Has anyone here seen this yet? Link Very sweet discovery the guy has made :thumbsup: I already gave my unit an activity light and it works like a charm. I always love activity LED's, especially on my model 1 saturn. Im very glad I could finally give my DC one as well! Incedently, I also stumbled (and implemented) upon a Dreamcast Reset switch, although this might be old news. (Link) Anyway I thought i'd share these with you guys, Two very sweet and important Dreamcast features. At least for me. (Just did the reset switch today and already had to make active use of it 3 times because of homebrew code that crashed the unit lol.)
That's just motorized drive noise, a reading laser dosnt make any audible noise The dreamcast is reading a lot without actually making noises too, and thats what I needed this for. (PS: Not all dreamcast drives sound the same, the japanese unit's can actually be quite quiet like my unit ) Edit: maybe interesting to note that this activity light goes after data inputs/feeds and ignores any motorized part.
I totally was thinking of how cool this'd be, a couple months ago. I looks from his video that the light is on all the time, and brightens for activity? (haven't looked into it more than that, and I've got to sleep now). I'd be down for replacing/disconnecting/rewiring the main LED. Love the light blue color he has, too.
That's right. The light is lit on a dim level and for activity brightens up. From the looks of it though, he used a same size LED as the main power LED. I used one of the smaller ones, I think it is a 5mm one. I salvaged it out of an old PC mouse lol, nice little red one. Anyway, what bumps me is that he dosnt block his LED's off. They both light up each other and they share the same color, should be one of the reasons why its so bright on his one, they are so close to each other and no "light-block" between them. Damn, thats hard to explain when high in the early hours. I wish I could make a little video as well but I dont have any camera equipment for that. I disliked the spot he used and for the time being put it next to the fan vents, it looks like the vent from hell when lighting up red (For the future i'd like to drill a hole on the top between power LED and open button, but for now I dont dare to because I dont have the proper tools at hand.) @madhatter256: Very sharp! I tested this theory on a faulty GD drive, and all it does is a quick activity flash on bootup, which should symbolize the recognition of the GD drive. It does work and spin, so yea the unit finds it. But when trying to read a disc theres no data activity at all, so the laser is the obvious (deceased) culprit.
How about using a bicolor LED in place of the original power led, or going with a orange 3mm and other color 3mm as a replacement? That way you don't have to cut any holes.
Uhh bicolor LED's, I didnt even think of those! Marvelous idea, never used these before myself. This would be a great oppurtunity though, could be very sexy. Thanks for the input :nod:
I was just going to mount the activity LED right next to the power LED. Although, this doesn't have the kind of gain it does with the model 1 Saturn does swap disc wise.
Link doesn't seem to be workin now. Anyone have the original schematic or a better one with a dual colour LED?
The discovered pin is only an address line on the drive, but it seems to be the one that goes high for longer time when the cache is accessed... one should have some strobes used too, so you could get clean blinking rather than something in the middle... anyway, A12 is the pin of interest on the drive connector.
Does anyone still have the instructions on how to do this mod?? I've tried searching but the original tutorial has gone AWOL from DCemu unfortunately.
