Dreamcast A/V or motherboard problem

Post by **MynameisAdam** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:15 pm

So I just finished doing surgery on my Dreamcast. It's been broken for years and I'm trying to bring it back to life. I had a problem where on power up it would turn on for a second(orange light blinks) and turn off, disc wouldn't spin. I narrowed the problem down to the power supply. So I swapped it out with one from a working dreamcast(why not just use the working one? The system I'm trying to fix is modded so just trying to avoid remodding). Tested it out and now it powers up, spins the disc but on screen it just shows a blinking white screen and it plays the dreamcast startup audio but it is scratchy. At this point the screen keeps blinking but no audio is heard(seems to suggest the game didn't boot up). Also none of the buttons do anything except when hitting the d-pad it makes a little beep. I'm a newbie with this stuff and it's definately leaving me a bit confused. At first I thought A/V connection, but the fact that the game doesn't boot up, and only the D-pad causes a beep, suggests the problem is more complicated. Maybe the motherboard. Anyone seen this before? Or think they can offer an educated guess?

Post by **Pullmyfinger** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:18 pm

Do you have other AV cables?? Perhaps a pin is busted, do you have S-video or VGA cables, you might be lucky and just have a problem with comp video

Post by **MynameisAdam** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:27 pm

Ya I'm actually running around my house trying to find the second set right now. Thought I knew where they were but can't find em anywhere.

Post by **MynameisAdam** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:44 pm

On second thought, the A/V cables work fine with the other dreamcast. So probably not that.

Post by **GrandMasterJimmy** » Wed May 14, 2008 12:08 am

Lightly bend the 5 pins that hook to the power board towards the back of the DC. Your power suply wasn't bad, the pins just arn't touching good enough. When loading a game it doesn't have enough power and it shuts off. When you switched boards it probably is just touching the pins better, but not good enough yet.

Hope that solves it. That seems to be the problem alot of the time.

Post by **Adderall** » Wed May 14, 2008 7:34 am

I have 2 dreamcasts that don't work correctly... if you want them for parts let me know (you would only pay shipping). For both of them, the dreamcast powers on and spins but does not read any discs.

I'm pretty sure that one was left out in the rain, and as for the other one: I was playing Galaga on a NES emulator and I put in a cheat code to never die.... Then I put a rubber band around the fire button and let it go for a few days to see what would happen to the score. The laser just doesn't work the same after I did that.