Signs Your Dreamcast Is Going?

[Marbles]

Any telltale signs of when your Dreamcast is dying?
 

It's not reading disc as well as it used to, certain games will literally dump me back to the DC Config screen mid load... and the sound of the drive has gone from the original grinding noise (not sure what to call it, DC owners know what I meant) to little more than chirps when trying to load a disc.

It'll run a game 1/5 times, so I am trying to diagnose the problem.

So, I'm guessing it might be on it's last legs.. even though it worked a couple weeks ago.

 

[Jarte]

My Dreamcast does the same thing, usually takes a few tries before it'll start playing something, then once it does it'll go back to the boot screen while I'm playing. It usually does work for me after a few cycles of that, each time getting slightly further until it works properly. I've had some weird glitches where certain layers don't load or something in 2D games.

Replacing the laser would probably be the only option short of replacing the whole system, which makes more sense to me since it's likely a replacement will have the same problems soon enough anyway.

Is it possible to maybe repair or refurbish the laser? If so I'd definitely like to know how.

 

[Marbles]

My Dreamcast does the same thing, usually takes a few tries before it'll start playing something, then once it does it'll go back to the boot screen while I'm playing. It usually does work for me after a few cycles of that, each time getting slightly further until it works properly. I've had some weird glitches where certain layers don't load or something in 2D games.

Replacing the laser would probably be the only option short of replacing the whole system, which makes more sense to me since it's likely a replacement will have the same problems soon enough anyway.

Is it possible to maybe repair or refurbish the laser? If so I'd definitely like to know how.

Yea, I've been trying to find parts but.. it's fruitless due to the proprietary GD-Rom used for the console.

 

[nattybohman]

 It's not worth it most of the time to replace the GD-ROM. However, there are a few videos on youtube that show you how to "calibrate" the laser.

It's not hard, but it's delicate work. I broke mine trying to twist the little piece they tell you to twist in the videos. Lucky for me, I had access to some broken Dreamcasts, so I took a working GD-ROM from one of them.