what you’ll need to begin
a broken dreamcast
a smokey amplifier ($30 or so from this place)
basic toolset with screwdrivers to take apart the dreamcast
duct tape and super glue
a guitar and amp cable to test it out
time and patience
9V battery
allright cowboy, so the reason why I did this? well my poor dreamcast stopped reading discs and i wanted to play my games so we had a falling out. it’s really a shame. so i decided i’d turn it into a portable guitar amp. it’s pretty simple to do this, so just follow along.
removing the guts
begin by unscrewing the shell of the dreamcast to seperate the lid from the bottom. then swat your cat away. you’ll now be able to unplug some stuff like your cd-rom drive and modem (by the way, try starting up your dreamcast with no cd-rom one last time…oooooh). rip those out and start unscrewing everything until you have something like this left:
with the guts removed and a beautiful shell leftover, we’re ready to start putting stuff together.
putting together the pieces
now grab your smokey amplifier and rip it out of the box it’s contained in. after some rough cutting, stabbing, ripping, and poking, you’ll have 2 input jacks, wires, a 1 watt speaker, and a 9V battery hookup all still together. if you tore anything, just twist the wires back together or solder it. whichever you prefer. now throw it all in the dreamcast and get your tape out. where the fan used to be on the right hand side, you’ll see slots for the air to exit out of. place your speaker right up against it and tape it there. run the 9V battery and it’s wires to the middle of the dreamcast and tape the battery down as well as the wires. then take the 2 input jacks and shove them through controller ports B and C. it takes some wiggling but eventually they’ll give in. apply a little super glue to keep these in place and you’re almost done. after all the above, it should look like this somewhat:
re-assemble and rock
Ok, almost there. now go ahead and test it out by plugging the guitar into the B controller port and if you get sound, you’re ready to rock. you’ll wanna put the top back on with screws or superglue. when you need to change the battery, just open the cd cover and replace the battery. that’s it. you’re ready to rock you rockstar. you can view more pictures here.
and for the record, this dreamcast was broken and did not work anymore
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