HK Dreamcast - good serial no.?

What were you wanting for that?

I have a nice one I bought as "new" which I doubt. It's really minty though and it has the box w/matching serial number.

It's a cool system. I haven't fired mine up but if you found a rougher used one it seems like it would be a good machine to use for legit copies of NTSC-J games. Is anyone doing that? I would think it would resolve the slight voltage difference on its own for worry-free use.

 

Hey everyone,

I have the Dreamcast HKT - 3010. This was bought for me back in 1998 by my father over Ebay. It came in an Orange and White Box. It was brand new and sealed when we received it. Interestingly, the box says it is a HKT - 5010. Anyways, this version did not come with a built in modem. I can probably post some pictures if anyone is interested.

I do have a question. I noted on the bottom of my dreamcast (same as one in the picture on first page) that it says 100 ~ 120V (also says this on the box). I had never used a step down converter (American power usually 120V vs. JAP 100V). My dreamcast has always worked okay just plugging it straight into the wall and has been played for many hours over the years with no issues. Anyways, does anyone know if this model supports 100V and 120V? I assume it does? This dreamcast holds sentimental value to me and it still works perfectly, so I don't want to damage it. I'm trying to figure out if I should look into buying a converter of some sort or will regular american outlets not damage the system (as they seem to not have yet)?

 

x

 

Oh wow. I have an HKT-3010.. I found it on ebay. It came with a region mod (the old kind and not a modded bios) a fighting ASCII pad and a couple japanese games.. 20 dollars plus shipping. I've since done a VGA mod to it.

I always thought this was just the Japanese domestic dreamcast. One thing I noticed about mine is the power supply jack had two round holes as apposed to the normal square and round hole.. I didn't like using the shitty cord power cord that came with it so I swapped power supplies to an american one.. I guess I bastardized it a bit.

 

Here's a pic of mine. What can be said about it from the serial?

 

Seems there are a lot of Asian HKT-3010's in the US than Japanese HKT-3000's. I was able to find 4 of them easily, instead of a Japanese HKT-3000, which was what I was actually looking for. Coincidentally 3 of them also have a region-chip mod installed.

They just use standard figure-8 power cords, same as Japanese/Asian Saturn, Xbox, PS1. You can use any cord instead of swapping the psu. Also I notice there is a modem on yours. HKT-3010's are supposed to come with a dummy block instead of a modem since they never had Dreamcast online features in Asia.

 

Yeah mine came with a dummy too, I just swapped it for an extra modem I had.

 

Just in case someone googles information and somehow gets here. I am the original owner of an Asian Dreamcast that was purchased pretty close to the Japanese launch on 12/09/98. The Asian boxes do have matching serials numbers. Here's some pics on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TSegaholic/status/1112281305595568128

 

These Asian versions with 100~120V orange logo units must have been sold in Taiwan and/or the Philippines...?

Hong Kong units are modified 220V blue logo units that came in European and Australian boxes. They have a sticker on the lid of the console and on the box to remind customers that there is no modem. Haven't seen this mentioned in this thread or anywhere else yet.

It's possible very early 100~120V Asian units were sold in Hong Kong, but that must not have lasted long? It's very stupid, it's not like Sega didn't know HK was running on 220V. They sold the MS, MD and Saturn there...

What about the manual of that unit in the Twitter link? Does it mention any distributors or territories?

 

Photos attached.

Sticker says "NTSC version without modem, 220v with 13A plug"
that's a proper asian version for hong kong

So when I read someone say that there are plenty of 110V asian version in the US, well maybe because they weren't really sold in 220V countries in Asia? Maybe they were somehow sold in the US officially or semi-officially?

Maybe the manual has some company info to help me understand...

 

From the look of it, the consoles you have there are grey imports that have been modified. The "official" Asia region DC is the HKT-3010, which is 100-120V and NTSC-J - and obviously a pretty bad match for HK, which at the time used 240V/50Hz power and PAL, but it's still by far the most common variant of the DC you find here (often with blown up PSUs because they were connected directly to HK mains).

You also find Japanese spec HKT-3000s (fairly common), PAL spec HKT-3030s (less common) and US spec HKT-3010s (even less common than the PAL ones). Most of them are region modded by the importers.

That sort of wild mix of machines from different regions is pretty common in HK. When the SNES/SFC was popular you could get both PAL and NTSC versions (even from the official Nintendo distributor!).

 

You guys want more info on this? I can do a full teardown and do part number photos. I used to work for Hardcore Gaming back in the day, and I bought this obviously close to the launch day... only reason I didn't was the import store had to wait for the shipment. They had HK connections, that much I know. Maybe even a YT video?

 

Those aren't grey or black market, they are proper HK imports with distributor sticker at the back of the box, which is hard to read in my small pics. After realising the genius idea of selling 100V units in HK, Sega reserved a couple of PAL units and modified them to NTSC. Same thing that Nintendo did with the SNES in HK, after selling the SFC and realising it wasn't the right model for the market.
They are most likely late and few were sold, which is why most people have never seen them. But as far as HK is concerned, they are what the region needed originally.

@Catch22: I was curious if the instruction manual of HKT-3010 and HKT-5010 had any mentions of distributors and/or countries/territories of sale, or any similar information. (I guess not, must be a plain English manual with no custom info for any market).

 

Just found this thread, I didn't know that there was Dreamcast models without the modem, I suppose this is where Tectoy took the idea to release the console here in Brazil without it, tought it was something designed by their orders.

Tectoy had sometimes an akward story with Sega, the japanese white and Skeleton saturns were sold here that, they were units converted to NTSC-U bios with the PAL-M image system.

In Dreamcast case, they say that originally it didn't come here with the modem for cost cutting reasons, the game boxes were a mix of the american design with additional side bottom logo from the japanese ones. To make things even weirder, the Jump Pack retained the Puru Puru Pack name and later units had the blue european swirl.

 

Here is the only Asian DC I have left. Unfortunately the serial numbers don't match. Box, instructions and safeguards sheet are completely in English. There is no mention of any specific country it was designed for, only that it is compatible with NTSC-J games. I have some complete Asian Saturns and they also follow the same rules; they just made one configuration for all of Asia unlike the Asian Mega Drives which had different video and power supply standards depending on the country. It is strange that the Asian DCs used 100-120v when the Asian Saturns used 200-240v. Interestingly the manual calls the dummy block a "Terminator". The Terminator on this one is plastic/metal, but I used to have another Asian DC that came with an all-plastic Terminator.

Mine came with a piece of gray foam. Does anyone know if that originally came with the console or did somebody just throw in in there?

BTW:
HKT-3010 = model number of console
HKT-5010 = model number of box
671-10151G = part number of box
670-13624A = part number of sticker on console (contrary to what somebody said earlier, the "A" has nothing to do with the manufacturer)

Is there such a thing as an Asian Dreamcast game? I have some Asian Saturn games, but I've never once seen an Asian Dreamcast game. I kind of doubt it since they didn't bother to support any internet capability on the consoles. It seems like they didn't care by that point.

 

Thanks for the photos and information about the manual. Yeah they certainly had lost almost all interest in "Asia" by then, as indicated by the lack of a proper 220V model, which is just a modified PAL unit sold late and which most people haven't even heard of.

I'm only aware of Illbleed that had a Taiwan release with Chinese subtitles, it came in a cardboard box with a 2002 calendar.

https://assemblergames.com/threads/dreamcast-rare-illbleed-t-chinese-ver.61662/

 

I forgot about that. That's a strange release as the case says "For Japan Only", while the disc has the "-11" suffix on the serial, which is used for Hong Kong-region ("-16" is for Taiwan-region). There also seems to be some typos on the box "7memory black"?! The box also doesn't have the "-11" suffix and there's not a single SEGA logo anywhere. Who knows if that's even an official release.

 

Look again, there is a Sega logo on the box. How can it not be an official release box?