Sega Dreamcast VGA Mod

If you've ever had a Sega Dreamcast, you know how awesome of a console it was. I love the dreamcast, but I got rid of the TV in my bedroom. Crap. What was I ever to do? Why, hack it open of course! Oh, sure, I could just as easily go out and buy Sega's "VGA box" for about $30 This mod will tell you how (assuming you have some decent soldering skills) to add a vga port to the back of your Dreamcast, for considerably less than the cost of a commercial VGA box which does the exact same thing. No IC's are involved here, just regular components, like capacitors, resistors and diodes. I plugged my Dreamcast into my LCD monitor, and it works like a charm.

Tools Needed:
No. 2 Phillips screwdriver
Wire cutters/strippers
Soldering iron
Dremel + cutting bit (steel bur or cutting wheel works well)

Materials Needed:
3x 220uF capacitors
2x Silicon diodes
2x 4.7Kohm resistors
2x 150ohm resistors
1x Slide or toggle switch
1x Female VGA port
1x 3.5mm stereo audio jack
Solder
Electrical tape

Step 1 Removal of the top cover.

Remove the four screws on the underside of the dreamcast. There will be one in each corner. If you have a modem for your Dreamcast, remove it to expose the 4th screw.

Flip the whole thing right-side up and take off the top panel. Make sure you didn't leave a disc in the drive (I made that mistake several times while troubleshooting).

Comments

[hetsumani]

Thanks for this instructable.
The connector schematics are very useful.

[roryos01]

I suppose the alternative to actually making teh vga connections would be to simply get a vga box, rip it open, and just internalise everything, then it would be a lot quicker

[Kasm279]

Personally I would have just bought the VGA box instead of opening up the dreamcast, but if this works it does. I still need to get a dreamcast though....

[AudioCraZ]

On all the VGA boxes you can buy that I have seen, none of them have had op amps. They were all hard wired to both ends (rca and headphone jack) at the same time.

Other than that, awesome write up. I should really do this, being as I will usually play my dreamcast on a pc monitor, which you have to do because once you start using the VGA output, you can't go back to standard signal again.

[Kurouro]

Cool

[magiccowy]

can you do this with a ps1 or ps2?

[gamemasterful]

I keep having an "Out of Range" message on my monitor, accompanied by khz values that vary from time to time.  Dunno what I'm doing wrong.

[kentsfield]

yah.... Got the same problem here. Also Out of range. But i dont Understand why? Everything is soltered correctly, everything has contact, should work - but No, a f***ing out of range instead.

Great ~_~

[WebDext]

 Are you certain you didn't switch the h/v sync wires? Or bridge them? Do you have access to an oscilloscope to check the waveforms?

[kentsfield]

Hello,

unfortunately I don't have access to an oscilloscope, but I allready solved the Problem! It's because the RGB/AV Switch. I soldered the Cables wrong. I soldered it like this: Position 1: VGA with GND, Position 2: RGB with GND, but when you look @ the schematic, VGA AND RGB must be grounded mit GND!

Now it just works fine ^_^

[WebDext]

This works! I just finished -- holy crap did it take me a long time to get it working. Almost all day today. I ran into problems when I wired it up with the H/V syncs running though the 150ohm resistors like a commenter said.. DON'T DO THAT. Follow the instructions in this instructable carefully and you can succeed. I'll try to follow this post up later with some photos of it running.

Jack

[BlackDeth]

hehehe how funny you have the same game as i do. plus do you know how to get the Browser disc cause i lost mine. do you know where i can get it at?

[nickstewartroc]

For anyone still having problems, heres another one i found
http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21585

[nickstewartroc]

Im very interested in building this for my Dreamcast, can you please let us know what the voltages for the caps are? And what kind of silicon diodes you used? Thanks- Nick

[mothflavour2]

the voltages on the caps are maximum ratings. Since the signals inside most electronics are 5.0V, anything rated for 5V or higher will be suitable.

[nickstewartroc]

thats what i figured, Thanks

[big99]

hi nice work ....I have a request please do not disappoint my hope, I am from Palestinian Territory, I have dreamcast and I want to make Dreamcast VGA Mod I saw the steps , but in the step 6 to last step ,I did not understand something, please till me how do that .....this my emil "[e-mail]"

[atls]

Man, it´s fantastic and the better, it´s works pretty fine, thanks a lot for the tuto :)

[MiKOTRON]

Fantastic mod! One question, can the V-SYNC frequency be changed?

[Weston607]

Cool mod, but im not to handy with a soldering iron. :(

[mothflavour2]

yeah, the solid wire makes it easy to solder, as opposed to stranded wire.

[lifelong-newbie]

But In situation were the wire will be under stress one solid wire is more likely to break than a collection of finer wires like those found in stranded wire.

[mothflavour2]

true, but hopefully an internal mod won't be put under too much stress.

[lifelong-newbie]

Fair enough, I still prefer the braided wire mainly because if i make an error in my soldering and have to sort it out (unsoldering many other wires) the wire im getting at may be put under stress and it could fracture without my knowledge and i won't be able to debug it with much ease. Solid is a fair site easier to solder though.

[manimpz]

I did It! And it works perfectly. There´s about 3 months I´m using it. This project works fine, only sometimes the monitor gets black for a few seconds like if he looses the signal. But it is perfect, and the price is very attractive. Thank You Man

[Dms12444]

It may not be the easiest mod ever, but it sure is cheaper than the VGA box ps:It should work with a CRT monitor.

[geekdude]

i was going to do this for the longest time, but someone convinced me it was easier to get the VGA dongle off of ebay

[manimpz]

Hello Nice Mod But see this layout
http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/dreamcast/images/dricas.gif
Its talking about an IC 74HCT244.
Its dangerous if I don´t use it like in your mod?
Thanks

[slimguy379]

Sonic adventures rocks!!!!!!!!! I wish my Dreamcast didn't have to break!!!!

[Klappstuhl]

Awesome job there! I wish I had seen this mod before I bought a MadCatz VGA Box for the Dreamcast.

[cotton]

compared to new gpus

[pezmanlou]

I see you used ethernet cable. I use that stuff in projects all the time too.

[cotton]

oh but it is probily not the best

[mothflavour2]

probably not the best compared to what?

[cotton]

no ofence but you have to get the rats and there nest out of your dreamcast and it would work better i think lol i am jusk joking

[mothflavour2]

To be honest, there is a bit of signal interference that shows up on the screen. It's a negligible amount, but using ribbon cable to neaten things up, or shielded cable to avoid interference, is definitely preferable to the ratsnest I have in there.

[cotton]

it dosent ave a gpu gpus did not come out whn it was made it is a graphics chipset

[mothflavour2]

That seems like a reasonable assumption, but it's actually false. Sega did actually include a GPU on the Dreamcast. There's a detailed timeline on the topic here: http://www.segatech.com/technical/gpu/index.html
More information about the chip itself is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR.

[!Andrew_Modder!]

:-)

[ranex]

for the ps2 get a component cable and convert it sort of how they do it on this site http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/vgacable.html - and if you do that post what you did