A modern, universal, Dreamcast power supply
I have fond memories of playing the Dreamcast growing up, of many hours trying to figure out Ecco the Dolphin in the days before ubiquitous home internet. A few years ago I picked up a Dreamcast and installed an optical disc emulator (ODE), and had a good time revisiting old games from my childhood. As a huge fan of Jet Set Radio Future on the original Xbox, it was fun to play Jet Grind Radio for the first time.
When I moved to the Netherlands I shipped over my consoles, including the Dreamcast. Unlike most of my other consoles, the Dreamcast used an internal power supply that was region-specific. As I had a North American console, it was expecting 120V while the power system in the Netherlands is 240V.
For convenience I didn’t want the bulk of a step-down converter whenever and wherever I wanted to play Dreamcast games. So I set out to replace the power supply instead.
At first I looked at replacing the power supply with a SEGA OEM power supply for the European region. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a power supply on its own on eBay or the Dutch auction website Marktplaats, nor a “for parts” Dreamcast. Most of my options were system bundles, which made this approach uneconomical since I’d still need to replace the capacitors on the power supply.
