My Dreamcast Dev kit is here!!!...wait..Help!!

[corn619]

My friend delivered the Dreamcast Dev kit as promised! Theres a problem though, it powers up ok, the "no signal" icon on the LCD goes away but no picture. I'm very depressed right now. I tried the composite, S-video and VGA on three LCD and tube TVs and nothing. Just a black screen, boo. When hooked up to VGA it says "video not supported". Needless to say I need help from my fellow racket members. I read some stuff about possibly it needing to be hooked up to a PC to work via a SCSI cable. I also read its a PC with a Dreamcast emulator built in from another. So I don't know what to believe. Should I just be able to hook this up to a TV and start playing or am I missing something? If any other info is needed to help please feel free to ask. Being most of you guys are better at modding and configuring things than me, I could use some help. I thank you in advance, heres some pics. Sorry for the quality my iphone camera sucks. I will post better quality ones in the near future.

[Xonticus]

First of all nice DC unit! Its beautiful!

My guess from working with PC's is that there could be a couple things wrong with it... either physically the graphics card output could be either broken, fried, or simply not connected right inside the box from being tucked away for years, jarred a few times in the meantime......

Or something with the Operating system was messed with the last time it was turned on, and it failed to boot the next time they tried, then boxed it up. There could be a way to enter some kind of "Safe Mode", or reset the BIOS settings, but its hard to tell without knowing what O/s its running. The DC used Windows CE, but idk if that one is different. Short answer is probably find a good Computer guy you know, and have him look at it.

One minor sidenote.... not sure if you need a Bootable OS on disc to run... I think you mentioned in an earlier post about the guy saying it originally came with a couple discs. If that were the case, it might have asked to insert it, but since its a dev kit and not a production model, it wont be as clear as to how to run it. Just an afterthought. Good luck!!

[miked]

Even If you never get it to work, its freakin sweet. I would probably just be content with one sitting on a shelf. Very nice!

[hockeytree]

Nice man! Well have you opened it to take a look for any loose connections?

[corn619]

Taking it apart is my next move. I'm Hoping to take it apart tonight. I will post detailed photos tonight or tommorow. Maybe someone can point out something I'm missing.

[bobbynewmarkiii]

Even if it doesn't work, that's an awesome piece of video game history! never seen one of these before...gotta piss you off that it's bust tho - best of luck getting it working.

[ubelaffe]

try it with a dc game (GD Rom) in it? I think the whole os disc suggestion is a good one, but maybe, since it's supposed to be able to play the stuff, I think, you could try that??

Good luck!

how did you get that sucker, anyway?

[corn619]

try it with a dc game (GD Rom) in it? I think the whole os disc suggestion is a good one, but maybe, since it's supposed to be able to play the stuff, I think, you could try that??

Good luck!

how did you get that sucker, anyway?

I'm downloading Katana SDK discs from Underground Gamer as we speak. I think these are the software development discs for the Katana and hold the tools to get this baby booting up properly. As for trying games in the drive, I tried Soul Caliber, Under Defeat and Seaman with no luck. I messed around with the dipswitches and the other rotatable switch in front also with no luck as well. I got it from my best friend who works in the games industry. He knows I love retro games and systems in particular Sega stuff so he put it aside for me. And he gave it to me for free. Yeah I know, awesome friend. I'll keep doing more research and trying different things and hopefully I'll strike gold soon.

[nick944]

Check the dipswitch settings on it, if I remember right if one is not on right the unit won't display video.

[corn619]

I know what the problem is, its in emulation mode theres 2 ways to switch it to GD-ROM mode. Buy the SCSI cables, card and the SDK development software hook it up to a PC and do it through the interface. The other way is to disconnect the HDD and certain boards which should switch it back manually. I'm going to buy the hardware and I'm downloading the SDK software via Underground Gamer, sucks little to no seeders. Wish me luck I'm going to need it. Also friend found 2 more Katana dev units, one needs fixing.