Dreamcast Black Swirl of Death

Long story short, I did the one wire region change mod (I did include a switch), and accidentally flashed a bad region to my (NTSC - U) Dreamcast. The system boots as normal, but with a black swirl. Any game will act like it is getting ready to load, but will end up going to the CD player. I don't think my flash ROM is dead though, as it maintains the date and time. I've tried setting my date to 1/1/1950, but I'm still unable to boot anything.

From my understanding I have 5ish options:

I could try to fry my flash ROM out, and then set the date to 1950, and supposedly this would work.

I could flash my flash ROM manually.

I could buy (or borrow ) a mod-chip and run the region changer disk to change it back to a real region.

I could go all out and install (or financially compensate someone to install for me) a regionfree bios with the dev kit intro and everything.

I could chalk this one up as a failure and just get a replacement system.


I'm just curious if you guys know of any other options I could try, or would be able to help me try to revive this little guy.

EDIT:
Would it be possible to somehow create a region changer disk with fake region flags (just a bunch of random junk flags) so that the system believes that the disk is valid?

 

Yea its dead, only way for the time fix to work is to fit a region free modchip. I'm the one that posted this fix and YouTube video. I already had a 4 wire modchip in mine and it saved it. Removed it and didn't work, sorry its a new DC or modchip. They sell them on goldenshop for $11 shipped and stupid easy to install. Here is my video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EsUGANIkMsc

 

It looks like Goldenshop no longer carries them, and Robwebb doesn't list them either (although, I'm not too sure if he's even in the business anymore looking at the last time the page was updated). A quick google search turned up nothing. Do you have any other recommended sellers of DC Modchips?

Would using one of Bad_Ad84's bios chips work?

Also, does the modchip have to stay installed, or could you re-flash the system and remove the chip?

 

I just put a 4-wire chip in my DC last year, I bought it from Eurasia shop, but it looks like they no longer carry it, someone on here probably has some, or could make one for you.

EDIT: These people claim to have them, but the price is ridiculous, and they also claim to have new CD64 units in stock, so maybe a zombie site:

http://onsweb.tripod.com/dc.html

 

I'm nearly positive that that's a zombie site considering the copyright date, and the items they have marked as new. I'd love to honestly just borrow one to reflash my ROM, but I highly doubt anyone would be up to "share" XD. I'll search around some more, but it seems like these bad boys have become quite rare recently.

 

sorry to bother, but i discovered and posted this fix 5 years ago.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...egion-Changer-Error-(Is-my-DC-Fucked-up-now-)

 

This place had them for sale for $11 a piece up until recently:
http://www.goldenshop.com/ai/
you could email them and ask of they have anymore. Not sure why they removed them. I ordered some earlier this year from them.

 

Just curious, were you able to reflash the ROM and remove the chip?

 

If you had read the page he linked to, you'd have known that yes, he did.

By the way the region-free custom bios should also fix this issue, but you got to flash the new chip before installing, and you can't flash the original bios. Though the alternate bios would allow you to boot RC and fix the flash so you can remove it in the future if you want.

 

I wanted to make sure, as it sounded ambiguous when he said:

I'm not too comfortable with the thought of doing the regionfree bios mod myself. As much as I love the dev unit boot, I don't have the skill to do such modifications. If there's someone on here that can do it I would gladly pay them, but if not I suppose I'll just live in limbo looking for a 4-wire modchip.

 

I actually only have the region free chip in my DC so I can play the JP version of SEGA Rally, seems like a lot of work for one game I know, but it has cars not in the US version and backups don't work properly for this game.


I suggest you email this guy and ask nicely: cs@consolegoods.co.uk

 

There's more than a few users that'd do that mod for you here, you might want to make a wtb thread with your Iocation. Be sure to follow the rules of the marketplace though!

 

Well, I managed to track down a modchip from Goldenshop. Due to lack of demand, as well as PayPal banning transactions for modchips they have taken them off the store, but they still carry them. Simply use this form http://www.goldenshop.com/ai/info.php?contact and they still have some for $12 apiece. I'm hopefully going to be able to save this bad boy soon enough.

 

Thanks, I'm going to try it too.