Dreamcast SD card reader RELEASED

Between this and the other dongle type device (VGA and SD inside of one convenient box) I'm not so sure I'll offer anyone internal SD mods anymore. I've yet to find a SD card socket that I'm fully happy with and trying to make it look factory fresh with the Dreamcast case really isn't possible.

Then again these aren't exactly available at every street corner 7-11.

 

I bought mine on January 19th, still have not got it here in Texas yet. Bought a new mouse and keyboard combo on Ebay and a 32GB SDHC card for it as well.

SWAT, the developer of the Dreamshell OS said that it should work with 32GB cards, and I have friends that already tested it with 8GB SDHC cards, so it looks like I am in the clear as 16GB & 32GB theoretically should work.

Still waiting on it to come here, so I have been waiting for it for a while now.

If you guys are wanting ready made games in the SDISO format, you can get them from the FTP set up here.

http://www.google.com

 

ahem, excuse me?

 

What is it that they do to the games in order to have them play through the SD card?

 

From the reading around I did last night it seems you're right, the SD adapter isn't any real kind of GD-ROM replacement at all. There's only about a dozen games confirmed to work/half-work. I hadn't realised that the Dreamshell software to use it had been out so long, either - the lack of development is kind of disappointing. I guess the DC's had its day as a homebrew platform.

Still, looking forwards to messing with mine when it (finally) arrives. Any excuse to fire up the Dreamcast.

 

Pretty much. The SD adapter is just a badly-retooled USB-SD adapter:



On the right is my USB-SD adapter, which as you can see happens to be the same model he's using for his DC-SD adapters. On the left is the insert which hopefully you can see is pretty rough! If I'd known it'd be this amateurish I'd have made my own.

Will give it a go later and report back.

 

They convert them on PC with one of 3 or so programs, or you can rip it from your Dreamcast to the SD card and rename the image to boot in Dreamshell.

• 
  
  
  Wow, you do realize this is all coded by a single person right? He is coming out with Dreamshell 5.0 soon that will have more features than you can shake a stick at, you just wait!
  
  I have a 32GB SDHC card waiting for mine to test, as I'll be the first to test out such high capacity cards with the device, but so far it looks good as I have friends that have 8GB SDHC cards they have got working with these Chinese adapters.

 

They binhack it to 0 and make a non selfboot iso.
It's actually the same thing as the old utopia bootdisc releases.

If they can add CDI support, the selfboot isos you can find everywhere should works (as long as the game is compatible witht the sd-loader).

FG

 

Ah thank you FamilyGuy, I couldn't explain it as good as you could.

And yes, if it has that feature, it would make it so much easier to test games out, god, I can't wait to get my SD Adapter in and Dreamshell 5.0 comes out, great things will be implemented that's for sure.

 

I'm not certain but I dont think cdi support will be added as I'm pretty sure theres tools you can get from swat like make cdi to iso and it will work that way. *shrugs* I haven't looked into this to much but it was one of those first mods I wanted to try just dont have a slot...didn't feel like actually wiring the sd I have to the console...(which is a mini sd adapter)

anyway whats the word on the 5.0 release? any dates to speak of? ..debating wether i should wait for it instead of getting the 4.0 beta or w/e it was.

 

Well, CDI support is not a far off possibility, it could, and could not come, I guess you'll have to wait and see won't you? :dance:

Swat tolD me he will have 5.0 soon, thats all he would elaborate on, but things like the Descktop will be working in this version now, so it is more of a GUI like windows, so if you don't like typing in commands you will love it.

As for the difference between 4.0 and 5.0, there should be a marked increase in features, so it will be a more complete OS.

 

wow, mine finally arrived and i'm quite disappointed. i was expecting something homemade but this is like the worst looking piece of hardware i have ever BOUGHT (i made worse myself, but thats okay )

the sd slot looks like he hand dremel'd it with everything than a sturdy hand. the actual box says "MP3 Power Supply" on the back
he used hot glue everywhere and urgh....well i'll try it later. maybe it will at least work

 

Well, I made a review of mine, already posted it everywhere else, so might as well post it here.

Here is the packaging it comes in.




Ok, so the first thing I noticed when I was opening one of these, is the actual serial port connector has been fashoned with a peice of plastic to act as a spacer to keep the device firmly placed in the serial port. This is not a bad thing, and actualy looks quite nice if you ask me. You will never notice it when it is plugged in anyway.





I did order an orange one, to keep the NTSC theme going with my Dreamcast, but apperiantly the orange ones sold out first, as I did specify to them I wanted the orange one, but they gave me an email saying that option was not available.

So far, I have gotten retail games Gigawing and Mars Matrix working, the later of which had some stuttering issues duing the Capcom logo, but once in game it worked fluidly as expected with full audio.

As far as homebrew goes, in my experiance with Neo Geo CD games, it works great, Double Dragon was fine by me. Aes4all should be updated in the future to be more compatible with the SD cards and use them as ram for the carts, so arcade games MIGHT work full speed in the future, but as of now, the low ram the DC has has kept emulation very slow for that system.

Dcplaya2.0 was updated with a SD card plugin, so you can browse the media directly from the SD card, but this hasn't worked for me with either my 2gb or 32gb card, and could be a common bug, but it should get worked out in the future I hope.

In the future Dreamshell will get updated with more features that I can't elaborate on just yet, but I assure you it will be more than worth it, and time spent waiting on these to come to your house. Mine took a little over 2 months, and you can do what I did and get a 32gig card on Ebay for $42 and fill it up with all kinds of GDI, and homebrew binaries.

 

Does anyone want to see if we can do a group buy?

 

I'd be interested.

 

I would too, though it would depend on how much money I'd have to donate though.

 

You can also buy these on ebay if you want? They are going for $20, but I got mine from "Buy from taobao" for $11.14, shipping and all. It took 2 months and 2 days to get here.

http://shop.ebay.com/imeizu/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

I also made a tutorial to help folks buy these if you would like to see how to get them easily and cheaper. Also I did a Q. A. where I explain what you can expect from one of these devices.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26005&p=330213#p330213

Also, a newly released version of the Snes4all emulator was released with SD adapter support, and it has real speed emulation now, much higher than Dreamsnes ever was! Also, Uae4all Amiga amulator for DC also just got an update for these cards and have 30% speed increase!

You can get them here.

http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/snes4all.html

http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/uae4all.html

 

LOL I know that packaging. A few months ago I order two USB SD card readers that used that exact same shell. Looks like they used the same parts but changed the PCB and connector.

 

Yup. I have the same SD reader from China.

 

Wow, Buy From Taobao finally just got my package. I cannot wait till I get it , but i have to wait another month lol :crying: