Region changing

[al73r]

Long story short I swapped my bios and wanted the blue swirl. Flashed to Europe. However my video keeps swapping back and fourth during boot. I tried to flash back but it's like I'm region locked to Europe and the region changer now shows red xs on all the options. I tried the retrodream flashrom reset but still all red xs. The system is usable but I feel my flash ROM is done

Any ideas?

[MoeFoh]

Long story short I swapped my bios and wanted the blue swirl. Flashed to Europe. However my video keeps swapping back and fourth during boot. I tried to flash back but it's like I'm region locked to Europe and the region changer now shows red xs on all the options. I tried the retrodream flashrom reset but still all red xs. The system is usable but I feel my flash ROM is done

Any ideas?

What the heck is going on with Dreamcast's 25 year old flashroms? The data sheet for the 3.3v version says data retention for minimum 20 years (upped from 10 years initially). Maybe @megavolt85 or any hardware guru can chime in? Should we not be trying to flash the boot part of a 25 year old flash chip?

[al73r]

I ordered some of those chips and will attempt to replace it and use retrodreams flashrom reset rom. I can't think of anything else other than the flash is done for. The system still works fine since i'm on a devkit no gdrom bios so no region check .. its just kind of annoying that my video is on and off now during boot or when its switching. For instance when I go into dreamshell it prompts for 60hz press Y. ... i want my smooth boot up again

EDIT: Yes I bridged 422

[al73r]

Oh to add I do have the equipment to pull the chip off the board and dump it. So i was thinking of going that route as well.. Oh i forgot to add .. if I pull the SSD/GDROM i get a black swirl of death as they call it

[MoeFoh]

I ordered some of those chips and will attempt to replace it and use retrodreams flashrom reset rom. I can't think of anything else other than the flash is done for. The system still works fine since i'm on a devkit no gdrom bios so no region check .. its just kind of annoying that my video is on and off now during boot or when its switching. For instance when I go into dreamshell it prompts for 60hz press Y. ... i want my smooth boot up again

EDIT: Yes I bridged 422

What happens when you unbridge R422?
Not 100% sure, but I thought if R422 is bridged an NTSC system would output PAL and if R424 is bridged a PAL system would now output an NTSC signal.

[al73r]

I started poking around as I found a short near the caps on the video. Removed all the caps related to video out and resoldered them back on. Video and boot are back to normal. Now to fix my black swirl issue with a new flashrom. I will be dumping a working flashrom as I feel it's something that has not been done

[PengoJetz]

Which BIOS revision are you using? Japanese Cake v1.32 allows you to pick the boot swirl color from system menu, so might be easier to install than flash and all regions should play. I have heard anecdotal claims that it doesn’t work with GDEMU (can anyone verify?)

[al73r]

I'm told 1.31 Japanese cake works perfectly fine with gdemu but 32 doesn't