Dreamcast Parallel Port Mod

That's interesting. Old ide drives are so cheap nowadays that you could virtually never run out of them...

 

WOW! A HDD in a Dreamcast?! Are you serious?! This is epic news. I was told that this mod would never exist. I guess anything can and will exist given enough time.

How much would a mod like this cost? Also, is there a way to may this work using a laptop SATA HDD?
I'm pretty good with Photoshop, would it be possible to add artwork to the game selection list? This is very exciting news for Sega Dreamcast owners and fans everywhere! It would be interesting to see a mod done where the karaoke machine is used as the housing for the HDD mod. Also would be cool to have a HDD indicator light added to the machine or use the orange triangle light in the front of the Dreamcast for it instead.

I better stop, rambling on...

 

Yes

 

as for the activity light, this can be done to any IDE device. Look uo the xbox HDD led mod

 

Any updates on the progress? I'm thinking of designing something based on this mod and wondering if there needs to be any points connected so the drive is a master. The site had info on various options of master and slave but that was with the GD board connected to the custom pcb. So wondering if you wire directly to those motherboard pointsyou can simply use a drive in master without jumping points.

 

Didnt ozone already post all the pcb files?

 

I wasn't aware if he did, I don't want to do the same setup as his but his design files would definitely speed things up. The whole thing about the Master and jumper points still stands though.

 

with this mod I wonder if there is enough, either unused pins on the modem connector OR enough room on the bottom of the console to fit a connector (like the one us4ed on the custom PCB to interconnect to the drive.. nice and small..)

Like how the N64 DD works, then we can just clip a HDD to the bottom, there would be enough room to fit a SATA to IDE controller, maybe a fan and a PSU to run bigger drives.. To only need one cable (with added PSU) you could use a y split-er cable

Aaannd seeing as we would have the extra room down there, you could internalise a SD reader, VGA adaptor maybe dual HDD's with switch ....

Just a thought

 

To attach it to the bottom you could either mount it like the karaoke machine (IIRC it screws in?) or replace the screws that hold the two half's of the console with longer screws and go through the new bottom housing and into the DC

 

My whole idea was to have a board with a ide2sata bridge and then have the sata connector in the back for a modern drive. I already have 2 schematics to build the ide2sata board so I just to have more info on what connections are really required to feed the IDE pins to this said board.

 

Very interesting indeed, had been waiting for a HDD mod for some time. Is there any way this may give a slight boost to loading times within games? I'm guessing this wont be affected.

 

I wired it all up and attached a fat32 formmated drive but could not get dreamshell to detect it, although the status led showed activity. Here are some pics




Can only post one pic for some reason, anyway I guess I may have got one of the wires soldered to the wrong pin on the ide connector, when I have some time I will go over it all with a continuity meter, but this month my time is going to be dedicated on getting drunk and watching the world cup

Edit: here is the other pic i was going to post http://i.imgur.com/gwbs1FZ.jpg

 

It might be the issue with which mode you set the IDE in, pretty much what I was asking above about if we can solder directly like you did or is there some points needing to be shorted?

 

The hard drive needs to be set in slave mode

 

Can that be done by shorting 2 of those points? I have one of the boards for this mod design pretty much down but would definitely like some info on this, or perhaps the ide2sata bridge should have those options?

 

WHOA i remember reading about projects for adding an ide interface to the dreamcast it was extremely scarce as far as data and only one guy successfully added an interface that was intended to be compatible with hardrives but it was super super intense, also the documentation was starting to get lost and it wasnt highly documented at the time to begin with. This was years ago granted i wonder why his needed so much more electronics he used this IC thats popular that i forget the name (U** xxxx), to convert data types for the use of it. Its been to long since i done a serious electronics project. Idk what i/o's he was using though. Also curiously i downloaded and entire web page that had been slowly dieing from age over the years. It was a research project by a university to reverse engineer the katana mother board traces and indebth info on how they work and communicate to each part. As far as i knew it was still in progress. It had alot of intresting data on the main board. Its some where on one of my hard drives i made an effort not to loose it lol. Glad to see some one starting the effort of doing a project like this again.
Edit: im also not even sure anymore but it may have been an effort to add a pci socket for a more affordable broad band but im really not sure anymore its been several years at best since i dug deep in the web about it.

 

It was for network cards.

 

I use SD(HC) to SATA adapter with PS2. There are IDE variants but I did not test them.

jse, Maybe you messed up wiring. Or cables are too long.

 

Oh ok, It was either network cards or ide lol. Well this i might have to try one day!

 

There indeed was an attempt by university students to connect a HDD to the DC, and they succeeded AFAIK. But they didn't use it for piracy.