Dreamcast issues

[CFFJR]

I'm trying to work on my old dreamcast today and I've got a question.

First off, I must say that I am the original owner of the system and have NEVER used anything but legitimate dreamcast discs from my region. I never toyed with this thing. Its a launch system I bought new in september 99, and it broke down (on my birthday no less) in 2001. My young self declared it dead and bought a used dreamcast to replace it (which I still have and works fine), but I kept the old one out of sentiment.

Its been in storage for years, but today I figured I'd try to get it running again.

When it originally broke, its simply porked out on me in the middle of playing Grandia 2. The disc simply stopped spinning. I noticed at the time that if you turn the little spindle the disc spins on, it clicks, which it never did before, and my working DC doesn't do this. The broken DC still clicks today.

The system boots fine, as it always has. It simply won't spin the disc. If I try to start a game, the system repeatedly tells me to insert a disc. Putting a game in while the system is on will cause the system to detect the lid being shut (or me pushing the internal lid switch), saying the disc is being checked, and the laser reacts appropriately, but nothing happens.

I've tried the usual stuff.
Its not the lid switch.
The laser still moves, up and down, back and forth, with no problems.
I made a minor adjustment to the laser pot, and there was no change.

The info I've found on this simply says that if the disc doesn't spin at all after attempting the calibration, its some other problem. I haven't found any source that says what this other problem might be, which is obviously no help. Way back when, I just figured the "motor" broke. Is that the case? Is there anything I can do, aside from simply stealing the drive from another DC to replace mine?

I should emphasize that this is not a pressing issue. I don't need this dreamcast to work. But I sure would like it to.

[spiritplx]

Hmm, the spindle definitely shouldn't click when you spin it. I'm not sure what all would make a clicking noise either. I haven't heard one click yet, so I'm not too sure. This link seems to suggest clicking might be cause from something getting stuck in/near the motor (my first thought), or perhaps a PSU problem (I didn't think of this).

You're lucky that you have another DC, it makes troubleshooting a *lot* easier. Swapping pieces in a DC is a piece of cake, as long as you have a screwdriver. I would try swapping out the PSU board (the board on the left) and see if that fixes your problem. If not, then I would take out the GD-ROM drive, remove the ribbon, and flip the top of the unit upside down. Take a look and makes sure you can't see any obstruction. If you want to swap out GD-ROM pieces, be my guest, but getting the ribbon back in is a pain. If you want to just swap the entire unit, it's very simple, and will at least narrow the problem down to the unit itself.

Once you've narrowed it down, you can try to buy a broken DC unit on Craigslist, or just toss the broken part and keep the rest for spares. If you want to play your "original", just swap GD units and you should be good to go (or PSU boards if that happens to be the issue).

Good luck and keep us posted.

[CFFJR]

Hmm, the spindle definitely shouldn't click when you spin it. I'm not sure what all would make a clicking noise either. I haven't heard one click yet, so I'm not too sure. This link seems to suggest clicking might be cause from something getting stuck in/near the motor (my first thought), or perhaps a PSU problem (I didn't think of this).

You're lucky that you have another DC, it makes troubleshooting a *lot* easier. Swapping pieces in a DC is a piece of cake, as long as you have a screwdriver. I would try swapping out the PSU board (the board on the left) and see if that fixes your problem. If not, then I would take out the GD-ROM drive, remove the ribbon, and flip the top of the unit upside down. Take a look and makes sure you can't see any obstruction. If you want to swap out GD-ROM pieces, be my guest, but getting the ribbon back in is a pain. If you want to just swap the entire unit, it's very simple, and will at least narrow the problem down to the unit itself.

Once you've narrowed it down, you can try to buy a broken DC unit on Craigslist, or just toss the broken part and keep the rest for spares. If you want to play your "original", just swap GD units and you should be good to go (or PSU boards if that happens to be the issue).

Good luck and keep us posted.

Thanks for the reply and advice man!

I never imagined the clicking could be a psu problem. Its too bad the topic in the link was never discussed further.

I can confirm that there's no obstructions in the unit. I poked through it earlier quite thoroughly, and aside from being a bit dusty and marked in parts of the case, everything is clean as a whistle.

I'll take a shot at swapping out the psu's and see what happens. It'll be easy to do, since my working DC is completely disassembled right now for cleaning.

If that doesn't work, I'll switch the drives like you said. I'll be back later with an update!

[CFFJR]

Well, after getting all the work done, I've got disappointing news.

Unfortunately, switching the psu boards made no change at all.

After returning the original board, I swapped the gd rom drive. On powering up, I saw right away that the spindle on the working system's drive spun on startup. Tried a game, it worked just fine.

So it comes down to the drive then. I took a closer look at the assembly, and I saw that going any further and taking out the spindle itself would require desoldering wires in a teeny, tiny space. Not gonna happen.

So I guess that's that then. If I want to get this old DC working again, I'll need to get a new drive somewhere or another. I don't know if there are any sources for buying them individually anymore, and unless I'm lucky enough to find another broken system with a different problem, stealing it from another system seems redundant, heh.

Oh well. I'm glad I at least got in there and took a shot at it. Maybe one day I'll fix it proper.

One thing I found interesting as I was switching parts around:

My broken launch system, manufactured in August 99, has a Yamaha drive and a psu board made in China. The working system, manufactured in October 99, has a Samsung drive and a psu board made in Indonesia. It surprised me that the two systems were built within two months of each other and yet have different sources for their parts.

Thanks again for your help spirit.

[vlame]

it's called outsourcing dog.

[spiritplx]

Not a problem at all. If you want to get adventurous, you could take the board off the GD unit and swap them. If the problem persists, then you can rule out the board. If you try the board from the bad GD unit on the good one, and it still works, then the board is good, and you can keep that around as a spare.

I had two DCs die with bad GD boards. One of them caused the spindle to be in a constant state of spinning, and the other caused the DC to power on for a split second (led lit up), then would immediately power off. The first problem makes sense, but the second issue was a bit odd. I guess what I am getting at is try to save all the parts you can that actually still work, as tossing the whole GD unit for a bad spindle motor would be a waste. If your GD unit board dies on your working DC, you will have a replacement.

Although replacing the laser itself might be more trouble than it's worth (DCs are cheap, after all), you could keep that around as well. Basically I just keep around parts that are easy enough to plug in and go. Anything that would require board work/soldering gets tossed in the trash.

You can take the GD board off without removing the ribbon. Just be careful, if it gets disconnected it's just a pain to get back in (at least for me it is).

A few months back I was looking for DC parts to fix two of my broken DCs, and I won an auction and ended up getting 10 broken DCs (I knew they were broken). I was very surprised to find out that the most common problem was a bad controller port board. I think you can buy fuses and solder them in for a fix, but to me, it's just not worth the time and money to fix just one piece. The next most frequent issue was with the GD-ROM unit. So it's definitely a good idea to keep those parts around.

Anyhow, enough rambling. Hopefully your current DC lasts quite a while before you have to start replacing parts.