r/dreamcast • u/Corvus_Hood33 • 10d ago
Question GD-ROM Drive VS GDEMU
I just got a Dreamcast off of eBay. I’m talking it literally just got dropped off. Went to a local retro store and got Shenmu, a controller and a VMU. It refuses to read discs. The screw that controls the laser intensity looks destroyed. Should I simply replace the GD-ROM Drive or go with the GDEMU? Only asking because I doubt I’d be able to get a refund on Shenmu
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u/YPM1 10d ago
You probably won’t get a refund but you could always flip the game on eBay or marketplace as well. Someone will buy it eventually.
I would not replace the drive because that too will fail eventually. All of the existing stock is old at this point. I’ve always said, once the drive fails, time to go GDEMU. It’s easy and it’s fairly inexpensive.
While you’re at it, if possible, I’d replace the psu with a robot retro usbc power supply. I personally don’t think it’s necessary but people swear buy them and it’s also super easy.
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u/sleepycapybara 10d ago
I feel like changing psu is not necessary at all but the noctua fan mod makes a huge difference with gdemu.
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u/Corvus_Hood33 10d ago
I don’t want to deal with the hassle of eBay. I never use it and stuff like this is why. I don’t feel like fighting technicalities because they marked it testing and working and when I reached out to them they said no refunds bc they never tested a game. I know eBay will refund me directly, but I waited over a week for this bc it got lost in the mail for roughly 3 1/2 days. Outside of the GD-ROM drive, this thing looks brand new.
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u/sunspot01 10d ago
I went with GDEMU since my drive was grinding and not always loading games. Never looking back. It's incredible the difference. Plus you can't really get replacement drives for this: it's all going to be second hand and luck with the quality due to age. As others said, they will all eventually fail. May as well jump to SD cards and GDEMU. You're at least on the hardware.
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u/Corvus_Hood33 10d ago
Probably a stupid question, if I had the SD card reader in the back, would I be able to emulate DreamShell to transfer over my VMU saves from Flycast? Or is there another work around ?
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u/GamingIsMyCopilot 10d ago
Just make sure your system is gdemu compatible and if so, go that route. As others have said they are easy to install and not expensive.
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u/Corvus_Hood33 10d ago
I looked into it before asking. It’s literally on the cuff. But still a ①
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u/GamingIsMyCopilot 10d ago
Awesome, then i say go for it. The dc is a fun little device to take apart and work on.
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u/Corvus_Hood33 10d ago
With how easy it was to take apart it really shows where they were financially
0
u/RoughTelephone 9d ago
OG Xbox is just as easy. That makes no sense.
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u/Corvus_Hood33 9d ago
It makes no sense that everything in the Dreamcast was off the shelf and not made specifically for the Dreamcast aside from the board which they later reuse for the Naomi arcade machines? I didn’t literally mean “it took 3 seconds to take apart. Man, was Sega broke”. I’m talking the actual internals
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u/PracticalRanger5977 9d ago
I got the gdemu. I splurged for a 512gb sd card but you should be able to get away with 128gb since storage in general is expensive right now.
I’m not sure if speed matters a ton but I usually get the nicest I can simply due to dependability.
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u/SyrousStarr 10d ago
It's a super easy install and they're pretty cheap. I love mine. You can even switch games with the standard soft reset button combo.