I finally got around to buying some aftermarket Dreamcast shells from eBay seller hdzoneau. I bought a Gray Skeleton shell reminiscent of the Skeleton Sega Saturn and a Crystal Blue shell. I was surprised at the speed in which they arrived (AUS to USA in a week) and the build quality – I wouldn’t have guessed these were aftermarket shells.
I transplanted my previously modded Sega Dreamcast in the Crystal Blue shell. This particular VA1 Dreamcast is actually my first Dreamcast I bought back in 2001 just around the time of its decline. I still remember borrowing a friend’s burned games and going through a 100 CD-R spindle copying everything over a weekend with my 4x TEAC CD-RW. To go with this new shell, I picked up some new mods; I bought a ReDream PSU from eBay seller rexurepair0 and new GDEMU/Noctua mounts from Laser Bear Industries. This new GDEMU mount is an improvement over the one I bought last year since it doesn’t require any gluing to the top half of the Dreamcast shell. I also swapped the original LED with a blue one to match the new shell. Lastly, I also replaced the thermal pads on the Dreamcast with Fujipoly Extreme 1.5mm.
I also ended up fixing up another VA1 Dreamcast that was from a Goodwill auction I won for $21.50 about 2 years ago – it was a lot of 2 “as is” Dreamcasts, both of which were in poor cosmetic condition but otherwise functional. I fixed up this one with the same mods as my other Dreamcast but with a 5.15B GDEMU clone rather than original. This Dreamcast received a white LED instead to go with the Gray Skeleton shell.
The only mods I’m missing is the famed DCDIGITAL (aka DCHDMI) mod; fortunately I was lucky enough to snag 2 of these with spare flex ribbon cables last week. I’m still waiting for them to arrive but I will try my hand at installing them once I get better soldering equipment.