The GDROM drive in the Dreamcast in my arcade cabinet is sometimes making unhealthy squeaking noises. That made me think about that when the GDROM eventually dies the Dreamcast is pretty much useless – and getting spare parts will continue getting harder.
Recently I got a new found interest in electronics after realizing what you can do nowadays with FPGAs and microcontrollers. I think it all started when I read about the Minimig – awesome project!
So I started toying around with the idea of replacing the GDROM drive with something else – a hard drive, connection to a PC or maybe a flash card. I did some googling and realized I wasn’t alone with that idea. A good thing is that the gdrom electronics are on a separate board which connects to the Dreamcast motherboard. Therefore it should be easy to replace at least physically.
Initially I thought the gdrom used some kind of scsi communication but others have already done some digging in this area and the gdrom board actually contains an IDE controller chip! That pretty much settled it. Problem is that normal IDE cables have 40 pins but the connector in Dreamcast is a 50 pin one. Since there are no other wires going to the drive module some of them must be power lines.
So I need some extra Dreamcasts that I can hack – I don’t want to risk breaking the ones I already got! I got some extras off eBay the other day. They all worked fine – except one that died when I tried booting a cd! It blew a fuse on the motherboard – I think there is something wrong with the gdrom drive – the laser sled was parked all the way at the top which is not normal..A much bigger problem surfaced today! I opened one of the Dreamcasts and realized it was different to all the ones I’ve seen before – including the ones I have seen on the net: it has no gdrom controller board! That has been integrated on the motherboard – the connector is gone and only wires controlling the drive motor is left!! This is not hacker friendly anymore! So I guess Sega did some cost reducing. That Dreamcast was produced in november 2000.. I don’t know when they started doing that – somewhere between december 1999 and november 2000 apparently. I have yet to open the last machine I bought for hacking purposes but I’m hoping it’s an older model!
The plan now is to try to find a place to buy the gdrom connectors. That is gonna be a little bit tricky, but at least I can now get the proper measurements. I might end up getting something that is somewhat similar and then hacking them up so they fit. When that is done I need to build a board that allows the drive to function normally and at the same time allow for me to snoop the communication going on.
Great project! I look forward to hear more about it. I hope you succeed and when/if you do you must make one for me..
excelente yo tambien estoy intentando lo mismo y aun no he tenido exito, seria fantastico conectar una unidad de dvd o un disco duro en nuestra dc, DREAMCAST VIVE.
This is a little off of the topic, but I have been looking EVERYWHERE for the motherboard you have (the one without the whole drive assembly. Would you be willing to sell it to me? I can pay through paypal. I’m making a portable dreamcast and would rather not have to extend all of the wires for the GD rom drive, this would make life exceedingly simpler, and my project smaller. You can reach me at Trstn12@comcast.net. Either way your project looks great!
Hi, very nice project. I wish you good luck.
Something like what has been done on the Wii might fit:
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/22/new-wii-drive-hardware-emulation/
Wow that Wii project is pretty cool!
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to track those GD-ROM connectors down. I might have to gut a DC to get them..
Hi there,
This is precisly what I wanted to do with my dreamcast. I want to mount a hdd on it.
At the moment I’m doing quite some research of it.
Have you made any progress? I am also trying to interface an IDE HDD into my DC to replace the GD-ROM. once I accomplish this I will use that knowledge to put another HDD into my portable dreamcast with all my games. I plan to basically do the same thing with the HDD as I have done with many “Multi-Game” disks i’ve created. (many game files on one CD seperately booted from a simple HTML page linked to their bootable file [uses the DC web browser at boot to select game]) this would eliminate my need to carry like 200 CDs all over with my Portable DC and then it’d be complete! battery powered, VGA quality, no CDs, internal music player, maybe a little video player mod too, and DONE! the ultimate portable dreamcast evar!!! XD
P.S. – after many weeks of non-stop googling i discovered this little jewel, as i’m relatively new to electrical engineering i dont exactly understand it all but…. heres a link….
http://web.archive.org/web/20070127184121/http://www.syncscroller.net/dc/dc-ide.html
Just click the circut diagram to see what i mean
Sadly no.. still have no luck with the connectors. I’m thinking about maybe using a Reprap to make some connectors. Also a friend of mine got the idea of trying to emulate the drive on an analogue level – bypassing the connectors completely and making a solution that would work on all Dreamcasts. I’m not sure if it is easier or harder that way..
I’ve seen that link before I think – it looks promising but that circuit is meant to connect to the expansion port (ex. where the modem is connected) and not the GDROM connector.
I’ve have not given up on the idea yet