Sega Dreamcast trimming

[gman]

I've noticed that the dreamcast has been neglected in modding for a while and there aren't any dreamcast trimming guides that I know of. About a month ago, I picked up an untested dreamcast for $5. I have no av cable, power cable, or game to play it so I might as well call it dead. I just opened it today to get a good look at the board. It's one of the 2 layer boards(i think) because it has the daughter board so that is good for me. I already started ripping off all of the components and I'm goingto sand the board to get a good look at the traces and see what can be cut off. I already removed all of the parts on the top off the board and I'm working on the bottom of the board now. Pics later tonight maybe!

 

[gman]

Here's a sneak peak

 

[gman]

Possible Trims:

The red trim requires no rewiring any traces I'm pretty sure. The purple trim requires about 20 or so traces rewired and a few components, but nothing too crazy yet. The yellow trim requires a significant amount of components and traces rewired, but it might still be possible.

Sooo... who wants to do the blue trim first? lol. it fits in a psp case.

I got the bottom of the board all sanded already and the top is half way done

 

[samjc3]

It doesn't look like the blue cut is possible to me. You'd be cutting off some of the secondary memory and the GDRom decoder.

Also, these might help you.

 

[gman]

It doesn't look like the blue cut is possible to me. You'd be cutting off some of the secondary memory and the GDRom decoder.

Also, these might help you.

Lol the blue cut was just a joke.

 

[samjc3]

Lol the blue cut was just a joke.

Sure, but its not much more extreme than what been accomplished on the gamecube or the n64. lestways in terms of size reduction. Yellow looks feasible, but it seems kinda silly to cut anything other than a rev 02.

 

[Abyss]

Is it even possible to run a Dreamcast without a disc drive? I know there's SD loading, but it requires the disc to boot and isn't all that reliable at times.

Either way, this looks promising and I'm excited to see one of my favorite systems getting attention.

 

[gman]

Is it even possible to run a Dreamcast without a disc drive? I know there's SD loading, but it requires the disc to boot and isn't all that reliable at times.

Either way, this looks promising and I'm excited to see one of my favorite systems getting attention.

Yes there is sd loading which is cool but i hear some games are pretty bad. I know one guy is trying to run it without the dd but i'm gonna consider it not possible right now

 

[Kickback]

It's somewhat possible, not so practical, but baby steps gotta be taken to achieve these sorts of things, it's good if you live in PAL-Land because every Dreamcast i've had gets *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ed up disc drives after a short while.

 

[djstevo]

Isn't there other disc-drives that can replace the bad Dreamcast drives with a Dreamcast firmware flash? I thought I read that somewhere I'll have a look. :/

 

[gman]

I got a bunch of great pics of the board today! They were taken with a professional camera so I can zoom in very far without it getting too blurry!

Get ready for some epic re-wiring diagrams!!!

Here's a sneak peak

 

[gman]

Traced back the traces on the left side of the board to the farthest spot. The blue dot can be a little hard to see though. All I have to say is that the dreamcast board is complicated for sure.