Hi, Im really interested in the set top box which could play Dreamcast games directly from the internal harddisk. AFAIK it was a working prototype, and I hear rumours that somebody got it off of an auction. Does anyone know if it did actually play games from the HDD or if it had an optical drive at all? How did they run the games off the hDD?
I've never heard of any of the set top boxes being anything more than nice looking mock ups. The only prototype that was a mockup that I'm aware of in private hands was the zip drive and IIRC it did have internal guts but without anything to use it with it may as well have been a non-functional mockup. However, the Dreamcast Katana devkits could play games from an internal HDD but I don't know how you'd load them except manually. I'd imagine SEGA would've built some sort of graphical interface to either dump games to the HDD or download them.
A picture of one of the iterations of the Pace box. There is another picture from this IGN set which displays the controller's VMU, which has the Ferrari F355 logo on it. I cannot find a working link to it atm. Looks like it was a working proto with working HDD interface for game loading. Not only do I see no gdrom drive in the above picture, but check this description from gamespot. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sega-and-pace-unveil-dreamcast-enabled-set-top-box/1100-2681885/
Looks like a normal DC motherboard in there, but with an adapter on the gdrom socket that goes to a hdd. Much like what ozone was trying to do.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...-Devkit-Boot-Intro-for-Retail-Dreamcast/page2 Some more info here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?32047-Games-Gateway-Dreamcast-successor http://www.multichannel.com/news-article/pace-teams-sega-dreamcast-box-setup/100986 http://www.imgtec.com/news/Release/index.asp?NewsID=234 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/02/uk_settop_box_builder_licenses/ http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/02/06/sega-and-pace-reveal-new-digital-home-gateways-platform http://news.cnet.com/2009-1040-252689.html http://www.drobe.co.uk/article.php?id=5&nc=0 http://www.computerworld.co.nz/article/514221/sega_licenses_dreamcast_pace_micro/ http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1219237 http://www.iconbar.com/articles/Pace_to_take_over_Dreamcast/index76.html http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sega,+Pace+to+develop+Dreamcast+technology-used+TV+box.-a070505988 http://boards.fool.com/pace-and-sfa-to-bundle-dreamcast-14149359.aspx?sort=postdate http://www.telecompaper.com/news/pace-set-to-license-dreamcast-from-sega--257349
Yeah I remember reading from a few sources that it was definitely a working unit. Never seen anything on ebay - I have 'Sega pace' as a saved search on eBay and have seen a few magazines come up but no hardware or anything. Would love someone to come forward if they had one!
I'll try and check in with someone I met at BskyB over in Osterley. Not sure if it's still there, but a few years back I visited their STB Farm to QA a red button game. In short, it's a room with every STB ever made, and you get one sky remote to control them all. The guys that maintain that setup know their shit about unreleased / proto boxes, so I'll see if I can get hold of someone.
