Now that I actually have something to work with...

[Kevin Beckman]

I recently bought 2 broken dreamcasts on Ebay. According to the seller both boot up fine but can't load disks. When I received the package a few days ago, however, one of them was actually in perfect working order. Well hurray for me. Anyways I opened up the other one last night and discovered that the ribbon that runs from the laser assembly to the PCB had a tear in it.

That's actually a relief to me because I had this crazy idea. Instaed of re-attaching the GD-Rom laser assembly I would make a custom USB port to attach pen drives and external HDDs. Now I'm not really sure how feasible this is but I thought it would be worth a try.

[mankrip]

Hmm... Good luck .

[emptythought]

Interesting.

Good luck!

[Kevin Beckman]

I don't suppose anyone here knows what each connector on the ribbon is for, do they?

[emptythought]

Maybe?

http://www.fuzzymuzzle.com/Bitmaster/CD_ROM_Port.htm

EDIT: I think I read you wrong.

[Calavera]

Let us know how that turns out!

[Kevin Beckman]

I took some pictures to better explain what part I'm talking about.

If the pinouts aren't readily available what the best way for figuring it out myself?

[BB Hood]

yea, I kinda thought of this alittle ago because of someone doing the samething for GC. I cant do any hardware stuff so I cant do it but im glad someone has started on this.

Here is a link to the GC one if anybody is interested(It hasnt been released but is being worked on): http://www.tehskeen.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5421

[kohan69]

crazy idea are great, but with infinite luck, you will never make a usb adapter, sorry.

take the good cable out and try it out in the broken DC