Dreamcast woes! Won't boot correctly?

Soldato
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Hi there, just wondering if anyone had seen a similar issue to this on the Dreamcast.

I just plugged mine in for the first time in 2 years to see if it worked.
It came up with the Dreamcast logo immediately, this in itself is weird. It should play the familiar sound and animate the creation of the logo.

It boots to the menu and seems fine but it just wont boot any games.
The discs will spin but not do anything with them.
Tried with a good few games but nothing is working. :(

Is it fubared?
 
have you tried cleaning the laser eye.

If i remember DC's also had a problem were dust build in the power connector caused problems. So giving that a blast of air/clean might help.


worth a try especially if its been sitting for 2 years
 
Mine did this (back when i still had it).
All it turned out to be was the laser unit had poped up slightly on the rails, i pushed gently down on it and it clicked back into place.
Worked perfectly for another couple of years (in the end i sold it, stupid me).
 
I'll give these a go, I just couldn't understand why the boot would be different.
(Immediate Dreamcast logo rather than sound and animation)

EDIT: God damn, the new "try this" fix is to clear the internal flash memory. I don't have any tools with me so I guess I'll just leave it for a few days unplugged.
It could have been a good Sunday, MSR and Rez all the way. :(
 
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Does is start to read a disk and the crash back to the desktop or just not read it? If it starts to read them one solution that strangely works is to not close the lid of the cd rom. Instead just put some on the lid to keep it from opening. No idea why it works but it worked for mine.
 
Had this problem & as silly as it sounds, turning the Dreamcast onto its top, so cd lid is on the bottom, fixes it most of the time anyway.

I know it is a completely silly idea but it works. Been using mine like this for about 5 years now & no problems.
 
Used to work with the playstation (turning it upside down or on it's side).

ok naughty question, are the games all retail? If not some of them may have required a boot disc
 
Had this problem & as silly as it sounds, turning the Dreamcast onto its top, so cd lid is on the bottom, fixes it most of the time anyway.

I considered this but didn't do it.
I had to run my launch playstation upside down for pretty much it's entire life... :D

To the "naughty games" question...
I've got a couple *cough*Ikaruga/Chaos Field*cough* who doesn't?
The one's I'm trying are all retail though. Sonic Adventure, MSR, Res Evil, etc...

It doesn't even attempt to read the games, GDR spinds but nothing happens. I suppose it does all point to a dodgy laser, dunno why it would skip the boot logo animation though.
Curse you Dreamcast! You were the reliable one!
 
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Dreamcasts can take some stick i'll give it that for sure. Nothing like the consoles nowadays that'll mess up if you blink at them (sarcastic)

Maybe a change of laser will do it some good if not you can pick them up fairly cheap from elsewhere, got mine from the blue highstreet store fairly cheap.
 
Hi mate, i had this where my DC stopped reading anything. Would boot to the Dash fine. It turned out the laser needed tweaking slighlty. There is a little pot dial that you need to turn. There is a guide on youtube that shows you exactly what to do. took about 5 mins and it read discs straight away after that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTgpWACBYYw
 
Cheers for that link, got back to the flat with the stricken DC and tried it tonight, seemed to do the trick. :D
Been on Code Veronica all night, such a clumsy control system, a chore to play at times! *gets coat*
 
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