How is your Dreamcast gaming going on?

[Tanooki]

Do you have a coin slot yet or still the stock battery?

I bought one from this guy, best deal ever and you can even deal down with a best offer, but it's already at $8 shipped and it arrived pretty fast too.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Dreamcast- ... Swxp9W4g3-

Battery clip holder and a new LIR2032 rechargeable battery.


Unscrew the 4 screws to pop the DC top off. Next the front area where the 4 controller ports are is a small rectangular board. Remove the 2 cables/plugs very slowly/carefully and then unscrew that and lift. However works best for you, heat the solder and pry the original battery metal (thin and annoyingly so for me) battery clip out. Clean area, slide new clip in, 3 spots of new solder, pop in battery. Then reverse your steps and button it back up.

Turn on, run system for 2 hours (run some CDs or whatever) and you're set. Ever fails again, no painful surgery just pop n' swap another battery in like 10 years.

--

Anyway last weekend I got lucky with the Dreamcast stuff. I went to the flea I usually wouldn't do this time of year due to weather as I was out there driving by it on the way home. Have known this old man who runs a game/misc stuff shop in there for a long time. Saw he had some DC games, felt bad as they were thrashed. He figured they were ruined, long story short let me have them. Got 6 of them home, happy to report I recovered 5 of them into working order. Cases/games may not look the best on the bottom but I hand resurfaced them using my pinball novus1-2-3 kit.

Happy to find that Bang! Gunship Elite is pretty cool, maximum pool is bland but not bad if you're in the mood, and I'm not sure how I feel about SF Rush 2049 but it's alright so far. Also got Sarge's Heroes and Hydro Thunder which I didn't need (so I stuffed them on ebay for below 1/2 the going rate for someone not picky to play.)

Bang! is pretty fun, it's sort of like starlancer on DC/wing commander but has it's own driven story so you don't have all that pilot yapping and between stage stuff as it's more action oriented which is fine.

[Reprise]

Do any of you guys know if the official vibration pack (I think it was called the jump pack for those of you in NA) takes batteries? When playing the Dreamcast a couple of weeks back I thought to myself "wow, I've never changed the batteries in my vibration pack. I better have a look to see if I have any CR2032s hanging around in case I need to change them soon". I looked at the back of the pack and realised it doesn't look like it takes batteries... So is it just powered by the controller?

[Tanooki]

Jump Pack is powered by the controller, no batteries required (like N64 rumble pak.)

VMU uses batteries, but only to have them unplugged to play the mini games or transfer files off console, the saving itself is just solidly onto a chip.

The only battery stupidity with the system is the system placing a LIR2032 type battery on the board to save the time/date settings.

[CRTGAMER]

Confirm, never seen batteries on any brand Dreamcast vibration pack. I prefer the Madcatz jump pack for the lightup cue when it activates.

True on the memory pack, the battery only needed for the mini LCD "gameboy" games. The beep on power up if I remember right indicates a dead internal battery; gives an audio cue the controller and memory card plugged in properly. Both the startup screen and that beep synonymous to the Dreamcast.

[Tanooki]

Eh it's known, I got a DC days before Christmas. I've had to do the battery upgrade(slot) and replacement in January on mine. Very familiar with the whole battery situation right now, and it reminds me I need to remove the dead cells from my 2 other VMUs, hate to have a rare rupture ruining the thing.

[Reprise]

I have no idea why I ever thought the vibration pack took batteries. Thanks for confirming guys.

The only battery stupidity with the system is the system placing a LIR2032 type battery on the board to save the time/date settings.

Yeah, mine's pretty much dead. And when I say "mine", I mean my latest second hand console, since I'm now on my fourth Dreamcast

It's a shame, because my other three consoles never had a problem with the battery for the date/time.

[RCBH928]

Confirm, never seen batteries on any brand Dreamcast vibration pack. I prefer the Madcatz jump pack for the lightup cue when it activates.

True on the memory pack, the battery only needed for the mini LCD "gameboy" games. The beep on power up if I remember right indicates a dead internal battery; gives an audio cue the controller and memory card plugged in properly. Both the startup screen and that beep synonymous to the Dreamcast.

Does the memory card need battery to work properly?

[Reprise]

Confirm, never seen batteries on any brand Dreamcast vibration pack. I prefer the Madcatz jump pack for the lightup cue when it activates.

True on the memory pack, the battery only needed for the mini LCD "gameboy" games. The beep on power up if I remember right indicates a dead internal battery; gives an audio cue the controller and memory card plugged in properly. Both the startup screen and that beep synonymous to the Dreamcast.

Does the memory card need battery to work properly?

No. Just if you're going to use it like a mini-gameboy to play the odd mini game (e.g. the chao virtual pet thing from Sonic Adventure, or the mini games Power Stone has).

[RCBH928]

There is a myth that if you use CD-R backups on Dreamcast it will abuse the hardware and cut its lifetime short, on the opposite of GD-ROMS. Any one can confirm or deny?

[marurun]

The Dreamcast drive is very noisy and not particularly durable, and cheap CD-Rs may increase seek times. Also, many DC images, especially early ones, are poorly organized, leading to longer seek times and more drive noise. This has lead people to think their Dreamcast is dying early because it is making more noise. There is no real evidence, however, of significant impact on the lifespan of the console. The Dreamcast uses standard, modern (for the time) CD drive parts with custom firmware for reading GD-ROM discs. That means it is as capable of reading CD-Rs as any other drive of that vintage, which is to say it does just fine. If you are that worried about the life of your Dreamcast, use well-organized image files and good CD-Rs, or better yet, don't use the system at all and you'll avoid wear and tear altogether.