Hello all, I have a V0 Japanese DC that's chipped, and I've owned and played since release. Last week, I turned the DC on (it's been sat in the same place on the shelf for months, and been played) but was met with a black screen, with faint white ghosting around the Dreamcast text on boot, then menu items. Sound works fine Using a yellow/red/white AV cable produces full colour picture, but switch back to the official RGB SCART lead, back to black pic with white ghosting. Any ideas what's causing this? I need RGB SCART on my DC! Any help much appreciated.
Very unlikely. The video signals for a SCART cable are red, green, blue, and sync. There is no luminance (black/white) wire. If the red wire were broken, there would just be no red part of the picture. Same for green and blue. If all of them were broken, then there would be no picture at all since white is generated by R+G+B. If the sync wire were broken, no picture would appear either. jake74, unfortunately it sounds like something more serious is going on.
It's exactly like the pics in this post — http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38344 Also, Bad, can you check your pm please?
edit: before you do that check your tv settings for the scart input and make sure its set to "RGB" and not "s-video" or "composite" or even "auto" if there's caps in the scart cable for RGB try removing them looks like its getting sync but not strong colour signals - i could however be wrong but thats just what it looks like to me. also check the grounds in the scart cable too.
Checked caps, replaced one, still the same. So I tried another SCART LEAD. The same black screen happened with an official DC SCART lead.
Synrgy, the TV is not the problem. It's rocking my Wii, PS2, PC Engine, PCE Turbo Duo, Jap MD and Jap switched 'Cube all fine. Have tried cleaning the AV port, no joy.
have you tried messing with the tv scart input settings(if it has any) ? it could be auto detecting the input wrong eg "thinking" that its s-video input via scart instead of RGB. only other thing i can think of is removing the capacitors from the cable on the rgb line as they may not be needed by your tv. one of my LCD tv's doesn't like RGB scart with the caps on a sega master system but is fine with other consoles.(just an example) other than that, try a VGA box or stick with composite. or buy another DC
The last post of the thread you linked to: You should try a non-scart output just to see if it fixes it.
See my first post. "Using a yellow/red/white AV cable produces full colour picture, but switch back to the official RGB SCART lead, back to black pic with white ghosting."
just another thought, is your DC scart cable a pal one? or is it a japanese rgb one? i dont know if the japanese DC has a differently wired AV port (dont think so) but japanese RGB cables are differently wired than pal Scart.
Then it's either the scart cable(s) or the related pins on the av port that are broken. You could try another scart cable if you ahve access to one, as it fixed the issue in the quoted similar case.
Will try with a different TV tonight. The current TV (Sony Trinitron) was playing the DC fine previously. It's auto detect, so I can't push any buttons. As I said, the DC used to work, so removing caps shouldn't make a difference. Also, not tempted to open a barely used official DC lead just yet. Not tried VGA yet, but it's not a solution, as the Sony Trinitron doesn't have VGA…
As mentioned early on in the post, tried another SCART lead. So yes… I think something's up with the AV port…
the reason i mentioned VGA is because it uses the same pins for RGB as scart does so you could rule out an issue with the console and av socket. have you opened the console to check inside? nothings shorting or damaged? just throwing out suggestions at this stage
Sorry if this thread is old but I've been researching this problem ... If you have black screen it is because your TV does not like 12V on pin 8 of SCART, using 5V will run smoothly I have opened my cable connector and swapped the cable connected at pin 4 to pin 5, now it works in all my TVs.
