Dreamcast Blackout

[ORTA]

the problem occurred when I was playing DC and it blacked out on me I checked all the connections audio, video and power cords but nothing works the weird thing is the orange triangle power indicator is lit. I don't think the power supply is the culprit any help?  :blink:  

[Martin]

I made a topic about this ages ago and no-one helped.
But anyway, I realised my dreamcast that does this makes a rattling noise if I move it about.
It just started doing it one day while I was playing SA2 on the green hill zone and I was like  :unsure:  

[Lost Monkey]

the problem occurred when I was playing DC and it blacked out on me I checked all the connections audio, video and power cords but nothing works the weird thing is the orange triangle power indicator is lit. I don't think the power supply is the culprit any help?  :blink:

Does the disc spin? Is the lazer trying to access the disc at all?

Or is it all just dead with a black screen?  - If it is this, I had a problem with a DC like that and I found that swapping out the drive did nothing, swapping out the power supply did nothing and swapping out the controller port did nothing....  I ended up ditching it for a new one under the assumption that something on the mobo was baaaaad.
 

[kendrick]

This is just my guess based on what little information there is... The Dreamcast is like the Xbox in that some of the video output pins won't work unless specific input pins are grounded. I don't know for certain, but I think that if RGB or VGA modes are activated, this causes normal composite or S-video output to be turned off. So based on your description, I would guess that some of the pins on the DC video connector are shorted to ground, causing it to output only RGB or VGA no matter what cord you actually have connected. I would be more confident in this guess if you continued to get audio output as well.

If you have the power and the desire to troubleshoot this beast, check http://www.gamesx.com/avpinouts/dricas.htm and look at the condition of pins 6 and 7 on your connector. Hope that points you in the right direction.

-KKC, who's about to put a Dreamcast store kiosk in his house for no reason that he can discern. Hm.

[atom]

I had a similiar problem once, It was a little bit after dissasembling the unit. Turns out the heat plates werent hitting the Chips too well and the system was overheating. I just did some adjusting. This may or may not help you, but I hope it did in some way.

[ORTA]

Thanks for the info guys I'll post later if there's an improvement thanks again