Power Problem?

[fackue]

You have a link?

[Kokujin]

Yeah here http://dcforums.net/index.php?showtopic=22712

[ptr.exe]

You may be lucky if the blown cap has actual visual signs of being blown, ie balck marks around base. Take a look, its not as bad as my DC main board has a blown cap somewhere which stops any visual signals, ive been trying to find it for ages but there are too many.

[NeoGohan]

Did anyone ever find a resolution to this problem? I'm a few months late from the last post lol. My Dreamcast has been like this for the past 2 years and was never able to figure out what was wrong. Please inform me if you found a way to fix it.

[semicolo]

I don't think the dreamcast could be able to detect if a condensator is blown, more likely when the motor starts it drains too much current and the psu shuts off. Did you measure the voltages of the psu ?

[NeoGohan]

I haven't measured the voltages of the psu, but I took out the psu and placed it in a working dreamcast(i took out the working dreamcast's psu, of course) and it runs fine. I haven't tried swapping out the gd-rom units yet. But I'll get to that in a little bit.

UPDATE:
Just swapped the gd-rom drives. Took the good dreamcast's gd-rom unit and placed it in the old dreamcast. Turned it on, and voila~ It runs great. So, I guess the gd-rom unit is dying or something. But I still havent figured out what caused the gd-rom unit to go bad. Anything I should check? I'm not that very knowledgeable with electronics. :X

[semicolo]

maybe there's some mechanical problem preventing the motors to spin, if so it'll call for a lot of current ant it could trigger an auto shutdown.
So check if nothing's jammed.

[ptr.exe]

I don't think the dreamcast could be able to detect if a condensator is blown, more likely when the motor starts it drains too much current and the psu shuts off. Did you measure the voltages of the psu ?

The DC wouldnt 'detect' it as such, but it wouldnt work correctly, it could be the cause of a problem.

The most likely thing is the GD-ROM board is fried, or the spindle motor is dead. You could try replacing the motor but it is really annoying getting it in at the exact same angle for the laser to not skip (take longer to load).

[NeoGohan]

Played with it some more with the lid off.

I start it up with "lid open."
It goes to the system menu.
I close the lid by pressing the black switch in the back, no cd inside.
The motor spins and the laser moves its eye sticks its eye out and back down 3 times. The motor stops spinning after this.
This should be expected I think. This seems like motor is ok, and laser is ok. But not sure, wanted to ask you guys.

While the power is still on, I let go of the black switch to close the lid.
I put a CD in and press the black switch. It spins a quarter turn and stops.
The laser didn't move at all.
This, I didn't expect, I expected it to turn off like it normally would. But it seems like it doesn't even bother to read the cd, and it barely tries to spin the cd when the lid is closed.

Seems like the everytime the laser is trying to read a CD(it seems to be able to read fine without a cd in it), it shuts off the power. Circuit problem?

What do you guys think? Nothing seems to be stuck on the gd-rom unit. I also played with the laser calibration, but that didnt seem to do anything.

Thanks for your input, guys.

[burhancik3]

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