Sega Dreamcast Portable

Well I did not really keep very good tabs on my first portable project so I don't really know how much i can say about it at this point. I will go over it real quick just so that people can know a little bit more than what I have previously posted. I don't really have many WIP pictures either but I will post what I can. And I would like to thank Family Guy on Benheck for his help and answering some questions I had.

When I first started this project I ordered a Dreamcast from ebay and I was looking for a cheap one (duh) and I found one that was broken, it was a typical controller board fuse problem so I snatched up that dreamcast and got it not too long later. I opened it up to replace the resistor which I had done a few times before and to my disbelief I found that I had gotten the second revision of the board. One without the GD-Rom controller board. At the time I didn't even know that there was one that came without the GD-Rom board but did a little research, and again thanks to Family Guy I learned up on these. Turns out that some people couldn't get homebrew or any boot up discs to work but Family Guy said that he knew a way so if you have one of these Dreamcasts and want to know how maybe get in contact with him.

Anyways here are a couple pics of the Dreamcast.

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From 060826233152

So after I got the board I ordered a Pico PSU as the means of powering everything in my portable. The one I got was the PicoPSU 120W I think that this was a bit overkill though as on the bottom of the Dreamcast it says that its power consumption is only 27 watts but any ways that power supply definitely works and it's very small and was way easy to fit into the case.

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So then came the screen. I used the standard 5" PSone screen. Actually I used the Zenith Xbox Screen but its the same internals. Except for one thing. The zenith screen actually comes with a voltage regulation board.

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I have heard that using this board you can use a 12v power supply but I tried hooking the screen up to the 12v line on the Pico Psu through the regulator board and I got interesting results but it never ended up with me being able to use 12v. I think that some people have used it though but I can't remember the parameters around its use for them.

So then I hooked everything up to make sure that everything was working and sure enough I had no problems.

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But after everything was working I set that all aside to start work on my case. I don't have many pictures of this part but how I made the case was I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of acrylic. Took it home, traced out the pieces that I was going to need for the case on the protective sheet over the acrylic and then used a band saw to cut out the pieces. Many have mistaken my case for being CNC machined so I will take that as a compliment to how I did cutting out the pieces.

After this I traced on the front piece the viewing size of the screen. I drilled a hole in the middle of the area that needed cut out and then cut out the screen with a scroll saw. I took the blade off and then put it through the hole I had drilled and cut the screen out.

After I got all the pieces cut out for the case I put them together. I had originally planned on using epoxy to glue the pieces together and I bought some but was unhappy with the results. ie: yellow cured color, sloppy, mixing the two tubes. So I went a different route and went to the local hobby shop and picked myself up some InstaCure+ as well as some Insta-set. I liked the results much more and it was a more instantaneous setting so that I wouldn't have to wait overnight to continue work on my case. It also produced an extremely strong bond!

So got the case all made and then I needed to start putting the components into the case. I mounted pretty much everything using screws and made my own mounts for all the stuff. To make the mounts I made small squares (.25"x.25" approx.) and stacked them on top of each other until I got the desired height for the part I was mounting. Then I glued them together with the glue and accelerator, drilled a small whole (size depended on the screw), and then I would screw them onto the part I was mounting, throw some glue on the mounts, and placed it in my case so that I wouldn't have to worry about not lining one up properly.

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So that was pretty much it. I got everything mounted and and put together, took it apart again, painted, put everything back in, put on the hinges, and it was done! So here are the results.

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From 060826233152

From 060826233152