Dreamcast-Talk.com

I bought a NTSC VA1 HKT-3020 off eBay. I had no games so I burned some disks (MVC2, Sonic Adventure and Illbleed). Illbleed wouldn't play beyond a couple cutscenes, sonic had issues with the opening video and would freeze in the first level. It would freeze in the same spot also. MVC2 would freeze after a couple matches. So I decided to buy a GDEMU. I used ROMs from CDRomance. It was cheaper to buy a MicroSD card so I bought a Sandisk 512 GB card. Formated it and installed openmenu. I used a repos off of Archive.org for the GDI files. I had the exact same issues that I had with burned disks. Exact same. I tried it with a regular SD card but it made no difference. Which led me to think it's a console it.

So I bought a DreamPSU in an attempt to see if it would fix it. It had the same issues, so I cleaned the pins. I've taken the heat sink off and the thermal pads on the board seem to be okay on the CPU and underneath. The battery is dead but it would seem odd that it would cause issues. So I decided to buy a retail copy of PSO. Before putting the laser drive back in, I tested it in the GDEMU. It froze post character creation during the initial loading screen. I put the laser drive back in and it had the same issue. The issue seems to occur consistently during loading screens when loading the actual gameplay.

The crash is consistent in games like Sonic Adventure, Illbleed, Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia and PSO. However, some games like Crazy Taxi, Monster truck game, RE3/RE:CV and DAO2 have no issues loading and playing. So I'm left perplexed, i could try every single game in the dreamcast library to figure out which ones work and which one don't but that seems redundant.

I know that its not the ROMs are the retail disks have same issues. I'm left with little options besides recapping the motherboard or buying a new unit. Any advice would be nice.

What does the screen look like during crash?
What does the system sound like during crash?

My bet is maybe a bad memory unit or like you said a blown capacitor that is crashing once it’s charged.

The crash depends on the loading screen. Phantasy Star crashes during the load screen so it's just music and the spacey background. During Illbleed it's a reset to Bios. Sonic Adventure 2 is a black screen freeze that goes nowhere, same with Skies of Arcadia after its done it's splash screen.

If there is a graphic load screen, that's what it freezes on. If it's a black screen load screen, it freezes on it.

I've tried removing the VMU and that changed nothing. You say a bad memory unit, are you referring to a chip on the board? Which capacitor would I change, or should I do a full recap. I can't say I've ever done recapping but I know there are videos online that show tutorials.

Thanks for the response.

Yes there are memory chips on board that I think would crash out your DC if they were bad or came loose.

If the processor inside is over voltaged as well it could overheat and shut off.
It sounds like short circuit safeguarding to me.

How is the power supplied to the unit? Does the behavior changed when plugged directly into a good wall outlet?

Behavior remains unchanged while plugged into the wall. None of the SRAM chips appeared to be loose. I think I might just have to recap the motherboard at this point

What are some common troubleshooting steps for addressing freezing issues in Dreamcast consoles, particularly when both burned discs and GDEMU setups exhibit the same problems?