dreamcast no pwer

hey completely new here lol, i have a dreamcast that i pulled out of storage after many yeas and decided to get it working and install dreamshell and stuff on it.

i loaded up the dreamshell disc and went to install a custom bios which failed, didnt know i disable write protection, so i looked it up and seen that i had to solder this wire (http://www.made-by-bacteria.com/viewtopic.php?f=85&t=516). i did that and went to power it up to flash and nothing, the power light comes on but thats it the disc wont spin theres nothing on the screen, i removed the wire and its still the same.

figured its dead but thought id ask just in case lol as i have a replacement on the way and was wondering about this one

 

That website is incorrect (shock, horror)

That wire doesnt allow you to flash a custom bios. That wire just makes the flash writeable, which allows you to change the region. He confuses 2 different things in 1 article.

 

yeah you need the Region Changer Disc (i think 1.7 is the last version they did) to do the bios changes and not Dreamshell

here is the link for version 1.5
http://mmmonkey.co.uk/console/downloads/region_changer_v1.5.zip

 

Sounds a bit like you might have had that wire in place for too long and fried the flash chip

 

ah ok lol well as theres no power from that wire being added should i trash this on? also what would i have needed to of done to use one of dreamshells bios's

 

Depending how competent you are with soldering, either buying a flashable bios chip and soldering it in yourself(much more difficult than it sounds with a crappy cheapo soldering iron) or paying someone to do it for you. I'm relunctant to say trash it without knowing exactly what's wrong because when I think about it, consoles with fried flash chips still boot up generally. Are you sure you re-connected everything properly and didn't put the wrong screw in when you screwed the GD-rom drive back in?
Also are you positive that you soldered it to the right place, that picture isnt exactly clear, and my soldering isn't exactly great, but that guy looks like he's just been vomiting solder all over the place.

 

as far as soldering im pretty good, ive transplanted ANA and NAND chips on 360s ALOT lol, ill get a pic up of the wire thats on it, and im 99% sure everythings were it should be just no response from the board or drive anymore.

 

Could you look at that part of the board and tell me if there is any damage to that white rectangle area?

 

no looks good

 

Odd :/ Ok well I'm stumped

 

ya i cant figure it out it worked greeat b4 then i added the wire and now nothing, have about 6 hours of going over it with a magnifying glass and havent found any burnt traces so it has to me internal on on of the ics

 

Well occam's razor and all, one of the chips has indeed probably died then

 

something similar heppened to me while adding an internal vga box, looked everything and ended up replacing the mobo from a dead one, some time liater looking at the board found that the problem was a larger screw securing the drive, it scratched the board cutting traces between cpu and gpu, you may save your board if was that

 

It amazes me how much work Bacteria gets, when he quite clearly cant solder for shit (or take decent pictures for a GUIDE?!).

I would just replace the motherboard, dreamcasts cost next to nothing... By the time you have spent hours fault finding the board, you could have just put a new one in.

 

Just took a look at it, and holy shit they're horrible. It actually bugs me when he could of *POSSIBLY* retake the photo? Pretty lazy.

 

To be fair, he does credit someone else at the top - so it might be someone elses handy work. But I have seen his soldering too and its not good...

Much like Drakon that likes to come on here and show his butchering of electronics very proudly.

 

That's why I asked him to show me a picture of that white bit

 

ya im just going to bin this board for parts as i have one that should be here tomorrow that i paid 5.50 on ebay for lol, my new question, is the bios mod worth doing? is it just a modchip or can i salvage a bios ship from a pc or something?

i did take alot of care making sure i didnt mixup the screws and all that, just guess i was unlucky lol

 

Bios mod is region free, so I guess it depends on what you want to do.

If you can find a suitable chip in a PC then sure. But I doubt any Pc's use that chip.

 

Admittedly some of the images I've posted are pretty horrific looking as they're more "proof of concept/just work damnit" rather than the final product (which I tend to put a bit more solder on than absolutely necessary to ensure a strong joint) but damn, bacteria LOADS that solder on there. Is his iron under powered or something?

Every PC mobo I've seen in the last few years switch to a PLCC package with very few being anything easily soldered into the Dreamcast as-is. Plenty of TSOP on laptops (wrong packaging still) and smaller packages yet. Even if they were compatible you'd have a lot of fun wiring it in.

Strongly suggest buying one from Bad_Ad84, you'll find it infinitely easier to deal with.