Dreamcast-Talk.com

for anyone trying to get as much battery life out of the vm2 as possible but don't want to turn the backlight off, you can adjust the brightness of the screen via a pot on the back of the pcb.
i have turned mine down as low as it can go and it still looks great.

VM2 GUI new version (1.8.0.0) released

The new version bundles a VMI/VMS (batch) converter, for easily converting existing VMS mini-games or data files into full VMU dumps.

The converter supports both VMI/VMS pair or standalone VMS (mini-game) files

Hi guys, I received my VM2 a few days ago and the build quality looks great and I'm pleased with it, but unfortunately I'm having trouble getting it to work with my main Dreamcast.

I have tried various things and I'm satisfied the VM2 itself isn't the issue but rather its compatability with some aspect of my machine - I suspect the PSU but I would have to do more testing to be sure.

Basically I have two Dreamcasts, both of them modded. The one I use most of the time has GDemu, and the other one still runs a disc drive. They both have various other mods too, including Noctua fans and battery-mod controller boards on both, and my GDemu machine has overclocking to 110% and a Robot_retro USB-C PSU.

In short, when I try to use the VM2 on my GDemu machine, the screen on the VM2 just sort of goes into a loop of flashing on and off, and if I do this when on the Dreamcast memory card screen, it looks like the controller is being unplugged and plugged back in over and over again. This is the same on all four controller ports and indeed if I have the VM2 plugged into one slot, the memory card in the other slot doesn't work either. I've tried multiple controllers too; always the same.

After trying a bit of my own troubleshooting on the VM2 and finally running a factory reset, I couldn't find anything wrong with it, so I tried it on my disc-drive Dreamcast (I didn't do this earlier in the process as it took a bit of time to get everything hooked up). Granted, I didn't test it with a game or with any saving or loading, but I started the disc-drive machine up, went to the memory card screen with the VM2 in the controller and everything worked exactly as expected. I was also able to update the clock and date on the VM2 through the option on the Dreamcast.

So it seems the problem is not with my VM2 itself but with its compatability with my GDemu machine. I suspect the issue is to do with the non-stock PSU I'm using, but does that sound likely? Might it be the way I've got my GDemu set up, or something else I haven't considered?

When I get a few minutes I'll try swapping the PSUs around to see if that's what it is, but to be honest I do prefer using the Robot_retro PSU as it makes the machine run cooler. When I had the stock PSU in that machine before, it got pretty damn hot. For what it's worth, I've had no other problems with this Dreamcast since I put this PSU in it, and indeed a previous custom, rechargable back-lit VMU I bought from Chris runs perfectly fine on it. But maybe VM2 takes a bit more power and this PSU doesn't like it? What do you think?

Hi,

Glad that you like your VM2!

The answer to your problem is not the PSU, but the overclocking mod. The VM2 does not support overclocking. This is also the reason that it works fine with your non-overclocked Dreamcast.

Hi Chris, thanks for the lightning-fast reply! And thanks for clarifying that before I did the work to change the PSU over; really appreciate it. Cheers

chrisvcpp wrote: ↑Sun Mar 23, 2025 12:47 pm VM2 GUI new version (1.8.0.0) released

The new version bundles a VMI/VMS (batch) converter, for easily converting existing VMS mini-games or data files into full VMU dumps.

The converter supports both VMI/VMS pair or standalone VMS (mini-game) files

update done

Hope others are coming

[Release] VM2 & USB4Maple Organiser

Info
This software will let you easily setup/manage your sd card for either VM2 or USB4Maple, You can do a variety of things such as:

• Open the folder of selected save.

• Create a vmu with the correct game id for the selected game.

• Delete the selected vmu save.

• Open the selected save in vmu explorer.

• Add your own vmu dump to the sd card with the correct game id for the selected game.

• Backup your sd card.

• Restore your sd card from backup.

• Create new vmu images for every game you have on your gdemu by simply selecting your gdemu sd card.

• Convert a vms/vmi save or vmu game to .VMU (thanks to Chris from dreammods) (For USB4Maple you can simply rename .VMU to .bin)

• Manage VM2 games

There is also a simple gui in the Settings menu for adding to the custom database.

Download
VM2 & USB4Maple Organiser

This is great! Would you consider making a new post in the new VMU forum?

OatBob wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 8:48 am This is great! Would you consider making a new post in the new VMU forum?

done

updated my app to v0.10, make some tweaks to the code and database, everything should be working great now but if anyone has any issues let me know.