Dreamcast GDRom Diver emulator!

True. But I do not know if I should give it out. I think it is his personal email :shrug:

Contact him on his blog / journal, and he should reply that way if he is interested. Thats how I did it.

 

Someone wired the most popular kit among logic newbs to a Dreamcast. Major accomplishment!

 

Lol, was that meant to be sarcastic or what? I really can't tell.

 

He was saying that the Altera DE1 is a popular no0b logic board, and he managed to wire it to the dreamcast.

The Altera DE1 is a great board though, and is affordable.

I think because he uses 'top of the range' FPGA's, he thinks its a kids toy...

 

Ah I see. Well, whatever is cheap enough and gets the job done works for me.

 

I'm going to have to assume that it isn't capable of fully doing the job.

 

Only time will tell. I remain an optimist on the prospect of getting a fully affordable 100% compatible with Dreamcast GDR rip's, solid state solution for the system.

I was pretty excited with my SD adapter but, just I traded it for a mint model 1 Saturn, and 7 great games, I couldn't pass up that deal.

Anyway, just hoping something comes out of this in a few years or so.

 

What I mean is that it's every student's starter board these days, so it alone doesn't instill a lot of confidence without knowing the author. And all that is shown is some wiring.. Does he even claim any results? It seems like anyone can wire something together and get preemptive cheers from iPeeps.

And I don't use a top of the line development board, my main kit was actually half the price of a DE1, 4 years ago... But I probably have more gates since it's a Xilinx.

 

Can you make a dode then?

 

I hear you on that, but this is after all Deunan, the creator of Makaron, the Dreamcast emulator for PC's.

He claims it runs everything he has thrown at it except Skies of Arcadia, which it has a slight problem with the sound I believe. That game just likes giving problems be it on CDR or GDR rip.

I agree, it would be awesome showing this thing in action.

 

Yes, just give the project some time. Things like this dont happen overnight.

It may take him months, or years...

He said anyway, that 3 or so other people were working on this idea too.

 

Out of curiosity Calpis, what type of Xilinx board would you recommend for a hobby VHDL dev if money was no object? It has been many years since I did any work in this area (college days)..

 

Probably if Dreamcast were a major interest of mine. BTW, why "dode" instead of "GD-ROM emulator"??

I didn't know this, but it's still kind of irrelevant. Being good with software doesn't inherently make you good at hardware, typically it means the opposite; good programmers are often scared of and have little or wrong knowledge of hardware, and hardware designers often make lazy and not very clever programmers. Dreamcast emulation is also HLE and from most of the "low level" emulator source I've looked at it's clear that even "low level" authors aren't very knowledgeable about hardware.

If he said games run then I'd believe him though.

I'd still recommend a "cheaper" board and blow excess money on something more fun. I feel that Digilent boards give the best value for a GP board. I have a 1.2M gate NEXYS2--all the basics, protected I/O, and 0 peripherals I won't use unlike a system-level Altera board. Digilent's SDK is really obnoxious to me though and their boards only support (sub-)full-speed USB so I couldn't recommend them for anything data-heavy. For data I'd look towards a classier Opal Kelley board which have high-speed USB controllers and emphasize support. Their boards are REALLY barebones though and you'll have to buy a (cheap) breakout board for I/O.

 

I think he is trying to sound smart but instead comes off coining a neologism that sounds like a gay sex toy. I know of absolutely no-one who uses that acronym who has any technical knowledge or experience with the Dreamcast.

 

Im just using acronyms for what i can relate to. the only optical drive emulator I know is wode. it stands for wii optical drive emulator. im not trying to come off as smart at all. in fact its the opposite. I am just a real fan of the dreamcast, and im waiting for a viable solution to my wants. I would like a dreamcast to read from a hardrive, so i can select which game i want, and not have to worry about swapping or burning discs. I may be the object of jokes, because i truly dont hard dev, but i want to learn.

 

Honestly - I've come to the conclusion that emulating a GD-ROM is only of interest to emulator authors.

It in no way extends the Dreamcasts capabilities, which I think should be the goal for the future.

Wouldn't it be awesome if a Dreamcast could have a Ethernet, MMC Card, and IDE Interface?

 

It already has these three things to some extent ...

 

Not at the same time (for less than $300 and alot of luck!).

 

Using NETBSD I assume you could use the three at the same time given there's drivers for it. However, it can't be all used to play games as some would want, it can be used for storage though!

 

Sad that this isn't getting any traction.