Added a few hacks to my Dreamcast

I thought I'd share a project that I have been messing around with over the last year or so. I got myself a nice condition Dreamcast (Japanese VA1) and have been tarting it up a bit

Here's the DC with one of my fave Games for it, Shutoku Battle 2 (which I kept from when I used to have a DC back in the day).




Its very clean!




How it looks inside.




I changed the 110V PSU for an original UK 220V one first.




Hmm.. Dead battery...




That's better! And can be changed in the future much easier




Now to make a dual BIOS. I got this pre programmed from Bad_Ad84.




Soldering over the original BIOS. Here I have lifted the enable pin.




Straighten all the pins, then bend them over again to give a little more length.






All lined up ready.




All the relevant bits soldered in place (mod details at www.mmmonkey.co.uk) with a switch attached to select original JP or Dev BIOS.




Normal BIOS






Dev Multi Region BIOS







(The Dev BIOS looks nice and fancy and 3D.... But I actually prefer the original simple BIOS animation and sound, but It lets me play any region so can't be fussy!)


I got an SD card reader!




Booting Dreamshell OS works ok










Booting a game from SD card

 

But it looks dumb and pink.....




It needs hacking inside the DC!!




Wiring up to the Serial port internally




I have a DC that needs some caps taking off the bottom to make the SD reader more stable over a longer cable connection. (C605, 606 and 607)




It was still a little glitchy so put thicker wires in... you can also see the start of my VGA mod tapping from the RGB port




Here's my Over Clock mod. I want to run at stock 200MHz and Overclock to 240MHz. Some DC's can go up to 270MHz. Mine isn't one of those unfortunately. But playing games like sega Rally 2 at 240MHz are much nicer than stock so its good enough for me

Tapping +5V from PSU.




Wired in the switch and Oscillator (more details at www.mmmonkey.co.uk)




Reset Switch wired in. Sounds daft, but I miss having a reset button on the DC, I know you can soft reset games with the Joypad, but when dealing with Dreamshell a physical reset button is nice.




As I was ongoing with the hacks Dreamshell started to be able to work with a HDD!! you can wait for the "official" GD adapter to come out, or do what I did and follow the pinouts here: - http://www.dc-swat.ru/blog/hardware/874.html

I gave it a crack!








I tried it first with CF card connected to a 2.5" IDE adapter. (You can also see my rough positioning for SD card slot, and funky toothbrush for holding the lid button down)




Here's a vid of it running Beats of Rage Golden Axe adaption off CF

[video]https://plus.google.com/photos/106929866019169011552/albums/6021215859466875073/6021215954256135090?pid=6021215954256135090&oid=10 6929866019169011552[/video]

But I found the DC is really picky with CF cards, so none of my higher capacity cards worked. Best I had was my trusty old 512MB Sandisk, but alas, this cannot hold a single Full Retail game. So I found an old 60GB IDE drive and loaded it with some games to test...

[video]https://plus.google.com/photos/106929866019169011552/albums/6021215859466875073/6025253670896189506?pid=6025253670896189506&oid=10 6929866019169011552[/video]

Not sure if it was the images I chose or the Dreamshell softwares current beta state, but only 60% of the games I tried loaded. I will be getting some more validated images to test soon (TOSEC ISO) which I hope will help. Also I hope some updates to Dreamshell will improve compatibility. But for now its GREAT! and saves on stress to the GD drive and noise!



Roughly drawn out pin out for IDE 44 to DC GDRom. You can connect all GND wires together and solder to one wire going to pin A8, same for +5V. Don't try and solder all the wires directly to the board. I actually got away with only soldering pin 2 to A8 and Pin 41 to A3 then the drives internals connected up where needed. Not all drives may support this though, continuity test your drive and see if all GND and +5V lines are connected internally. Its also important to set the HDD as SLAVE otherwise it wont boot, just sit at the DC swirl forever. If you get a CF adapter, make sure you have ability to set as slave with jumpers. See next picture for GD pins onboard...





Hope these rough images help


VGA time!



Wired in a 15 Pin VGA connector and stereo Jack. (patient drilling and filing by hand of the VGA port hole too!)




Small Circuit taken from http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/dreamcast-internal-vga-mod/ But I modified mine a bit so it doesn't need a switch. The VGA plug itself switches the DC to VGA mode via 2 Grounding pins that create the circuit when its plugged in.




Roughly wired up. I've made small header pin connections to make dismantling possible in the future.




two pin connector is the grounding points. With no VGA connector these pins stay open cct. but when the VGA plug is inserted (And as long as all ground points on the monitor are shorted together) It will automatically set VGA mode. Unplug it and its back to RGB.




Lets plug it all in and give it a try..




Works! Looks absolutely smashing compared to the old CRT. Dreamcast is an old school console that looks more awesome via VGA than RGB SCART.




All that mess has to be squeezed in somehow!




Video of it running in VGA

[video]https://plus.google.com/photos/+LesRailton/albums/6021215859466875073/6025617967347845106?pid=6025617967347845106&oid=10 6929866019169011552[/video]





Cut a hole for the HDD cable




Had to take away some metal too. I hope to be able to modify it in future to house a mSATA to IDE adapter.

 

IDE cable slotting through under Mainboard




And out. I added some higher Rubber feet for now, hope to remove if I get mSATA working as it will be much smaller.




Hard disk in place under the unit. Loose for now so I can test easily.




Fixed down the SD card reader with hot glue.




Also the VGA board is fixed with glue. I also put some tiny blobs on the wire going along the back.




The cable sticking up will plug into the wiring I have soldered to the board.




I made a discreet reset button.




Hot glued in near the power button.




I added some LED's for HDD and SD activity. Front one is for HDD.




Mounted the BIOS and Overclock switches near the headphone jack.




Its a bit cramped and I had to shave off a bit of the screw post.




Plugging it all together and making sure its not going to get nipped under the GD drive housing.




Connecting up the VGA wires and the reset button. The purple wire is the HDD activity wire coming straight from the IDE cable.




It all fits! Added some labelling to remember the switch positions.




LEDs and SD card slot.




The rear. That's a BBA in there. A bit yellow though. Maybe I can retrobrite it at some point.




IDE cable underneath. I hope this is a temporary solution and that at some point Dreamshell will work with mSATA adapter to IDE.




To show the reset button. Its hardly noticeable, as I want it. I like to make my hacks discreet and not imposing on the original look.




Pose shot!




Testing the VGA still works. It does




From the side to see the plugs.




HDD hanging over the front for now to test. Works great!




Both LED's are flashing correctly.




And a game on Daytona 2001 to celebrate


I only really need to add 'silencing' features now to the GD drive, lid and fan. If anyone knows of a replacement fan for DC that exists that has the same or similar specs and is quieter, please let me know.

I hope this thread can help others trying some of these mods. Thanks for looking

 

Amazing work, what a console!

 

Nice to see some good hacks coming from the city of Hillerød in Denmark, in comparison to the homophobia that is in that town too(even to this day). Many years ago, I used to live near Hillerød.

 

Nice mod jobs!

 

Really nice job on those modifications, I like how to integrity of the Dreamcast has not been compromised . One modification that might be interesting for you would be replacing the audio-out with a optical-out modification, for getting the maximum out of your system!

 

Holy S**T that is amazing work. Well done!

 

Just wondering, Your playing games of the HDD right. are you booting dreamshell from a disc or did you get the new bios that came out not so long ago?

 

Really nice work phipscube! The cut for the VGA socket really looks great

Will you bring it to the next SSKT? I'd like to see it in action

I'm Konsolkongen everywhere else, but I f..ked up the registration here

 

Wow its so clean and and well implemented, my hat is off to you sir, bravo. I was gonna do the ide mod it always seemed like to much of a pain in the ass.

 

Wow! Really amazing work.

 

Wow, nice work. I should get around to doing a bios mod to mine, as well as installing an sd reader. Is there an advantage to installing a hard drive versus just using an sd reader?

 

Nice work, thanks for sharing.

 

Niiiiiice!

 

Bloody hell, that's some outstanding work.

 

i could just see myself snapping that sd card off , nice work though

 

In a nutshell, Impressive work indeed..

 

Thanks for the kind words guys

Thats interesting! Never heared of the optical mod. You got any links?

Yes, at the moment im booting initially from cd then loading games off HDD or SD. My second BIOS is the Dev BIOS to enable multi region GD. I do have original games from US JP and PAL so want to be able to boot them. AFAIK the Dreamshell BIOS doesn't allow multi region GD booting? I have my eye on it though and now it doesn't need the Pic chip mod I think my system is ready to try it.

Hey mate! Hows it going? Yeah i'm gonna bring it to SSKT13. I would like to have my CDTV finished too and be able to bring that. I've not been on playright.dk for a bit, any news on the next meetup?

Yeah, the HDD is MUCH faster, and loads many more commercial games.

I already nearly did! Hehe!

 

The Dream lives on to see another day.

Very clean, thorough mods. Impressive work all around!