Dreamcast-Talk.com

There’s been a lot of response regarding my last post and the issues with my Dreamcast, but unfortunately none of it constructive. To reiterate, im still having these issues after trying my DC with:

•Two different motherboards.
•Pico PSU and stock PSU.
•Noctua fan and stock fan.
•Two different controller boards.
•No SD card extender tape.
•SD card formatted correctly, and reformatted again also using different size and branded cards.
•Original GDEmu is new from Deunan.
•Motherboard power pins cleaned several times.
•Correct power brick and values.

Despite all this testing, I am still having frequent in-game freezing issues and occasional crash back to boot/black screen.

So forgive me if my last post about using foil on the pins seemed obsurd, which i do understand it was, only because it was clearly was a last resort idea, but until there’s a clear resolution, what more is there to do here? Im always open to suggestions from techs and experts who have experience with troubleshooting DCs.

Thanks!

Seems you went through the laundry list of troubleshooting methods. I was one of the first guys to recommend sanding down the PSU pins on the motherboard for people having issues with GDEMU. When you say you cleaned them, did you try that? Oxidization from 20 years prevents the power from getting delivered from the PSU to the GDEMU. I had varying issues with having problems with it. Sometimes it would boot up very slowly at the Dreamcast swirl animation. Sound was super slow as well.

Other times it just would not get past the screen and freeze. Once I cleaned the oxidization from the PSU pins all of my problems with it ceased. I did this on 3 different systems, since I had 2 personally to test with, then a friend traded me a modded console he never used features of he knew I would get better use out of. It also had issues until I sanded the oxidization layer off of the PSU pins on the motherboard.

Also, so you use a micro SD card with an adapter? If so, the adapter itself can be the culprit as well. Sometimes these things get dirty and would need to be cleaned. I had it happen before even being forced to use different adapter.