Dreamcast SDRIP v1.1 boots game

[ShadiestQuill]

Hi everyone. First post here, so sorry if I'm not posting on the right forum.

I bought a new GD ROM drive for my PAL 1 Dreamcast a week ago. So far it has been working great with games and homebrew, except for DCSDRIP. It can still dump the flash and BIOS as usual, it reads the discs without much issue and even detects the SD card.

My problem is that when I try to fully dump a game, the console resets and boots into whichever disc I have inserted to dump. Searched for this issue on Google and I found this Reddit post from a year ago with no answers. I have tried several games, but this happens with every game I've tried so far.
I also tried dumping using Dreamshell and it worked perfectly fine, though I've heard it isn't the best tool to dump games...

Picture of the TV right before the console resets and boots the game.




I bought this GDROM drive from dragoncity17's shop and I noticed there were two models for sale. I ended up buying the incorrect one (only one that was in stock) which, according to the store page, is compatible and the only difference is the screw-hole location. Could this have something to do with my issue?

I'd really appreciate if anyone could provide some help!

[MoeFoh]

Is it possible you have a 5v drive assembly in a 3.3v system? Worth checking out.
https://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewto ... 104#p97941

[ShadiestQuill]

Is it possible you have a 5v drive assembly in a 3.3v system? Worth checking out.
https://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewto ... 104#p97941

Thank you for the reply!

I checked my old GD ROM and it does say 3.3V, while the new one does not have anything that tells which voltage it runs on. The post you linked had someone that said the 5V board requires some modifications to fit in a 3.3V slot, which matches my experience.

Do you happen to know if running the drive at a lower voltage has any long-term negative impacts on its condition, or if there is a mod to step up the voltage to the 5V this drive requires? Since I still have my old drive I'm thinking about replacing the BA chip and the capacitors to see if I can bring it back to life... Backing up these games is important to me.

Though I still find it odd that everything works fine except for SDRIP.

[MoeFoh]

Is it possible you have a 5v drive assembly in a 3.3v system? Worth checking out.
https://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewto ... 104#p97941

Thank you for the reply!

I checked my old GD ROM and it does say 3.3V, while the new one does not have anything that tells which voltage it runs on. The post you linked had someone that said the 5V board requires some modifications to fit in a 3.3V slot, which matches my experience.

Do you happen to know if running the drive at a lower voltage has any long-term negative impacts on its condition, or if there is a mod to step up the voltage to the 5V this drive requires? Since I still have my old drive I'm thinking about replacing the BA chip and the capacitors to see if I can bring it back to life... Backing up these games is important to me.

Though I still find it odd that everything works fine except for SDRIP.

I would not recommend replacing a 3.3v drive assembly with a 5v drive assembly, but sometimes we have no choice. Electrically speaking it's not correct. The MODE ODE uses line buffer/voltage converter circuits to handle this situation, so it works on both 5v VA0 & 3.3v VA1 systems. There is no mod that I know of.

My guess is SDRIP is communicating directly with the drive's controller board, bypassing the BIOS calls and it does not like the older controller. It's also likely the system the 5v drive was taken out of had an earlier BIOS than what you have now.

[ShadiestQuill]

Is it possible you have a 5v drive assembly in a 3.3v system? Worth checking out.
https://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewto ... 104#p97941

Thank you for the reply!

I checked my old GD ROM and it does say 3.3V, while the new one does not have anything that tells which voltage it runs on. The post you linked had someone that said the 5V board requires some modifications to fit in a 3.3V slot, which matches my experience.

Do you happen to know if running the drive at a lower voltage has any long-term negative impacts on its condition, or if there is a mod to step up the voltage to the 5V this drive requires? Since I still have my old drive I'm thinking about replacing the BA chip and the capacitors to see if I can bring it back to life... Backing up these games is important to me.

Though I still find it odd that everything works fine except for SDRIP.

I would not recommend replacing a 3.3v drive assembly with a 5v drive assembly, but sometimes we have no choice. Electrically speaking it's not correct. The MODE ODE uses line buffer/voltage converter circuits to handle this situation, so it works on both 5v VA0 & 3.3v VA1 systems. There is no mod that I know of.

My guess is SDRIP is communicating directly with the drive's controller board, bypassing the BIOS calls and it does not like the older controller. It's also likely the system the 5v drive was taken out of had an earlier BIOS than what you have now.

Alright, thank you for all the info!

I'll order some parts and see if I can get my old GDROM drive working again, hopefully replacing the capacitors and the BA chip will do the trick. For now I'll use this drive to play and then I'll either sell it off or keep it in case I get a VA0 dreamcast for cheap.

Again, thank you for helping me out.

[MoeFoh]

Idea - use Dreamshell for the rip and verify for accuracy by comparing crc totals against attached file (use clrmamepro). Our friends from Russia even have a new Dteamshell release candidate to test. https://github.com/DC-SWAT/DreamShell/releases