Dreamcast Long Screw Straight Through The Traces.

OK so I already feel stupid enough so don't need any insults but I put a long screw in the bottom left of the drive which is the bad part and now my dreamcast shows no video. I think it took out several traces and is likely unfixable.

I was trying to change the fan for a quieter one thinking that's the reason it wouldn't boot but still have the issue with the stock fan.

Check out the damage. It's screwed right? (No pun intended)

 

Yeah, it's busted - it's not completely unfixable, but it requires tools and micro-soldering skills that most people don't have. IMO, your best bet is to find someone selling a broken DC with a bad GD-ROM drive and swap the main board out of that.

And don't feel too bad about it - you aren't the first person to do that, and I'm quite certain you won't be the last. Over the years, I've accumulated about a dozen broken DC main boards with damage in that area - I just use them for spare parts.

 

bad luck mate , we've all had mishaps with our projects nobody has 100% success record. You may want to checkout Squeept on ebay , he's a top bloke and he sells parts from consoles.

 

Doesn't look like it would be terribly hard to fix.
Remove solder mask (with a glass eraser), bridge the broken traces with appropriate enameled wire (like 0.15mm²) and optionally apply a layer of solder mask over the exposed area. The UV-curing stuff works great for this.

Maybe you can find somebody experienced with soldering near you.

 

He's very unlikely to be able to fix that himself, and even with the proper tools that's small enough to be hard/long to fix, and there's a lot of traces there. It'd cost less to find a replacement DC motherboard than to pay my time to fix this.

 

My condolences to you sir..

 

Yeah that was dumb but I know now never to do that again now ever. Shame it wasn't the back I done it at where there are much less traces. If I replace the board with an NTSC or Japanese one will it still work? I can't seem to find any PAL motherboards and I live in ireland. I might buy another dreamcast and an NTSC board for this so I have both versions. That's if it will work since I already have the right power supply for this country. I heard a US one will blow up over here because it's about 110v instead of 230v we have here. It would blow the transformer.

That shouldn't happen because it's the correct power supply.

 

A NTSC motherboard will work with a PAL PSU and vice-versa. It's the same for GD-Rom units. You only need to make sure to have the same revision number for complete compatibility.
The video signal will be determined by the region of the motherboard though, you can change that using DreamShell's Region Changer program and a temporary (important not to let it there) 1-wire to solder.

 

Perfect thanks. I'll order an NTSC board. I'm looking at one identical to mine it's katana VA1. Only 8 euro but 20 for shipping. Still an ok price from USA to Ireland.

 

Breaking things is sometimes the best way to learn. Don't feel bad.

 

I have bought a replacement board from America. It should be here this week. I assume it won't play retail PAL games. If I do the video mode switch does that change the region or only the video mode?

 

Using region changer you can change the region and the video output. I must stress though, that the wire that you need to connect for this mod should be remove once the operation is done, or you risk killing the motherboard.

The dual bios would allow you to have a perfectly region-free Dreamcast too, at a slightly higher mod difficulty.

 

I haven't got the best soldering equipment or skills tbh but I get by with it. I do my own but wouldn't charge people I don't know to do that kind of stuff.

I basically just want to get this working for now then might look into the mod. I got a second console now too anyway so I could keep that one NTSC and mine PAL so I'll have one of each. The PAL one plays out of region burned games but I seen with retail discs it will only play the correct region.

 

99.9% of Dreamcast backups are region-free, it's just a matter of writing a few characters.

 

In that case it's probably best to set it to PAL also since my friend wants one and any retail games we come across will be PAL.

 

I had a similar problem with a PS3 years back when I was closing up the system and put a long screw where a short screw should've gone... went too far and scratched the board, oops. Found someone who did micro soldering who fixed it for me (for pretty cheap, too). The PS3 was still relatively new so it was worth getting fixed then.

 

You wouldn't think it would do so much damage just because a screw is 2-3mm longer. I just wish it was the back of the drive as that would've only been one trace. The PS3 was like 600 euro here on launch so definitely worth fixing it at that stage lol. You get them for washers nowadays. The Dreamcast consoles and especially Saturn consoles are hard to come by cheap.