Dreamcast-Talk.com

Roareye wrote:I've ordered the resistors, the 3D printed tray and the GDEmu.
The PicoPSU seems a lot of effort, if the above will work fine. Mainly due to soldering and a spaghetti of wires. It's also another £50 of cost.

You can just jam them in the pins, no soldering needed. The heating problem seems fixed from my testing using the resistors and I've used my dreamcast for years now....

I personally wouldn't bother with a picopsu, voultar from retrorgb says it doesn't supply proper voltage to the dreamcast

Thanks Xiden. I do trust RetroRGB, they're very thorough.

I've ordered 5 of the 330ohm 1W resistors (they were a bulk sale for only a couple of quid). How many would I need to jam into the power pins? Your example shows 2 in the pins, would that be your recommendation?

Roareye wrote:The PicoPSU seems a lot of effort, if the above will work fine. Mainly due to soldering and a spaghetti of wires. It's also another £50 of cost.

The PicoPSU (80w variant) costs about 25 € on Amazon (~£23), and the Pico Dreamcast adapter can be bought on laserbear.net for $10 (kit) or $18 (assembled), so £50 seems a bit much.

Xiden wrote:I personally wouldn't bother with a picopsu, voultar from retrorgb says it doesn't supply proper voltage to the dreamcast

I have only seen Voultar dismissing the DreamPSU, not the PicoPSU. In fact he claims they can be pretty good when paired with a good 12V supply.

PicoPSU Source: https://twitter.com/Voultar/status/1248293048724922371
DreamPSU Source: https://twitter.com/Voultar/status/1248271361778253824

I couldn't find a PicoPSU assembled under £45. And as I'll need the adapter assembled for your stated $18 - about £12 - that's £63 already. But that doesn't include International postage plus potential customs charges.

Even if a PicoPSU could be got assembled for £23, add £12 (£35 already), postage from Europe to UK, postage from USA to UK plus US to UK customs charges... It's going over £50.

If the DC seems too hot after applying Xiden's method then I'll swap the PSU (once I can afford to buy a completed set - again I refuse to solder myself because I've literally never successfully soldered anything - and I've tried multiple times). Otherwise I'd literally be wasting money, and where I was made redundant due to the pandemic that's not really an option at this time.

NightBreeze wrote:

Roareye wrote:The PicoPSU seems a lot of effort, if the above will work fine. Mainly due to soldering and a spaghetti of wires. It's also another £50 of cost.

The PicoPSU (80w variant) costs about 25 € on Amazon (~£23), and the Pico Dreamcast adapter can be bought on laserbear.net for $10 (kit) or $18 (assembled), so £50 seems a bit much.

Xiden wrote:I personally wouldn't bother with a picopsu, voultar from retrorgb says it doesn't supply proper voltage to the dreamcast

I have only seen Voultar dismissing the DreamPSU, not the PicoPSU. In fact he claims they can be pretty good when paired with a good 12V supply.

PicoPSU Source: https://twitter.com/Voultar/status/1248293048724922371
DreamPSU Source: https://twitter.com/Voultar/status/1248271361778253824

Ah maybe I mixed them up

Roareye wrote:I couldn't find a PicoPSU assembled under £45. And as I'll need the adapter assembled for your stated $18 - about £12 - that's £63 already. But that doesn't include International postage plus potential customs charges.

Even if a PicoPSU could be got assembled for £23, add £12 (£35 already), postage from Europe to UK, postage from USA to UK plus US to UK customs charges... It's going over £50.

If the DC seems too hot after applying Xiden's method then I'll swap the PSU (once I can afford to buy a completed set - again I refuse to solder myself because I've literally never successfully soldered anything - and I've tried multiple times). Otherwise I'd literally be wasting money, and where I was made redundant due to the pandemic that's not really an option at this time.

If you're following this guide https://retrogamesultra.com/2019/02/17/ ... setup/amp/
Make sure you are using 3 not 2, The 3rd one in that picture is kinda hard to see
Just twist them together and then I'd bend up the ends to make them a little easier to insert

Roareye wrote:I was made redundant due to the pandemic that's not really an option at this time.

That sucks man, sorry to hear it. Fk this COVID b@stard.

I know you are going a different way with the power supply, but there is no soldering required with the pico setup. Just get a premade Chriz2600 adapter from eBay, the 90w mini-box pico from Amazon, a 3D-printed adapter for the barrel jack, and a suitable 12v DC power brick. It all goes together without soldering. But you’re right in that it’s about £50 all-in.

The resistor mod is a totally valid solution, even better just disconnect the 12v rail on the Dreamcast PSU (that does require (un)soldering though).

Sorry, one more question. Will the GDEmu take 256/512gb cards or does it max out at 128gb?
The full library is about 620gb in size, so splitting it across a few cards would be easier on 2x512GB or 3x256GB cards rather than 5/6x 128GB cards.

I’ve been using a Kingston Go! Plus 256gb the last few months, no issues. Fast and a lot cheaper than the equivalent Sandisk offering. I’m sure people have used 512gb too. I found that for a curated library of games I’d actually want to play 256gb was more than enough, and this is with full-sized GDI files.

If you must have 600+ gb, 3x 256gb cards are going to be cheaper than 2x 512gb.

Is the PSU heating even an issue? I think if its overheating and resetting its got nothing to do with the Gdemu....