/cassette deck and a base that houses the Mega Drive functionality. The CD player/radio/cassette deck system is mounted on top of the Mega Drive base and to function as one unit they must be connected with a patch cable that is included with the system. Also included with the system is an Aiwa-branded 3 button Mega Drive controller molded in blue plastic. The Aiwa Mega-CD only released in Japan during 1994 and is one of the rarest pieces of official Mega Drive/Mega-CD hardware available. There are no reported sales figures for the system.

Specifications

CPU
Motorola 68000 @ 12.5 MHz
Zilog Z80 @ 3.58 MHz

Display
Progressive: 320×224, 256×224 (NTSC) or 320×240, 256×240 (PAL) pixels, 512 color palette, 61 colors on-screen
Interlaced: 320×448, 256×448 (NTSC) or 320×480, 256×480 (PAL)

Audio
Ricoh RF5C164
Yamaha YM2612
Texas Instruments SN76489

RAM
72 kB of RAM (Mega Drive portion)
64 kB of video RAM (Mega Drive portion)
6 Mbit (Mega-CD portion)
512 Kbit to PCM waveform memory (Mega-CD portion)
128 Kbit to CD-ROM data cache memory (Mega-CD portion)
64 Kbit are allocated as the backup memory (Mega-CD portion)

Storage
CD-ROM discs
CD+G discs
ROM cartridges

Images

Image credit to Consolevariations.com, 20th Century Retro Games and Trader Games