Dreamcast-Talk.com

Are all DC GD rom drives interchangable?

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No, there are at least two versions. My VA0 and VA1 definitely use different drives.

They are interchangeable though, so yes. There's a model made by Yamaha and another made by Samsung. The Yamaha version was supplied with early Dreamcasts (Japanese VA0) and is more reliable than Samsung's.

There are at least 3 non-interchangable versions to speak of...

Most Model 1 consoles (in my experience) have a 3.3v drive, which might be from a couple of different manufacturers. These should be all interchangeable as far as I know (just make sure the drive actually says "3.3V" on the metal part on the bottom right corner -- it's in fairly large print, see the picture below).
There are also consoles (model 0 and some model 1, possibly?) that have 5V drives. These look pretty much the same as the 3.3v ones, but they are not interchangeable. I don't recall if these say 5V on them or not, because it's been a while since I opened up my model 0 console...

Finally, some later consoles (Model 2 ones) have a much lighter GD-ROM module. These drives do not have an on-board controller like the other models because the GD-ROM's controller hardware was integrated into the motherboard of these consoles. These are also non-interchangeable with any other model of the system, quite obviously.

I'll try to grab pictures of the 5V drive and the later drive sometime, if I can find them in my collection of consoles...

Thanks for the info. Would like to see that 5v drive one day, if you get the chance.

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Well, I thought they were all interchangeable, never read anything otherwise, but if BlueCrab says so

Bring wrote:Thanks for the info. Would like to see that 5v drive one day, if you get the chance.

I've gotta find the correct box in storage first... Once I get a chance to do that, I'll be happy to post a picture.

Since this is something I'm interested in as well, could this be the 5V drive? Although it doesn't say 5V, I opened up the unit and the PCB is definitely a different design from the 3.3V versions I've seen so far, and this is one of the earlier Japanese DCs from 1998, so unless the previous owners swapped the drive, I assume this is a 5V drive.

So, the 3.3V and the 5V drives aren't interchangeable?

Well, that is certainly a Yamaha drive. Also, since it doesn't say 3.3v, I'd presume it to be 5v. Plus, based on your statement of it being from 1998, I'd presume it to be a model 0 Dreamcast, which is where the 5v drives would normally be.

I'd stay away from interchanging drives between that console and any with 3.3v drives. The voltages won't be correct and will probably damage the drives (although, it may not be immediate). Heck, even the GD-ROM emulation devices won't work properly on those consoles, due to the difference in voltages (see here for a statement from the creator of the original GDEMU on that).

Thanks for the pictures of the drive though, since I never got mine out of storage to take pictures of it.

Cool. Just a little more info, the model number on its bottom is 670-13748D with T. TKR as the manufacturer, which according to this site definitely is one of the earliest DC types: http://users.skynet.be/t_chan/dc/mylist ... asts_japan