Dreamcast-Talk.com

Hi everyone!
I own a japanese dreamcast with a gdemu clone (5.15 version) and until now I didn't have any kind of problems with this setup, but suddenly when i turn on the console the dreamcast's boot is very slow, with a strange sound or a still image of the boot bios (or even just black screen with the orange light of the dreamcast weaker than it should be) and when I can access to the dashboard it says that I have to insert a game. I tried to clean the psu pins and the gdrom port (I used wd-40 and white vinegar with a cotton swab and even just a cloth) but it fixes the problem just temporarily, indeed just after 20/30 minutes the console reset or the game crashes and when I turn it on again I have the same situation. Also I even tried with a sd card that I know it works but I have the same result. So what should I do now? Should I buy a dreampsu? I have a spare japanese psu but i live in europe so I don't know if I can use it and at the moment I can't test it.

the problem is related to the overheating of the power supply

DO NOT CLEAN WIYH WD-40, coming from someone who works on stereo equipment from the 70s

Deoxit and isopropyl alcohol is the only proper way to clean electronics

Some basics about the cooling of the dreamcast.
- Try cleaning the power supply, remove the dust only using alcohol and a clean brush or toothbrush.
- Use the dreamcast over a hard surface with enough space at both sides, avoid carpets.
- Make sure the fan is working, you can open the dremcast and turn it on (without touching the tip of wires or component you are not sure about when it's on) and check if the fan is rotating and blowing air.
- check the vents of the console, sometimes dust or pieces of plastic might be obstructing the vents on the sides.
- The heat sinks of the console might not be making good enough contact, but this is a little harder to check than the other options.

Other members of the community might be able to guide you on more advance mantency and repair, I do a lot of repairs, but I'm a little of a messy guy and I like experimenting a little, so it miht be a little irresponsable to give you more advice than that.

*I would personally avoid using anything that is not alcohol on electronics, since some products can leave residue on the system which can give you problems in the future.

EDIT: also, I don't know if the GDEMU might need a little more power or produce a little more heat than the normal drive, I don't really think so since it doesn't even have moving parts, but maybe someone knows a little more about it than me.

Did you swap out your power board, I've heard people having issues with the new power boards being made

Gocha wrote:I don't know if the GDEMU might need a little more power or produce a little more heat than the normal drive...

From what I've been told: the GDEMU doesn't use the 12V line at all so the PSU tends to run that 12V up to almost 14V under no load and generates a bit of extra heat. Solutions to this include just putting a 12V fan in there, sticking a resistor in the line to give it an artificial load to keep the voltage under control, or removing the 12V entirely. Though that also kills the RGB SCART output as that uses 12V.

I just need to stop lurking and get my post count to 5, don't mind me...

Replace the power supply with a PICO PSU and install an SD card mount, your system will run cooler than ever.

bjankins1 wrote:DO NOT CLEAN WIYH WD-40

Deoxit and isopropyl alcohol is the only proper way to clean electronics

Agreed, WD40 is a 'Water Displacer', ideally meant for loosening rusty bolts.

Anyways, remove (ie unsolder) the voltage regulator for the 12v line, which will fix the overheating issue.

Alternatively, completely replace the PSU with a Pico PSU or the ReDream PSU. Just don't buy the DreamPSU, it's junk.

Hi! Thank you everyone for helping me and I'm sorry for replying so late.
Anyway I knew that gdemu could cause overheating isues due to the 12v line, indeed I used the resistor method and I thought that it worked (I stucked it how it is showed in this guide: https://retrogamesultra.com/2019/02/17/ ... and-setup/). By the way, I bought an electronic cleaner that it should help to have a better contact between components (this is what the guy at the store told me), but the situation got worse because now the dreamcast's orange light is weaker than it should be and there is only a black screen. What should I do now? I guess that problem is the power supply and I could buy a pico PSU/redream PSU, but are there sepcific model that I should look out? I mean I've just seen on ebay and aliexpress and it seems that there isn't any difference between them. And I've seen that the dream PSU has a 2.0 revision, is it better than the previous one?

Thanks a lot for your help!

GendoBus wrote:I could buy a pico PSU/redream PSU, but are there sepcific model that I should look out? I mean I've just seen on ebay and aliexpress and it seems that there isn't any difference between them. And I've seen that the dream PSU has a 2.0 revision, is it better than the previous one?

Don't buy the DreamPSU, it has problems.

I got a Redream PSU from this guy on eBay, works perfectly.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303170616893