Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disassembly

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|darc|
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Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disassembly

Post by |darc| »

I couldn't find crap about this thing online except the basics. So I'm going to be doing some more research on it. But first, here's pictures of the hardware:


Top of box:
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Bottom of box:
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Sides of box:
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Open box:
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What appears to be a song guide. There are tons and tons of songs to choose from, but they are not present on the disc it seems, I believe they were all available to download from Sega's online service. I'm talking thousands of songs here. Karaoke in Japan is serious business, and to me I get the impression that this isn't just a Karaoke game.
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Looks like a quick start guide:
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Instruction manual:
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Worked with the Dreameye too, apparently:
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Unboxing further:
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The microphone. A very nice microphone indeed:
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The karaoke addon must be linked to the Dreamcast console via an A/V link cable. You plug your DC into the Karaoke, then plug the Karaoke into your TV.
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Very annoyingly, this link cable only supports composite connections. The disc itself does have the VGA support flag set to ON, and if you boot the console plugged directly into TV skipping the Karaoke AV setup, it boots and seems to work fine, but there's obviously going to be something missing, I don't know if this is just audio (hopefully) or if there's anything added to the video signal. The AV ports on the Karaoke have all of the pins, so from what I'm guessing, one should be able to make a 16-pin passthrough cable and support VGA on this thing without a problem.
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The system, alone and hooked to a DC:
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Disassembly...

4 screws take off the grounding plate:
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Plastic removed from the G2 bus connector:
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3 remaining screws remove the top case. Here's the power passthrough connector:
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Power supply:
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Metal shielding:
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Shielding and power supply removed:
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Mainboard:
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G2 bus connector removed:
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Mainboard removed:
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Underside:
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Topside, close up pics:
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Microphone subboard:
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by LiENUS »

You know removing the case voided the warranty right?
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by pixel »

LiENUS wrote:You know removing the case voided the warranty right?
I'd love to see someone walk into Sega HQ, broken karaoke add-on and warranty in hand.
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by pixel »

This thing is worth the $130+ for the Chicago songs alone!
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by |darc| »

pixel wrote:This thing is worth the $130+ for the Chicago songs alone!
Unfortunately there are no songs on the disc :( Sega has a karaoke network in Japan similar to how modern jukeboxes in bars are networked and have a billion songs to choose from. The Dreamcast Karaoke machine could connect to that service and pick from tons of tracks.... but that server is no longer up so you can't actually even do anything with this anymore.
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by pixel »

Number one project for DCEMU: Reverse engineer a karaoke server!
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by dark2 »

I thought I heard there were a very small handful of songs on the disc itself?

Maybe one could figure out a driver for the unit and make a homebrew guitar amp simulation, using the karaoke mic inputs as an electric guitar input. :wink:
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by |darc| »

dark2 wrote:I thought I heard there were a very small handful of songs on the disc itself?
I've heard this but I've also heard the opposite. I'm not sure as I couldn't get anything to happen while playing with it. It's extremely heavy on the Japanese so I couldn't figure out what I was doing.

When I get some time I should look at the GD-ROM and see; I did dump it but I haven't looked at the files on the disc yet.
dark2 wrote:Maybe one could figure out a driver for the unit and make a homebrew guitar amp simulation, using the karaoke mic inputs as an electric guitar input. :wink:
That would be really cool!
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Re: Karaoke Addon - High Resolution Images including Disasse

Post by Nico0020 »

Ive seen a few of these machines here for pretty cheap. Its a nice little unit, and ascetically even looks quite slick. I did find it strange that the unit itself only connected to a server to play songs and not actual on disc songs. Did it support BBA also, or only 56K?
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