I got a modchipped DC...

[Darkfalz]

I wanted a second (well, third including my brand new boxed one in storage to be opened only in the year 2050 or something) DC to use for VGA on my computer so I didn't have to swap them around, so I picked up one cheap on eBay with no controllers or cords (I have plenty of those)... "Good working condition" it said.

Anyway, when I got it I noticed it was dirty, and the base was especially scratched. Looking at the base I noticed that it had two non-black screws in the base, so obviously someone had opened it at some stage... little did I know how much it had been though.

When I opened it up, I discovered to my shock that practically all the screws inside were missing. No screws securing the GD-ROM to the PCB, and no screws (there are something like 8 normally) securing the PCB to the base!

I also noticed immediately some cosmetic difference in the GD-ROM unit and the controller board. The GD-ROM unit was made by Yamaha instead of Samsung like my other two, and had some other differences (including a screw hole which was in the wrong position, meaning probably designed for a slightly different board). Someone had also fiddled with it because the ribbon connecting the head was badly bent. On the controller board, the battery was a different brand and didn't have a blue seal around it. Controller board was also missing screws, only had 2 instead of 4.

I believe these probably came from a NTSC Dreamcast or something (the unit itself was PAL).

The biggest surprise however was still to come.

I took off the GD-ROM and power board and took out the metal covered PCB section. I took off the top and noticed wires everywhere, connected to a chip in a bit of electrical tape. It was modchipped! As we all know, mod chips are pretty useless on a DC since you can load copies without them. The worst thing was that the wires had been caught BETWEEN the GPU and the GPU heatsink pad when they'd sealed it last! That is INSANE, I'm surprised they didn't melt. The bottom tray was also extremely dirty.

I was pissed about this so sent a nasty email to the guy about all the things I'd found.

Then I started cleaning it inside and out, and I replaced both the GD-ROM and controller board with spares I had from a broken system someone donated to me, and I had kept most of the screws from that system (I wish I had kept all of them, and the case...) but I found another three suitable ones to secure the GD-ROM.

I took the tape off the modchip and applied a better tape and secured it to the board in a different places with the wires well out of the way of the heatsink section.

I sealed everything back up and tried it out. Although I would have much rather prefered a Dreamcast that hadn't been raped and mixed and matched, I decided it wasn't so bad. I found that I could boot the few NTSC games I had (although they only work from power on, they didn't load from the menu) but this wasn't much good on the TV, because the games that had the region code then switched it to 50 Hz after the game loaded. No problems when using this as my VGA DC though, of course.

Although it took most of the replacement parts I have to fix it, it's now a pretty decent refurbished unit that boots NTSC games too. I'm going to sell that different GD-ROM unit and controller board on eBay because I don't like stuff that doesn't match. And I got reimbursed half the cost of the unit from the guy on eBay, so I've only ended up paying $25 for it (AUD, about $19.50 US). After I sell the replacement bits, it should come out even less.

Anyway, that's the story of how I got a modchipped DC.