Dreamcast Trying to figure out what was done to my Dreamcast...

PopetherevXXVIII

PopetherevXXVIII

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I bought my original Dreamcast in 2000 from neferious dealer Buyrite Games. It was sold as a Universal system.

I'm not sure if it's a bios mod or a chip.

All I have to work on is how it boots games. It will boot any game if the System is turned on with Game ready to go. However, from the system menu it only boots US games.

This came up in a Facebook group and if anyone would know what was done to my System it's someone here.
 
The obvious thing to do would be to open 'er up and see what was worked on.
 
PopetherevXXVIII said:
I bought my original Dreamcast in 2000 from neferious dealer Buyrite Games. It was sold as a Universal system.

I'm not sure if it's a bios mod or a chip.

All I have to work on is how it boots games. It will boot any game if the System is turned on with Game ready to go. However, from the system menu it only boots US games.

This came up in a Facebook group and if anyone would know what was done to my System it's someone here.
Click to expand...

Almost certainly one of the old CPLD based modchips. They worked by patching the boot ROM on the fly and only operated on initial power up.
 
How hard would it be to have the modchip swapped out for a unibios?
I need to have the battery replaced too so if I send it out I might as well have that done too.
 
PopetherevXXVIII said:
How hard would it be to have the modchip swapped out for a unibios?
I need to have the battery replaced too so if I send it out I might as well have that done too.
Click to expand...

It's not hard - basically trivial if you have the right equipment. Removing the modchip is simply disconnecting 4 wires - the boot ROM is a surface mount chip soldered to the main logic board and so is easy to remove if you have hot air tools (if you don't have hot air, then it can be readily - if destructively - removed by cutting the pins). The replacement simply solders in place of it with a couple of additional wires.

The backup battery solders to the controller socket PCB - the only potentially challenging bit is if you have the double-sided version of the controller socket board and don't have desoldering tools. If you have the single-sided version (with a brown PCB) then it's easy to remove just using a soldering iron.
 
I have a good number of retail games and burns so The GDEMU isn't high on the list.

DCHDMI is a huge maybe though and I don't know if the modchip will interfere.
 
PopetherevXXVIII said:
I have a good number of retail games and burns so The GDEMU isn't high on the list.

DCHDMI is a huge maybe though and I don't know if the modchip will interfere.
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It's fine - DCHDMI doesn't care what the boot ROM is.
 
It's more I have no idea how sloppy it was done since the people I bought from were shady to begin with than DCHDMI interfering.
 
DCHDMI should be an easy install, it’s also separate from the mod chip. However I think you should work on getting a newer mod chip in there done well.
 
PopetherevXXVIII said:
It's more I have no idea how sloppy it was done since the people I bought from were shady to begin with than DCHDMI interfering.
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Those old mod chips were a very simple install (4 wires), so they were pretty hard to screw up. I personally prefer the patched boot ROM since it means you can do in-game disc swaps using out-of-region discs, so I would recommend you get one of those installed anyway.
 
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