Dreamcast hardware

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:21 pm

I've been looking over my Dreamcast and I 'll admit I know little about computer connections. So maybe someone can help me out.

First one is the controllers. If anyone knows what type of connection it has please enlighten me.
The detail of it is they the ribbin cable that connects the controller ports to the mobo has 20 wires. I doubt it is a PS/2 and its immpossible to be a USB.

Second one is the port the GD-rom goes into. My best guess is its a laptop connector (for CD-rom/Floppy). If its something different again please tell me.

I want to know what these are as it will make building/modifing it a lot easier for me.

Thank you for any (useful) input.

cennar · Post by **cennar** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:51 pm

the controler ports belong to the dreamcast mapple bus. (a Canadian designed part)..
and the drive ive never tryed to subsitute with an ide cd drive... but doubt it would be good for it reading the giga disks.
and any matter theres not tomuch problem there in size if your trying to portablize it.. if it is bugging you go find a spare one and try to cut some hight off it. also you could try and relocate the main board and the GD asembly to next to each other so you can gain less hight..
but the big dream cast worrie is the expensave voltage exchangers they cost almost 100 bucks all together plus what ever laptop battry.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:59 pm

Its more about ajusting the placement of all thoses things. The GD-rom can hardly be pulled away from the rest of the unit. So I want to know what connects they have so I can see about moving them around and get a better setup.

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 8:18 pm

the serial port in the back is a modified usb with a coders cable and some adapters you can use it as usb.

[CCDC]Norn · Post by **[CCDC]Norn** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:44 am

I was trying to figure out what sort of cables those are too (The GD-rom and Controller Board). It seems like the are the same type of cable, but the GD-rom one has less wires in it. I did a google search on the model number that is printed on both cables and didnt get a lot of hits. I did find a few sellers (http://store.yahoo.com/alan-fm/8003961.html), but none of them had great sites, and appears that the cable in that link is only ~5 inches. So what I'm going to try to do is something simmilar to what Ben did with the Atari cartridges. Desolder the weird cable recipticles and then extend them using ribbion cables. The controller board actually seems like it wouldn't be too hard (if I had any soldering skills), but if you wanted to do the same thing on the gd rom lens unit, you'd have to have a really steady hand and be quite percise.

[CCDC]Norn · Post by **[CCDC]Norn** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 9:02 am

Ok, well right after I made that last post, I opened up a regular pc cd-rom I had sitting around. (I want to use the motorized tray) And saw that it had almost the exact same type of cable in it. It has a diffrent number on it, but its the same type. Which lead me to find this site : http://www.youngshinffc.com/product1.htm, it seems like we could buy some longer cables from there. But I can't understand how to order it

. The form is pretty confusing.

Ok, better yet http://www.discountmobilevideo.com/items/item351.htm This seems like the exact same cable, and its nice and long. Like I said, I believe the GD-ROM only uses 8 cables instead of 10, but maybe you could just snip out those last two and use it for that too.

NeoGoldenBoy · Post by **NeoGoldenBoy** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:19 am

I will use this thread so that I will not create a new one to ask this question...

What would be a good price for a DreamCast and how much does the games approximately cost?

riva16 · Post by **riva16** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:58 pm

Dreamcast is worth baout $30... Thats console, a controller, VMU and at least oen game or demo... on eBay they go way cheaper...

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:09 pm

If you go to a pawn shop or an Electronics Boutique you can find em for about $15.
Games are about $5-$10 usually. Pretty much like PS1.