My first Dreamcast, but wires missing! Help/advice?

[godzillafan]

Hi Guys,

Just bought a Dreamcast and it turned up with just a controller and 4mb card. I am not complaining for £10 delivered.

There was no wires.

Can anyone confirm what power lead and wires I need to setup with the TV, I don't mind scart or anything 3rd party?

I then play to use with iso games on disk (as I have about 500 plain discs cd-r)!

Any advice or links to what the wire/power lead setup should be?

Cheers guys

 

[KiiWii]

Any old figure of 8 power cable will work. I bought a AV-lead from eBay for £2.99 delieverd and plugged it into my HDMI upscaler.

I also nabbed a Dreamshell from the states for £27 shipped, works for most games but Shenmue 1+2 need to be burnt to disks to play anyway.

 

[migles]

the one that connects to tv is a proprietary one... the cable that comes with the console connects to rca (yellow, red, white)
there is other options as scart (or just a rca to scart adaptor)

the power one is a normal plug that you find in lots of appliances (like vcr) it doesn't need a ac\dc adaptor\converter...

heres a manual that you can find more info: http://pscd.ru/info/49-sega-dreamcast-instruction-manual.html

 

[godzillafan]

Great stuff, so that the power cable done a basic 8 job, will have one of those knocking around the house.

The scart options - any pics or links if there is a choice - I guess any cheapo job would do it.

Will do a another thread on the burning side of thing once, I got it working

 

[KiiWii]

Just any DREAMCAST av cable from eBay mate. Like I said mine was £2.99 shipped.

Burning is easy, just get the bootable ISO and use IMGBURN or clonecd.

 

[Lumstar]

The power lead itself is generic. Check thrift shops if necessary.
To be safe, first confirm the system's region. Dreamcast does not contain a 100V~240V power supply!

There's four standard video leads, and external RF boxes (no modulator inside the console)

composite and s-video are fairly obvious.

In general you'll want to use RGB on an SDTV, or VGA on an HDTV.
While some games don't support one or the other (it varies), a few have patches to fix that.

Keep in mind genuine games are region coded. Boot discs help, but AFAIK modding is needed to permanently automate loading GD-ROM imports.

 

[godzillafan]

cheers guys, I shall hit the bay for the av cable - I guess thats a HK job

The power lead itself is generic. Check thrift shops if necessary.
To be safe, first confirm the system's region. Dreamcast does not contain a 100V~240V power supply!

There's four standard video leads, and external RF boxes (no modulator inside the console)

composite and s-video are fairly obvious.

In general you'll want to use RGB on an SDTV, or VGA on an HDTV.
While some games don't support one or the other (it varies), a few have patches to fix that.

Keep in mind genuine games are region coded. Boot discs help, but AFAIK modding is needed to permanently automate loading GD-ROM imports.

Its a defo UK Pal job and - looks like the vga option is best for me

 

[KiiWii]

Lumstar can't you flash a modded bios for region free via the Dreamshell boot cd?

I was reading about this the other day: there is a region free bios with the Dev console start up animation that should be flashable from Dreamshell boot disk. All he would need is the SD adaptor or perhaps a disk to swap with that contains the bios?

EDIT: http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/sega-dreamcast-region-free-bios/

 

[Foxi4]

Burning a UTOPIA disc is super simple and doesn't require any modding or flashing, so it's a good alternative if you're lazy.

 

[KiiWii]

Burning a UTOPIA disc is super simple and doesn't require any modding or flashing, so it's a good alternative if you're lazy.

These days there is no need for a separate boot disk.

There are available ISOs that have the boot code slipstreamed.

 

[Foxi4]

These days there is no need for a separate boot disk.

There are available ISOs that have the boot code slipstreamed.

I like using clean rips (or rather "relatively clean" since proper rips can't fit on a CD, GD -ROM being a little over 1GB), but yes, that's also an option.

 

[Lumstar]

Lumstar can't you flash a modded bios for region free via the Dreamshell boot cd?

I was reading about this the other day: there is a region free bios with the Dev console start up animation that should be flashable from Dreamshell boot disk. All he would need is the SD adaptor or perhaps a disk to swap with that contains the bios?

EDIT: http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/sega-dreamcast-region-free-bios/

Yeah the fairly simple mod is a bit different. It instead switches between regions.
http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/dreamcast-region-change/

4 wire mod chip comes after that in difficulty.
Replacing the actual bios is hardest of course.

 

[godzillafan]

+r or -r, which works best?