Hello Obscure Gamers,
In this post I will share with you the problems that I have with my Sega Katana. The post it's big so, take a cup of coffee.
Some months ago, I bought this Sega Katana from a guy in my country, he told me that the Katana was brought from Japan by him and he used it for a short time. The console gave video and all worked fine.
He stopped using the console for years, and one day he turned it on and no video signal. Because of this, I bought the console by a low price to him.
Now, once I obtained the console, I did a lot of test to it in order to know what the problem can be.
What I did:
1) I tried all the switchs configuration possible, all possible video outputs and self test mode.
2) I build a Windows 98 pc with the Adaptec 2940uw, Pentium 3 1000mhz, Voodoo 3 3000 and 512mb RAM. I installed all the SDK versions, r9, r10, r11b... because some people told me that perhaps the problem is a bad boot rom flash, so here the problems:
2.0 Introduction) The SCSI Adaptec card recognizes well the two SCSI devices from Katana, when I'm booting my WIN 98 PC I see:
ID 3: CPL KATANA DA
ID 4: CPL GD-M
And I can see one of the two partitions of the Katana's SCSI HDD in the WIN 98 PC.
2.1) DACheck gives to me this errors when I try to flash the corresponding roms:
The first time I open Dacheck. I changed the DA mode from CPU to OS but nothing happens... no video signal again.
When the program loads:
When I do a test on DA:
Once I select the device SCSI device:
Here the logs: DA Log & GDM Log
2.2) CodeScape. When I open CodeScape this message appears on screen:
And if I do soft and hard reset and hit retry in the next message
I see the Ram memory map (I guess) of the Sega Katana. I can edit some memory addresses but not all.
2.3) DBFlash. With this utility you can reflash the DA, GDM firmware and the Boot Rom, but I have the same stub error that before and I can't even see the firmware of DA, GDM and Boot Rom.
3.0) Hardware Check. I disassembled the console and I checked all the boards for capacitor corrosion, bad joints, and I found nothing.
Here you have the collection of images, all uploaded in Imgur posts.
Main Motherboard
Cross Products Board
The Main Motherboard is the 5.16 version but the case says 5.24, very rare and this motherboard has a switch configuration inside, I don't know the configuration and what it does.
3.1) Katana Working. The Sega Katana turns on fine, the GD Drive works and the HDD too. Here you have two videos to watch:
Katana Working without HDD
Katana Working With HDD
So, that's all the errors I could document. Please, I need your help, I want to use this devkit to learn more about the Dreamcast's architecture and to help the Homebrew community, but with these errors I can't do anything good.
I hope that I'll find a solution. I live in Argentina, so... I can't send my Sega Katana to another country.
Thanks to all for create this beautiful community! I'll wait for your answers.
Have a good day.
In this post I will share with you the problems that I have with my Sega Katana. The post it's big so, take a cup of coffee.
Some months ago, I bought this Sega Katana from a guy in my country, he told me that the Katana was brought from Japan by him and he used it for a short time. The console gave video and all worked fine.
He stopped using the console for years, and one day he turned it on and no video signal. Because of this, I bought the console by a low price to him.
Now, once I obtained the console, I did a lot of test to it in order to know what the problem can be.
What I did:
1) I tried all the switchs configuration possible, all possible video outputs and self test mode.
2) I build a Windows 98 pc with the Adaptec 2940uw, Pentium 3 1000mhz, Voodoo 3 3000 and 512mb RAM. I installed all the SDK versions, r9, r10, r11b... because some people told me that perhaps the problem is a bad boot rom flash, so here the problems:
2.0 Introduction) The SCSI Adaptec card recognizes well the two SCSI devices from Katana, when I'm booting my WIN 98 PC I see:
ID 3: CPL KATANA DA
ID 4: CPL GD-M
And I can see one of the two partitions of the Katana's SCSI HDD in the WIN 98 PC.
2.1) DACheck gives to me this errors when I try to flash the corresponding roms:
The first time I open Dacheck. I changed the DA mode from CPU to OS but nothing happens... no video signal again.
When the program loads:
When I do a test on DA:
Once I select the device SCSI device:
Here the logs: DA Log & GDM Log
2.2) CodeScape. When I open CodeScape this message appears on screen:
And if I do soft and hard reset and hit retry in the next message
I see the Ram memory map (I guess) of the Sega Katana. I can edit some memory addresses but not all.
2.3) DBFlash. With this utility you can reflash the DA, GDM firmware and the Boot Rom, but I have the same stub error that before and I can't even see the firmware of DA, GDM and Boot Rom.
3.0) Hardware Check. I disassembled the console and I checked all the boards for capacitor corrosion, bad joints, and I found nothing.
Here you have the collection of images, all uploaded in Imgur posts.
Main Motherboard
Cross Products Board
The Main Motherboard is the 5.16 version but the case says 5.24, very rare and this motherboard has a switch configuration inside, I don't know the configuration and what it does.
3.1) Katana Working. The Sega Katana turns on fine, the GD Drive works and the HDD too. Here you have two videos to watch:
Katana Working without HDD
Katana Working With HDD
So, that's all the errors I could document. Please, I need your help, I want to use this devkit to learn more about the Dreamcast's architecture and to help the Homebrew community, but with these errors I can't do anything good.
I hope that I'll find a solution. I live in Argentina, so... I can't send my Sega Katana to another country.
Thanks to all for create this beautiful community! I'll wait for your answers.
Have a good day.