I wanted a way to read my GD-Rs without all the hassle of opening my dreamcast up and doing all that fun stuff every time I wanted to play a GD-R. Here I will show you how to make your very own "Homemade Dreamcast Debug Unit". Now this isn't going to be anything like a "real" debug unit, but you will get the idea. This is the swap trick integrated with some switches and handy work. This mod disconnects the battery from the dreamcast and resets it. Also, it will disconnect power from the drive motor for safe removal of the disc. You can see how the unit will operate after this mod is complete. Link to video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4912spFL9g Remove the controller board from the dreamcast Unsolder on of the leg joints that holds the battery in place. Now, solder a piece of wire to the leg and the board Using a paperclip, cut it where it will fit on the drive henge where it is pulled down. Trace the wires from the drive motor and cut the wires, and solder the wire to wire connected to the switch. Drill two holes on your lid so we can mount the switches. Your done, it should look something like this, To use this mod, disconnect the power of the dreamcast, and press the switch that disconnect the battery power. Insert a retail game that is the same region of your dreamcast. Boot up your dreamcast when you get to the clock settings press the drive motor switch for a few seconds. The disc should be slowing down. At that point it should be safe to stop the disc. Insert your GD-R and press the select button the the screen. Your GD-R should now boot as normal.
You can probably skip over the step where you disconnect the power cable. The Dreamcast uses a hard switch to either supply all power, or supply no power unlike a switching power supply found in PCs which constantly supply voltage even when plugged in (so the unit can be powered on through the motherboard with "Wake On LAN," etc.).
Cool mod, but I was expecting debug abilities, maybe there's a more appropriate name. Also, I'd reccomend instead of tripping the 'lid closed' switch, add a third on/off switch to control it. That way, if you so wished you could still play multi-disc games etc.
I know what I'll be doing with my spare DC. Thanks! Quick question though, those buttons look like regular old rat shack momentary push buttons, are they the kind that are always on with pressing it to turn off or vice versa? I'm assuming always on otherwise the dc probably wouldn't function. Got plenty of those somewhere....
Is it possible to play GD-R's just by having a modchip installed, or would you still have to make this sort of "swap-trick" alike thing?
You have no choice besides doing this. This is required, because during the drive initialization/media detection the retail drive reads the barcode (from the original disc) before reading the game boot loader. And after you press the ok button at the date/time screen it then opens the high density section of the disc (which you have already replaced with the GD-R you want to play).
