PAL dreamcast trouble. Any help?

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The problem is games crashing between loading screens. For example in Shenmue it'll play for a while (10-20 mins) then go to a black screen when moving between areas. It is rarely the same area. In Virtua Fighter 3 and Soul Calibur it'll sometimes go to black between bouts, again when the game loads. To be clear I never receive a disc read error warning, just black screens. And the discs are all in good condition, barely a scratch on them which makes it more puzzling.

So I figured this was to do with the laser so I tweaked the potentiometer a bit and tried again...no luck. It's not all games as well: Rez worked just fine, Sturmwind is fine, Spawn is fine.

So yeah, need some advice please!

[mjmjr25]

Hmmm, my only similar experience would be the signal drops. Some games on some cheaper LCD TV's when in VGA or S-Video the signal will drop.

Are you able to try a different connection? Are you using SCART? Does the game reset when it goes black? If it isn't resetting i'd lean toward a TV / Signal compatibility issue...?

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Cheers for the help. I've tried it on a CRT with a scart and RF connection and on a LCD with a scart and then composite. It still goes to black, which means it's likely that it is the laser. Looks like I'm getting my fourth dreamcast!

[BRIK]

No sure if it's the same problem, but sometimes the contact that connects all the innards to the power supply gets dirty, causing restarts. It doesn't seem like the whole games are restarting though, no?
If so, I did actually create a tutorial video a little while ago when I had the same problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHVWOSM ... KVdTqFmkBd

[Crynox]

I second the above solution, I had similar issues once. It worked a treat.