Sega Dreamcast Region Change Mod

Myrddin

Cracking open another boards; member console, this time it's Atavan_Halen's trust Sega Dreamcast. The mod in question, details what's involved in making some changes, in order to be able to change the consoles normally locked region.

Firstly the unit is disassembled, down to the motherboard. There are two points which much be bridged out in order to the DC to be able to overwrite its own flash memory. You must provide 12v to resitor R512, and in doing so, you gain the ability to write to the flash memory. It's heavily advised to have this bridge broken with an SPDT switch, as some games have the ability to write to flash (a certian part), and if the flash is open for this process, it can become corrupted.

The Sega Dreamcast



Decapitated



The two points with Kynar wire soldered onto them



"Well the thing's gotta have a tail-pipe!"



JAP Sega Rally, normally not playable on a PAL DC



Flash circuit now turned on, I can boot Region Changer 1.5



The options



JAP region & NTSC ouput selected, gone is the PAL boot swirl, replaced by red



With the region now changed, Sega Rally 2 doesn't seem to mind booting up



One word of warning, DO NOT leave the flash circuit turned on when booting a game, and DO NOT toggle it on or off while the console is powered on.

1) With the DC off, turn on the circuit
2) Turn on the DC with the Region Changer disc inside
3) Change to the desired region, & reboot from with the programe
4) When DC has re-booted, turn it off from by the switch.
5) Turn off the flash circuit
6) Turn the DC back on & use as normal.

Atavan - you have been warned! Failure to do as above will likely result in a fancy disc holder

TouchingVirus

Nice mod - but what the story with the tail pipe?, could it not be routed inside or?

witnessmenow

Its for the switch :P

I actually put this into my dreamcast when i was doing the VGA mod, never used it though.

Not to belittle your mod Enternow (I know this is the lower end of the challenging scale out of the mods you've posted!) , but this is a nice mod for someone getting started modding.

The case is easy to dissasemble (no special tools needed)

Its easy soldering

There is plenty of room in the case

There is bit of case modding involved

and best of all Dreamcasts are uber cheap, so not the end of the world if you mess it up!

o1s1n

Don't worry Witnessmenow, this is only a warm up act. For the main show he'll be overclocking my one :pac:

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Nice mod - but what the story with the tail pipe?, could it not be routed inside or?

Yup its a spot for an SPDT switch (when I get my hands on one, I''m outta stock at the mo ). Cool little mod, once the dangers are spelled out regards games writing to flash & the flash getting corrupted if used while switched on etc.

Myrddin

witnessmenow wrote: »

Its for the switch :P

I actually put this into my dreamcast when i was doing the VGA mod, never used it though.

Not to belittle your mod Enternow (I know this is the lower end of the challenging scale out of the mods you've posted!) , but this is a nice mod for someone getting started modding.

The case is easy to dissasemble (no special tools needed)

Its easy soldering

There is plenty of room in the case

There is bit of case modding involved

and best of all Dreamcasts are uber cheap, so not the end of the world if you mess it up!

Aye, agreed. I just said I'd document it while I was at it, eventually adding the link into that cool FAQ thread of yours :cool:

TouchingVirus

witnessmenow wrote: »

Its for the switch :P

Some would say the lack of a switch was a giveaway. Not for me :P

Atavan-Halen

Muchos gracias mon amigo! Remind me to sort you out soon

Time to start going mad on ebay with Jap games

Lex_Diamonds

GAME OVER YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!

talking_walnut

Nice. Brings back some memories. The pictures of it opened reminded me of the time I spilt Ribena into mine (I'm 26 now so should have been well beyond my spilling Ribena age even back then ). Stripped it down, cleaned it with distilled water and alcohol and it was good as new!

Might have to root mine out of the closet for old times sake after this.

Myrddin

Just noticed I had this pic on the camera, may as well put it up for the sake of completion.

Finito :cool: