HKT-0500 - Cross Products Dreamcast GD-ROM Duplicator GD-X

Not many people have heard of this funky Dev Box. The thing could be easily mistaken for a Dreamcast Dev Box set 5.

The main purpose of the HKT-05 GD-X Duplicator is to duplicate multiple GD-ROM discs simultaneously.
Up to 4 GD-Writers can connect to this beast. The GD-X Duplicator can also be connected as a host device.

The innards are pretty similar to the HKT-01 Dev Box. It also has a "brain" in the form of an internal SCSI Harddrive.

Pics:

I was a bit nervous while opening up this baby. Maybe someday I'll take up-close pics of its internal chips!

 

Very interesting. Never even heard about it before.

 

I was tempted to go after the last one on Ebay, but I passed. It has a hard drive in it? What's the purpose of the hard drive?

 

Cashe. It's faster to have it locally on the internal drive.

 

Pretty much. I have yet to see what is contained in the hard drive. I might just connect it directly to my Adaptec SCSI card though I doubt there is any data.

EDIT - LOL, it's empty! :crying:

 

My GD-X had Unreal tournament in the hard drive.

 

That figures! Oh well, now I'm kinda wishing I would have gone after that auction. Oh well....

 

Try something like
Ontrack EasyRecovery
R-Studio

might help if data was not overwritten with crap and/or low-level formatted.
(works for normally formatted HDs under Windows for example)
you wont believe how many GBs of Pr0n, private data etc. I have recovered from old HDs I bought on Ebay

 

lol, that's why my company has a rule about old hard drives. Any hard drive that is to be decomissioned is put in a drill press. Hard to recover data when there's a 2 inch hole in the middle of the platter. Sad thing is, we're actually considering doing more drastic things in the future. There's been talk of sending old hard drives to a smelting facility to be turned into slag... Kind of puts a damper on prototype hunting, eh? Thank that bozo who stole the source for Half Life 2.

 

I think it's too late for that. I've already reformatted to a FAT32 drive trying to get it to backup one of my GD-ROM discs.

 

Were you successful? I just snagged one of these units the other day, hoping it will arrive by the weekend although that is probably a stretch. Looking forward to playing around with it.

 

For some reason I cannot get it to copy the GD image to the harddrive and to send to the GD-Writer (even after reformatting the HD).

 

I think the one I'm getting has documentation for it, I'll keep you posted on what I find out. :thumbsup:

 

Mm it gives you some message when you try to make a GD image? The menus of the GD-X are quite intuitive, I do not know if it could be a problem with the GD-ROM drive.

 

I've tested it with different GD-ROM discs: My Sonic Adventure disc and a couple of HKT-06 GD-ROM discs. Whenever I choose either the "READ GD IMAGE" option or the "COPY GD IMAGE" option it never completes to 100%. It stops midway and reads "FAILED" which doesn't sound good.

 

Well, my GD-X arrived today. The hard drive was blank. Ugh... Anyways, I'm able to read off the GD drive one of my beta GDR's no problem onto the hard drive. It's writing from the image as I type this....no problems yet. This thing is cool. If I wanted to connect it up to my 5.24 setup I'm assuming I just connect it to the SCSI-B on the 5.24?

 

I would think either the SCSI-A/B or Extension ports since I do not own the manual. Are you able to view the GD contents sent to the harddisk through your computer? Also, would you happen to know what file system is being used on it?

Good luck connecting it to your dev box!

 

I actually haven't tried to view the contents since I dumped a GDR to it. I had a Crazi Taxi beta .5 that I've never been able to get to work cuz the CD was bad, so I figured I'd let it try to pull the image. Got to 72% and cracked. Ugh...

Haven't hooked everything up together yet, but will let you know. No idea on the file system, but I'll check it when I hook it all up.

 

Forgot to mention, I have the manual on the GDX. It only talks about using it as a standalone system, nothing about hooking it directly to a PC or through the 5.24. I thought that was odd....

 

It seems like my unit is picky with different GD-Rs since some go to a higher percent than others. The only major setback I have is my extremely short SCSI cable. Whenever I want to hook it up to my PC I have to take the PC out of my desk unit in order for the cable to reach. I have to get around to buying longer cables.