PDA

View Full Version : Mod ideas



krowstrife
June 20th, 2005, 09:04
I want to do some mods, but am lacking ideas for cases, I was thinking of a boombox for a dc
i also am getting this old laptop for $20 bucks, it ok
an amd 600mhz
196 mb ram
not sure on hdd space or videocrad but i was thinking of am emulation machine and a few old pc games link diablo2 and fall and doom, etc

any ideas,

also i want to do alot of leds for the dc mod and vga port but i dont have any electronical skills, but i bought a used dc for $10 and going to get another for the same price
any help will do

ptr.exe
June 21st, 2005, 18:51
I have no idea about the laptop but i know alot about DC hardware :)

I have no taught electronic skills, so being a noob doesnt matter just buy a cheap soldering iron and practice on some dead circuitry, you'll soon pick it up then you can mod the hell out of your DC :D There are loads of tutorials on soldering and general electronic skills all over the internet and most of it is common sense.

For the VGA port look at the topic under this one, it's a tutorial i wrote with a circuit schematic that only uses really easy to find parts. It's a fairly easy mod once you understand, just ask me for any help if you need it.

For the LED's/other mods go to DevCast (devcast.dcemulation.com) This is the best resource for Dreamcast hardware mods, its tut's are clear and have pics.

Hope that helps.

Morph
June 21st, 2005, 20:01
hey, ptr, it occurred to me you might know what im talking about. Do you know where the voltage regulator that supplies the CPU with power is located?

ptr.exe
June 22nd, 2005, 17:28
Are you thinking of increasing core voltage? i'm guessing for an OC, well i have no idea where its located :p but i will comment;

There really is no actual point, the max OC achieved without increasing core v. is 276Mhz, that is by far enough. However if you wan't to do it just for fun then by all means go ahead but be sure to understand that it aint gonna be easy, if you need help ask Kamjin he's very knowledgeable on this ort of stuff.

Morph
June 22nd, 2005, 18:32
Yeah, my goal is simply to hit 300. not that there is any point to it, I just wanna do it, thats all. Xp besides, after watching the UCM overclock video, I absolutely drool over the idea of adding a comparision of a 300MHz OC.

Oh, and the max OC without increasingthe vcore is actually 286, and that was accomplished by mattthemodder.

ptr.exe
June 23rd, 2005, 17:19
Oh, and the max OC without increasingthe vcore is actually 286, and that was accomplished by mattthemodder.
I apologize, i knew it was one of the dcemulation.com regulars.

You may be able to do 300 without increasing vcore voltage, im sure with the right DC and sufficient cooling and maybe a small amount of hardware hacks on the mobo, you could. Honestly, i'm the wrong person to talk to, go to dcemulation (http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=31&sid=a6bd1de3132916317fadad62b3934158) there are alot of people there who have much more knowledge than me when it comes to overclocking.

Morph
June 23rd, 2005, 17:49
Perhaps, but mostly people who are like "omg thats pointless, i aint helpin. get aids." or something like that

ptr.exe
June 24th, 2005, 17:37
I was gonna say before that you will find more help there, but you will get many pointless responses. I read on dcemulation, you want to make a DC comparible to a PS2? sounds to me like a pointless/brilliant idea!

The PS2 GPU runs at ~150Mhz, i have no experience with DC GPU OC, how high has someone got it? is the 54Mhz generated clock the speed or does it have a multiplier?

EDIT: OK, just bothered to use Google and the DC GPU runs at ~100, so the multiplier is x2, so you're gonna have to introduce a new clock of ~75Mhz that seems like a rather large increase.

Morph
June 26th, 2005, 07:37
That shouldnt be too much trouble. A 66.6MHz oscillator has been subbed in before (122.2MHz) with marvelous success, so I dont think that the extra 30MHz should be that hard to milk. Of course, we are less than 14MHz away from the 300MHz CPU, but stuck by voltage issues, so I guess there is always room for doubt.

btw, found anything about the voltage? I cant seem to locate it anywheres. I would assume a Dreamcast schematic would reveal such, but cannot locate one.

Oh, and if higher clocks are indeed feasable, Im not at all worried. With the way I have it modded now, I have fans and heatsinks on both the SH4 and PVR2, so heat is NOT an issue. :D

ptr.exe
June 26th, 2005, 16:04
Oh, and if higher clocks are indeed feasable, Im not at all worried. With the way I have it modded now, I have fans and heatsinks on both the SH4 and PVR2, so heat is NOT an issue.
lol. another cooling freak :p

I really doubt you'll find pinouts of the DC that specific, but you may find SH-4 pinouts that could be reverse engineered to find the place that produces the voltage on the DC. I thought you said you found that 1.8V is fed into numorous places on the SH-4 and you found where its 'produced' on the mobo, surely increasing that is the key.

EDIT: Also could you post some pics of the cooling/heatsinks on your DC? i'm OCing my DC's CPU to 276 and GPU to 124 so probably need to think about some more cooling :p at the moment i have an extra 40mm fan at the back and thats it.

Morph
June 26th, 2005, 18:06
Will do once I can get a digital camera to use. I actually have my GD-Rom in a completely seperate housing. i took an old non-working Dreamcast, and took the GD-Rom connectors, desoldered them, then soldered them pin for pin with a couple of spliced IDE cables. I effectively made a GD-Rom cable.

And as far as the 1.8v is concerned, I read the SH4 schematic, and the internal power (1.8v) goes in multiple places. However, it is my theory, that it would have been simply too inefficient to have multiple sources for the 1.8v, so Sega probably routed all of those multiple 1.8v threads to a single IC, or w/e it is that is generating the 1.8v.

ptr.exe
June 27th, 2005, 11:38
Did you start a topic on DCemulation.com about it? i remember someone there talking about putting the Gd-Rom assembly in a seperate DC so they would have more internal room for a dev dreamcast.

i had a similar mod, where i just took out the laser and used a longer ffc cable to connect it to the DC and extended the motor wires, was useful but got bored of it so just put it back to normal.

As for the 1.8, it's possible its coming from one source but i wouldnt count on it. You could just do it the long way and check every IC on the mobo for a +1.8V, long process but might be the only way as i doubt you'll find the info otherwise.

Morph
June 28th, 2005, 06:28
Yeah, at dcemu, that was me im pretty sure. I still have the basic diagram od what I did.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v176/Morph777/experiment.png

ptr.exe
June 28th, 2005, 16:37
Yeah, that's the one, must have been a bitch to solder all those wires, its like 50 pins isnt it?

I might take an interest in finding this 1.8V i have a spare DC mobo that i don't care about, so i'll mess about with that trying to find something.

Morph
June 29th, 2005, 06:37
ok, cool. thanx man. and eah, it was a royal pain to solder. i used 2 seperate cables that i diced, and each took me about 4 hours to complete correctly. over the course of 2 days. But its not hard-soldered to the PCB, so now I got a GD-Rom CABLE I can do what I want with. And if wanted I could just swap back in the GD-Rom no problem.