Bought modded Dreamcast w/ GDEMU installed. Disc swapping not working?

[Smokey]

So I purchased a modded Dreamcast on Ebay with a GDEMU, it works fine, i loaded up a 512GB card, however, there's a button that seems hollowed out and doesn't work, and then there's a small circular hole, when you stick your finger in there, there seems to be another button there, pressing this button doesn't seem to do anything? I assume this is the disc swap button?

Any ideas? Is there any soldering needed for this button to work? I'm hoping this is an easy fix, because i tried it on D2 and it didn't change discs or anything, i'm really concerned cuz i paid a small fortune for this as i'm not tech savvy enough to solder or do anything like that.

Any help is appreciated.

[Smokey]

To point out i'm on GDEMU Firmware 5.15.0
Bootrom version: 1.01D

Not sure how to update to the latest firmware though or if that's even possible.

[ateam]

Firstly, there's a 99.9% chance this is a clone GDEMU, which actually many, many people use without issue. However, sometimes the quality control on them is less than stellar, or outright horrible. Yours seems to be working fine for games though, right?

Regarding the disc-swap button (yes, that's what it is), it's non-functional on some clone GDEMUs. If it's not working with D2, you may need to tweak GDEMU.INI (read more here: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/vi ... 98#p157538), or it may just not work altogether.

Regarding firmware updates, that isn't possible with this era of clones (only the latest 5.20.x clones are alleged to be updateable).

[Anthony817]

Yeah exactly what ateam said. I was one of the early adopters of the clones back in 2018 and I have never had any problems with it save for all 3 Dreamcast systems I tested it in and it was not getting enough power do to the PSU pins having oxidization. Nothing a little sanding with super fine grit sandpaper didn't take care of. But do not EVER attempt to update the firmware, lest ye want a bricked ODE.

And you are exactly correct that button is how we swap discs. Though as per mentioned previously for games like D2 you could encounter issues loading it up and that fix should help. If it doesn't work at all I would just keep trying different SD cards in an attempt to see if those are the culprit. I had many times where one SD card brand didn't behave like others.

[Smokey]

Thanks for the help everyone, it doesn't seem to work

Tried increasing the open_time & detect_time to 2000 as suggested, still nothing. This really sucks because I paid quite a bit for this and didn't realize it didn't work til just now

Other games seem to work fine, even atomswave titles appear to be working.....

I tried the SD card it came with and hit the button on the title screen on Shenmue and it reset back to the GDEMU menu when doing that, i noticed this SD card it came with only has disc 1 of games on it and not disc 2 except for Shenmue, there's all 4 discs here.....so does that mean the button works? Maybe it's just not configured properly? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

[ateam]

I tried the SD card it came with and hit the button on the title screen on Shenmue and it reset back to the GDEMU menu when doing that, i noticed this SD card it came with only has disc 1 of games on it and not disc 2 except for Shenmue, there's all 4 discs here.....so does that mean the button works? Maybe it's just not configured properly? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

It doesn’t matter which disc images are part of the same game. The disc-swap button will always rotate to next disc on the list. In fact, before GDMenu was a thing, this button was how you’d select which game to play!

That being said, if pressing the button during a game doesn’t do anything at all, then I’d say it’s non-functional. Also, if my memory serves me correctly, clone GDEMUs with malfunctional disc-swap buttons will sometimes respond to the button press, however just randomly reset console or bring you back to menu.

I also recall there being a fix one can do by soldering a bodge wire to two points on the PCB, although that may only be true for the new 5.20.x clones that had this same issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/comm ... ix_update/

[Smokey]

Damn, so my disc swapping button isn't working? Should I just buy another GDEMU? I'm kinda bummed out about this because I bought this pre-modded in hopes everything would be fine, but the fact this isn't functioning the way it's supposed to, kinda got me bummed out.