Dreamcast toubles! HALP

Local H Jay

so i was lucky enough to find a dreamcast, controller, and a VMU at a yard sale today for $4.
i was so pumped i bought it and ran home.
now, i have a copy of marvel vs. capcom for it, and after playing it ONCE, with no issues, it now refuses to load any discs. MvC is the only game i have right now, but it won't play regular CDs either.

any help here? i know it's pretty much impossible to get it fixed now, but is there anything i can do?
any help appreciated.

Bartholamue

Looks like the GD-ROM drive needs to be re-aligned. There's a lot of risk to do that, as you have to take the whole motherboard out of the system and find a screw to twist it. There are tutorials online for that.

Seaborn111

**EDIT I have only seen ^ that method attempted two times, and each failed. just sayin.

that exact same thing happened to my launch dreamcast about 2 years ago.

it's fried. I contacted Sega, they said it's a known issue with the first 6 months or so of units the cd drive gets cooked. To this day i can still get it to boot a game EVERY ONCE in awhile. but it's random as hell.

at the time sega told me i could have it repaired for 80 dollars. i opted out of that offer.

Bartholamue

Hence why I said that it was a huge risk.

I don't even know if Sega or Sega-Parts.com fixes them anymore. Oh yeah, it seems like they do: http://www.leftcoastgames.com/console_repair.php?osCsid=2beef81c8710b085af9c0988527b0215

Local H Jay

snap, 55 bucks... welll, i suppose it's worth it.
i'll just wait until i find more games for it.

suppose i tried the tutorials found on youtube, would it fix my issue or am i better off not breaking my dreamcast open (i wouldn't be crushed if it broke MORE since it is already broken)

PeregrineFalcon

The GD-ROM screw trick is changing the laser power, which is why you have to be very very careful when you do it, and for fuck's sake use a multimeter people, it's like ten bucks.

Madpanda

You can also try taking the case off and VERY CAREFULLY detaching and re-attaching the ribbon cable from the GD rom to the motherboard. Look for tutorials on line. I had to do this every year or so when I still played my dreamcast a lot.

ElJeffe

Dismantling electronics and reassembling them is really easy to do if you have any degree of mechanical aptitude and know how to be careful. The parts are not delicate snowflakes. Try to ground yourself before dicking around with it, and don't, like, smudge peanut butter on the lenses, or anything, and you should be fine.

I've taken apart most of the systems I've owned for shits and giggles, and never had any problems. Tweaking the laser power, of course, is a different story, as that can actually fry something. But if you have a multimeter and know how to use it, you should be fine. If you're thinking "What's a multi-meter? What do you mean 'laser power'?" then leave it the hell alone.

Local H Jay

yeah, i might want to do some research first. okay, thanks duders!