Dreamcast Schematics, Group Effort?

[WarGames]

I posted this suggestion on dchelp.dcemulation.com, but fackue doesn't seem to be getting much traffic in his forums so I thought I'd post it here as well:


Since I've been tweaking with Dreamcasts for a while, its been necessary to see how the Dreamcast's 'innards' work, by tracing connections and making a schematic. I've had broken Dreamcast's that I spent considerable time trying to repair. Broken traces and blown components are almost always the source of the problem, theres not much else to go wrong besides a short.

For these reasons and more it's very useful to have a schematic to refer to. I have been unable to find any real schematics online, and I think that will be the case for some time. For one person to make a complete schematic of the Dreamcast's multi-layer board would be extremely tedious and difficult. Currently I have a few partial schematics that I used to diagnose problems and detect shorts. I have a significant part of the audio circuitry drawn out, and have some of the power connections. A schematic of the maple bus will be relatively easy to create, which I plan to do at some point. These three parts of the Dreamcast (A/V, PSU, Maple [Controller Ports]) I believe to be the most helpful for people trying to repair their systems or doing mods such as the VGA modification etc.

I was thinking of making digital forms of these schematics with a program like EagleCAD, and/or some JPG's or PS (MS illustrator) files for the community to use as a reference. But if this "Project" is done solely by me progress will be very slow and without people to verify it there could be some possible flaws. So for anybody that would like to see some schematics of the Dreamcast's innards, I WELCOME YOUR HELP!

All you need to do to help with this "Project" is:
-A Multimeter

Just use the multimeter on the resistance setting and select points you believe to be important, and check as many other points on the board as you can to detect a short (0 ohm reading) and theres a connection! Make sure to take note the components' names (written on the board in white) to which your connections are made.
If you want to help but this information doesn't make sense ask a question

For advanced people with electrical knowledge:
You can help out by also determining the values of components, this is a difficult process and risks damage to your Dreamcast but helps give a more detailed schematic.
-If you have access to a device that measures capacitance, inductance and more
-And have a soldering iron and experience with SMT (surface mount technology)

Anyone and everyone is welcome to post partial schematics of any Dreamcast motherboard, peripheral, or other device. Just be sure to note the version of the unit/device and a brief description.

If anybody has partial schematics, or knows a site with schematics, let me know! I'll be posting some schematics in a while if people think they will be useful, I hope some members would be willing to contribute to this project or verify my schematics when they are posted. I won't be too surprised if nobody wants to help out with this lol, it's quite a laborious procedure, but I figured I'd propose it to anyone that may want to help out
thanks!

-peace

[WarGames]

Hey everyone,
I've been working on and off my website for quite a while now and I recently decided to put it on the server for everyone to see. So far I've made some progress with the schematics.

Here is the link to the Index/Homepage to my revamped website:
http://web.vtc.edu/users/cph11120

& just to make it easy for you here is the link the Schematics Section of my site:
http://web.vtc.edu/users/cph11120/Dr...schematics.htm

So far I have begun creating schematics for:

Dreamcast Audio Out
Dreamcast Maple Bus & the
Dreamcast Serial (SCIF) Port


For comments/additions/questions on the schematic section of the site, you can use this thread to post your feedback etc.

For the site in general you can post your comments on the existing forum at dcemulation.com: http://dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtop...st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Note: you can also email me through the email option on the index/homepage.

As the site says, all of the current schematics I've drawn up have been for a North American Dreamcast VA1: http://web.vtc.edu/users/cph11120/Dr...otherboard.jpg

I don't expect to see too much differences in the schematics I've come up with so far [data buses / DAC audio conversion/amplification] in terms of Dreamcast regions/versions however it is a possibility. I do expect to see slight to significant differences in hardware design when I get to the schematics I am planning (like video out, RAM/SH-4/PV2 data i/o, etc.).

I've had basically the same thread over at dcemulation.com for a while and have gotten some interest and there's a good possibility for participation. Most of the people at dcemulation.com, like myself, use North American Dreamcasts...so I'm hoping I can get some people interested with European/Australian Dreamcasts, or any region for that matter.

Hope you find the schematics useful, even though they are not 100% yet. Let me know if you'd like to participate, and feel free to leave comments.

[WarGames]

For those of you who may have been wondering, my Hardware development page has been offline for a while now. The server is going through some changes, hopefully they will be complete soon.

I've slowly started to work toward the G2 bus for trying out some experiments like IDE/ISA Ethernet adapter etc.

I've also been rechecking my SCIF schematic of the Dreamcast motherboard which is the circuitry between the Dreamcast's serial port and the SH-4 pins. The schematic is about 90% complete.

btw, jj1odm has recently used the Dreamcast's serial port to write the BIOS and Flash to an SDCARD!

check it out:
http://f17.aaa.livedoor.jp/~takotako/index.php



UPDATE:
As of Friday the 13th (this morning) the site is now back up. Hopefully all of the server maintenance has finally been completed.