UK (PAL) Dreamcast work in USA?

[vaant]

Hi, next month i'm going to be moving from the UK to live in America. I'm wondering if i could use my PAL Dreamcast in America without having to buy some sort of voltage transformer, I know that the mains voltage in the UK is 240 volts while it's only 110 volts in the USA.

What sort of voltage does a UK Dreamcast need to run? Would i need to buy a transformer or is it universal and will work fine with just a cord?

ALSO I'm all aware about TVs having different signal inputs... but what will i need to get my PAL games to display properly on a regular NTSC TV? Most of my games include a 50/60hz mode option when you start up the game so i assume choosing 60hz would make the game display properly on a normal American TV?

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help

[Christuserloeser]

Oh, tough question...


Regarding the voltage transformer: Well, you could just buy a broken US-NTSC Dreamcast at ebay and replace the EU AC adapter with the one from the US Dreamcast. I did it with my US and JP Dreamcasts and it works flawless.

Regarding the PAL 50/60Hz thing... That's where the problem is I guess. Most NTSC TVs do not work with a PAL input, no matter if it's 60Hz or not.

A solution could be DC-SWAT's Region Changer v1.5:

Just did it back there, works absolutely perfectly.

Whoever wrote this is a fricking genius. Now I can play game without worrying if it's going to run in 50hz or not. Thanks so much!

The only thing I've noticed with this program is that on my European Dreamcast, choosing "NTSC" doesn't actually give you NTSC. It's PAL-60, which still has all the benefits of 60hz, but my HDTV happens to like NTSC more than PAL. Doesn't matter though, because I use VGA for compatible games and RGB SCART for the rest, both of which give me nice RGB video which is ten times better than NTSC or PAL.

For those interested, any owners of PAL Dreamcasts who want NTSC colour instead of PAL colour (I'm talking about the colour system, NOT THE SCAN RATE), then do not bridge R422 - leave it as is.

If you only connect R512 to the +12v contact then run the disc, you will have a Dreamcast that's functionally identical to an American one.

[vaant]

Thanks for replying,

Hmm... it seems bringing the console with me might be more trouble than it's worth... heck what am I saying? I'm going to NEED my Shenmue 1+2 fix sometime .

I wasn't aware that the games with a 60Hz option actually display in PAL 60, i actually don't even know what the difference is ~sigh~ So I'm guessing just using a scart cable (like i do now) to connect it to my TV won't work, heck I don't even know if American TVs take Scart inputs :S

[Christuserloeser]

I think they do take the RGB-Scart input.

Anyway, just buy an American NTSC-Dreamcast and use SWAT's Region Changer to enable support for your EU-PAL games

This program released by SWAT some time ago, allows to change the default region, language and video signal on a Dreamcast console with just some minor hardware modifications.