How to clean your Dreamcast
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------First off find one of those CD player cleaner dics and run that in the dreamcast...no dont play the first track over and over to clean it or whatever just open the dreamcast lid put the disc in close the lid let the disc get detected and repeat so the bristels hit the lense repeadedly.

Then get a Q-Tip....those ear cleaner thingies....and run that over the lense lightly and then roughly...not TOO roughly...your doing it too rough when the lense goes all the way down into the dreamcast

now take a paper towel...more than one actually, and some windex (or some other glass cleaner) and put windex on the paper towels and clean every possible nook and cranny of the dreamcast with the paper towel, where the disc goes AND the outside...now take some dry paper towels and dry it off...your Dreamcast should now look shiny new

make sure to take out the modem and clean in there too!! although it doesnt usually get dirty in there but it cant hurt it to be clean hehe

no for the controllers (yep you can clean the controllers while you wait for the Dreamcast to dry entrely)

do the same thing with the windex and paper towels and make sure to get all parts of the joystick and buttons you can movie the joystick in all directtions to reveal more of the ball-shaped part the stick is on

now get some tookpicks to clean out the letters in the buttons and the cracks on the side of the controllers where the top and bottom half of the plastic meet and you should be able to get any dirt out of the controller this way.

now get some windex and cotton balls and clean the inside of the controller plugs using the cotton ball and clean teh outside too...you will be surprised how much crap comes out of these hehe if you want you can do this on the plugs on teh Dreamcast where you plug these in but these usually stay pretty clean

Now for the VMUs/Other controller accesories

get more windex and paper towels (god i love windex hehe ) and use that to clean teh screens on the VMUs and all other areas...dry it off with the dry paper towels...

for teh contacts i take more Q-Tips and pick some of the cottoney stuff off to make the ends smaller to they will fit and then i spray windex on then and then dry it with another Q-Tip

do the same with Rumble Packs/etc. except theres no screen but use your windex and paper towels damnit!!! lol

Now for lightguns!

go over it with your paper towels and windex again (this sounds like a big windex ad buy now i know but its very useful!!!) and then use the same for teh glass lense at the end!! and then get the toothpicks out again and clean all the nooks and crannys like you did with teh controllers and use the same method you used for the controller plugs to clean the light gun plugs

use the same methods to clean all your cables and such too that i mentioned above...those usually dont get too dirty but they can hehe

VGA boxes

pretty much just go over it with more windex and towels....you should be pretty good at it by now hehe so i wont go into detail

now DO NOT play your dreamcast for a couple hours (its really hard to survive without it i know ) and then it should be working good as new

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Niiice Stuff.. I'll be using this guide very soon for my own dreamcast. 0_o

Very detailed. good stuff

great guide very detailed ive been needing this for my controller

hey wow thanks i didnt know my guide would be so appreciated!!

I used this guied about 2 weeks ago, it's pretty good.

ahh i found something else out while cleaning my DC...

if you want to clean the crevices in your controller (you know, the big round circle one) or in the DC, Pipe cleaners work very very well as they bend to the shape and you just move it back and forth and it gets pretty much everything They also work well in other places

Dont forget the gently wipe the white prongs protuding from the mainboard,cleaning these will help avoid the dreaded Reset/reboting problem you may expericance,often leading to deleted or corrupted save games.

good idea, i didnt include that part because usually it has to be a REALLY dirty DC for that to happen, that was happening to a used one i bought, hehe wait till you hear the story about it

i swear this is true...

so anyway, i was in the mall and i bought a DC game (which means i ended up with another DC, it was a 30 dollar game, a DC is 30 dollars, and you get a free game, so i always bought a DC and got the 30 dollar game free)

So i take this DC home and notice its dirty as hell, it has like food and bug eggs and crap all over the thing, it was really gross, so i was cleaning the heck outta the DC, internal and external, and it was finally clean

So im playing it making sure it works and such and i notice this green crap coming out of the cracks of it (after playing a fighting game, where i sqeeze the controller pretty tight, which explains the next part) so i clean the green crap off and continue to play, more green crap shows up!!, so i clean it off and then i just had to figure out what this crap was, so i open the controller and it was packed with that green crap

i show it to my friends dad to see if he knows what the hell it was, and he identified it as marijuana, this of course scared the shity out of me, and i asked if i should return it to the store, the cops, etc. but he said no, its not worth the trouble, especially since it has my fingerprints all over it now, so pretty much what we did was take it outside and cleaned it out letting the marijuana blow away in the wind and just not anywhere near me because it wasnt mine (well, technically it was) so i didnt want anything to do with it.

pretty crazy huh?

then i got to thinking, the chances are pretty much impossible, but what if there was some evil marijuana smuggling in DCs operation where this was a way to buy marijuana!!! i mean, this was the only DC that they had with an RF adaptor (which i specifically asked for, because i didnt own one until then, so i figured it wouldnt hurt to own one) so what if you went to the store, asked for the DC with the RF adaptor, and you get marijuana!!!!

hehe i know thats impossible, but i was bored, and daydreaming....

lol!!! I thought when you and your dad went out side i thought you were gonna say you were gonna smoke it, and i was like "LMAO" what a jackass. hey Who knows maybe it was the "RF(Real Flower) adapter) That made them give you that controller, or maybe you were the wrong customer.

hehe, i wouldnt smoke weed, i got enough problems