Dreamcast V01 Region Free BIOS

Sega Dreamcast VA1, Region Free BIOS Modification 

Hello Flock! 👋🐥🎮🎉

Yesterday, I replaced the BIOS chip on my Sega Dreamcast. I have been wanting to play the Japanese version of Jet Set Radio, so I thought this project would be an incentive for buying it.

I found iFixit's tear-down to be very helpful.

Sega Dreamcast Logic Board Replacement

Step 14 for the GD-ROM drive was not needed with my Dreamcast, it must be a different model. Still great though! 

Now, to get to the motherboard, I had to remove all the parts on top.

 

 

Motherboard:

 

This is the chip to be removed:

 

I carefully clipped the legs of the chip.

 

 Tada!

 

 Now to clean the legs off from the board:

 

This is the new BIOS chip:

 

 Soldered:

 

 Installed:

There were some problems with slow boot-up time and scrambled letters. We found that two of the legs were not quite making contact. I opened it back up and re-soldered them.

 

It works! The boot up screen is really cool. It looks like this:

Dreamcast Developer Bootup

Here it is after a good cleaning, inside out. Looking good!

😎

Thank you! 

電鳥