Swapping disk drives

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:06 am

This involves the Dreamcast, but I didn't want to post in the Dreamcast forum because (a) no one seems to look at it and (b) this is still a technical question.

So here's my question:

I want to swap out the GD-ROM drive in my Dreamcast with a laptop cd-rom drive. What kind of drive do I need? Will any IDE drive suffice, or do I need something specific?

project_failure · Post by **project_failure** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:49 am

the gd-rom drive does not use ide, so you will propably have to find another dream cast to swap the drive for.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:42 pm

But I've read that you can swap the GDROM drive with a CDROM drive and then you can boot homebrew on it.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:16 pm

khaag wrote:But I've read that you can swap the GDROM drive with a CDROM drive and then you can boot homebrew on it.

I think the whole drive assembly is swapped with one from a portable CD player, and you just plug the ribbons in (or at least thats what I think people have meant).

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:41 pm

The dreamcast's drive can already read burnt disks, there's no need to swap it out or anything.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 12:30 am

It's screw huge. That's the reason I want to swap it out. I'd like to swap it out for a laptop cd-drive because that will give me a ton of extra room. And I can't think of a way to integrate the existing drive into my laptop design if there is going to be a keyboard. Which there is.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:16 pm

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:45 pm

I just searched Google and nothing, sorry

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:10 pm

khaag wrote:Bump

You no wait 24 hours!!! *slaps khaag across face*

From what I've heard, I think that you do a direct swap of the drive assembly itself, and you plug the laser and that directly into the DC board, you don't use the IDE interface or anything at all.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:01 pm

Elaborate? I don't quite understand what you are getting at...

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:07 pm

khaag wrote:Elaborate? I don't quite understand what you are getting at...

I'll see if I can get some pictures of what I think you need to do, but by no means will they be correct, just an educated guess.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 8:07 pm

Well are you gonna get me those pictures?

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:32 am

Ok well you know how in IDE drives there's a controller board that understands the IDE language? The laser connects directly to that with a ribbon cable. What you need to do I think is take that ribbon cable and connect it right to the socket on the Dreamcast motherboard.

That's the best way I can explain it.

-iam