The MODE1 itself arrived first, and i thought it would be fine to install before the Laser Bear MODE sd card extension kit (the blue thing) arrived. in fact, the Laser Bear kit is its own mounting solution so i had to rip out the 3M adhesive pads the MODE came with and squeeze out the one-way plastic anchors with my handy hemostats. oops! ultimately manageable though.
this is a VA0 Dreamcast, apparently rare in the U.S. and only sold at launch. wondering if that's why i ran into fitment issues with the Laser Bear kit. the only thing i'm worried about in the end is how the SD card's ribbon cable unavoidably touches elements of the power supply, including what i believe is a big metal heatsink. hrm...
anyway, wrote to LBI to inquire. in the meantime it looks good from the outside. going to test that the sd card extension works now.
two mods down, two to go: replaceable clock battery holder and quiet fan. given how noisy Dreamcast is the modern fan will be a game changer, but i had to order a weird mod kit from France because the common Noctua fan mod doesn't fit the VA0. still waiting for that to ship.
- Terraonion's MODE is an optical disc emulator, ODEs let you load console software via sd card, hard drives, etc. instead of from CD/DVD. cartridge-based systems have devices like EverDrives and the like, disc-based ones have ODEs.