What to do with a broken Dreamcast?

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erehwon

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I picked up this broken dreamcast along with a working one at a garage sale. It will power up, but once I put a disc in, it shuts down. I watched it and noticed that as I slowly closed the lid, the disc spun up a little, stopped, and the unit shut down. I'm guessing that means the disc drive is bad. Is there any way to repair that?
 
[quote name='tangytangerine']Have you been playing burned games with it?[/QUOTE]
Nope. I got it at a garage sale a few months ago. I got it and a working dreamcast for $10. I don't know what the previous owners did with it. I'm just wanting to figure out what the problem is and try to fix it. I tried swapping out power supplies with a working one and that had no effect. I'm thinking it's the drive.

Does anyone know any good dreamcast sites that would have any information on this?
 
[quote name='Arkay Firestar']I think it could be a lot of things. Bad drive, bad mainboard (screwed), bad power supply...

All I know is that mine doesn't do that...[/QUOTE]
I'd say bad drive or mainboard. I've swapped out the power supply of the bad dreamcast with a power supply from a good one. That did nothing. I don't think the mainboard would be the problem since I notice the dreamcast would boot up and go to main menu. The problem only occurs when I insert a disc or boot it up with a disc already in it.
 
[quote name='Z-Saber']Not a factor.[/quote]

Are you sure of that? Many have reported that playing burned discs on a DC can ruin the lens because it causes it to run faster.
 
Well, if you can't get it to work... you could always mod the case, paint it and what not. If it turns out nice, you can replace the working Dreamcast's case with that one.
 
[quote name='yukine']Well, if you can't get it to work... you could always mod the case, paint it and what not. If it turns out nice, you can replace the working Dreamcast's case with that one.[/QUOTE]
If I can't get it to work, I could someday use the case and maybe put a mini-ITX board in it. I wonder if I could mod a regular DVD drive into a top loading one? A dreamcast computer would be kind of neat. Either that or just mod the case like you said.
 
[quote name='Rozz']Are you sure of that? Many have reported that playing burned discs on a DC can ruin the lens because it causes it to run faster.[/quote]There's no reason for it to "run faster."
 
Dreamcast's are pretty easy to fix if there resetting, Just open the baby up and take out the power supply and get a cloth, and push the 4 pins together more and no more reseting
 
[quote name='Rozz']Are you sure of that? Many have reported that playing burned discs on a DC can ruin the lens because it causes it to run faster.[/quote]


In older cases of making a DC disc this may have been true. WIthout a dummy file in the disc the eye would have to bounce back and forth several times causing it to sometimes become unstable (but it was rare).

With the added dummy files it's become no problem at all.... and pretty much EVERY downloadable DC game would have the dummy file fix by now. You can tell when they don't. It sounds like the DC is about to takeoff into outer space when you start up.

;)
 
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