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.
Replacement Power Supplies
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.
I also looked at the PicoDreamcast, which uses the PicoPSU and an external 12V DC power brick. However, I wanted to avoid the extra bulk of an external power brick. This also ruled out the similar DreamPSU.
Mean Well RPT-6003
Discouraged by my options, I happened across 3DprintRC’s /r/Dreamcast post discussing the near perfect fit of Mean Well’s RPT-6003 power supply in the Dreamcast. This is a modern universal power supply designed by a company well-known for making high quality power supplies, and it provides all the voltages needed by the Dreamcast.
3DprintRC later posted a follow-up showing the RPT-6003 being used by cutting up the original power supply. Unfortunately, my Dreamcast had a different revision of the power supply which did not allow for such a clean cut.
Dreamcast RPT-6003
A populated Dreamcast RPT board.
Dreamcast RPT installed alongside the RPT-6003 in a Dreamcast
I designed the Dreamcast RPT, a small board that interfaces the RPT-6003 with the Dreamcast’s AC connector and power button. In my design I focused on being able to reuse many components already found on the OEM power supply, as well as documenting widely available modern alternatives.1
I had boards manufactured here in Europe with AISLER and they arrived a few days later, looking great! It slotted into the Dreamcast case with no issue and worked the first time. 🥳
I’ve released the board as open hardware under the CERN-OHL-W 2.0 license. I designed it in Horizon EDA, an open source PCB design suite. I’d love to see others take and adapt the project. If you do, let me know what you build!