With my recent project of getting a Wii on the NNC, it’s only natural to want to do some more projects 😀
Enter this under appreciated beast of a console – the Sega Dreamcast who was always overshadowed by the far more popular Sony Playstation 2. Myself included 😀
I only got a DC early 2018, sold it late 2019 to help fund other projects and then eventually getting this one in January 2020. No, I did not pay the $449 you see there, but that sticker has been essentially there since release day 😀
So what can we do with a DC in 2026? A LOT it seems. Let’s mod this DC with the most common mods today.
With the combination of the recent project and the new Openmenu by DerekPascarella, it only made sense to get the DC connected to the cab. The DC already had a GDEMU, but it was just barebones and I wanted to always purchase the 3D printed case to make it appear that the CD Drive was still intact. A few dollars on Aliexpress and it arrived after a couple of weeks the unit arrived and to my surprise, it’s actually injected moulded and not a 3D finish.
I didn’t realise that there are GDEMU’s that have a different size connector, so my connector didn’t actually fit properly to this particular case, it was higher by about 3-4mm which meant the GDEMU would come off the connector when the mount was screwed down. No biggie, I grabbed the dremel and shaved off enough to make it work. Voila!
I then started reading about the original PSU getting a bit too hot when the GDEMU is used, so I figured why not? Enter the DreamPSU, a little tiny drop in PSU which has universal AC voltage making it easy to plug directly into the NNC with it’s internal 100V AC connector.
I can’t get over how small this unit is once installed
I did a quick test and in the spirit of the Australian Open, I had to load Virtua Tennis :D. Great, everything is operational.
Next up, controls! Since the DC uses VMU’s, I decided to do a pad hack with the shell still in use so I could easily have the VMU nicely snug into the controller
Like the Wii pad hack, I decided to do it using the Sega schematics of their candy cabs which make it plug and play across all the cabinets (should I decide to use this on an Astro City instead of the NNC).
In the spirit of being a plug and play solution, I decided to make a JAMMA fingerboard. This fingerboard will handle P1 and P2 controls of any pad hacks I ever want to do in the future.
A random bit in info I came across (and a little ashamed :D) was I never realised that the DC controllers had a small groove on their controllers to route the cable back to the “top” of the controller rather than the bottom. The cable always annoyed me coming out from the bottom, but obviously they couldn’t have it at the top due to the VMU and rumble pack slots.
After the pad hack, it was time to test! When I connected my controller, nothing worked. It had to have been the pad hack, because the controller worked 100% prior to the pad hack. I rechecked my pad hack and it turns out I had two wires connected to an active line instead of a ground point. Once that was fixed, the controller still didn’t work, I thought I had killed my DC.
After some googling, it turns out that the DC was notorious for having a fuse blow on the controller port deeming it useless unless replaced. I checked the fuse with a multimeter and low and behold, it was gonski.
Aliexpress has a “controller port” pack with a resettable fuse, a battery holder, a resistor and a cap to give the controller port the “maintenance” it needs.
The battery and fuse was removed but with great pain! Who the hell folds pins on througholes!?
After the fuse was replaced, everything worked fine again! Also after changing the battery (ensure you’re using a rechargeable ML2032 and not the CR2032, they look the same and will fit, but you need a rechargeable battery, if you don’t, you need to do a diode mod on the resistor), the clock now gets saved and you don’t have to change the system clock every single boot! 😀
The final mod to make the “ultimate dc” for me was the Noctua fan mod, whilst not necessary, it provides better airflow inside along with making it quieter (not that the DC was loud to begin with, if you’ve heard a CPS2 or a Naomi, a DC is whisper quiet)
The install was easy enough, but I’m not the biggest fan of the feel of the open button anymore as you have to change the bracket on it to make the fan fit, it works, but it’s just not as smooth as the original, fortunately, with a GDEMU, you really never open the unit, so not a big enough deal to worry about.
With all the mods done, this project is now also complete – onto the next console to arcade project, maybe a PS2? A Saturn (I need to get one of these first)? We’ll see what comes to the table next.
You can’t play a DC, without playing the single best attract mode video in history! Even after hearing it so many times, it’s still one of the best (and I don’t even listen to this genre or music and Offspring, but it’s so damn good!)
