"Let's make GD ROM emulation happen" Facebook group.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/336612363081189/members/#!/groups/336612363081189/

This is a group for anyone who wants to see a GD ROM replacement device for the Dreamcast. Open for anyone to join. Especially developers who are working on this to get the word out. Spread this group as far as you can.

 

How about learn verilog/vhdl and make it happen. Likely to have much more effect than a facebook group.

 

or AHDL and graphic for fpga too)) , also knowledge in asm/c/c++ for mcu, computer aided disign for developing schematic and PCB....
and its not enough, you need spend time and money, and debugging this board is not easy too. now i can realy feel how this work is so complex, espesially without any supporting. ...but russians never giveup in war)))

i can be wrong, but i'm not sure about "power" of FaceBOOK in helping of creating emu, just another site for just-talk-about))).

now i try make this board myself. and i'm would like help someone who make something like this if he ask help...

 

Haha, I knew you were russian! I've spotted a cyrilic "n" somewhere in your posts and your syntax seems russian!

To all those who underestimate cybdyn because he sounds childish, be aware that most russians sounds this way while speaking english when they're not fluent. They are ofter very talented and motivated people though, so don't dismiss tehm!

 

its not miracle - on the DC-SWAT i write on my native language (RUS).

making of PS1-DC emu is under way. all updates i put on this site. i almost done with scheme and soon i start
routing PCB file.

if for anybody it would be interesting i can put scm here, and we can discuss it.

also i would like to see new developers here too

 

Well, I don't understand russian, so I don't read the DC-SWAT forums!

Yet I'm happy to see another dreamcast loving russian guy! You guys are prolific!

 

I don't think Facebook is the way to go for this kind of things... you'll most likely get a bunch of people that just want the final product but can't/won't help.
I hope to be wrong though

I wish I could help, but I lack the knowledge; however I'd love to see this happen and I'll gladly donate or help in any way I can.

 

i soon make my own PayPal. you can help me if you wish)).

FG - you can dont understand RUS lang , but i show scm in pics.

http://s52.radikal.ru/i136/1206/96/d7c9590560db.png



..its not last one

 

I guess I hadn't understand what you meant by "its not miracle - on the DC-SWAT i write on my native language (RUS).". I swear one day I'll learn russian, it's a nice language I think, I can read it phonetically with various success level, but I don't understand a thing except "kinder-garden for retards" stuff.

Nice stuff, it seems like you're on the way for a first prototype? Making this in eagle? I had some experience with kicad, but I think most professionnal hobbyist use eagle...

This could be of help for DC: http://segaxtreme.net/community/topic/14768-finally-made-a-working-modchip/
It's the research and conclusions of a guy who made a saturn modchip. It uses the same 0xA8 & 0x59 patterns as the dreamcast for the security ring, so it might help you get over the security checks.

 

FG - its all ok. THNX for info, i discover every new very closer.

I use Orcad 16.0. for PCB design and manufacturing i'll try ask someone one my work.

alpha bord will looks like DC gd-rom board - same size and connector. and also ps1 parallel con, cause it is actually PS1(PS2)/DC emu , so all in one))).


dont know, for DC i plan add multi bios support and try cut all "licence-checking" as unuseful performing on start-up way.

 

Afaik it's pretty easy to circumvent, by sending recorded ring data when it asks for it; you could ask deunan/dknute for the recorded data, else it's readable with a dvd-drive using a swap trick, I've did it years ago.

If you want to sell those, keep in mind that not everyone can make their DC multi-bios.

 

You will just get the attention of a bunch of people that would buy the final product.

Anyway, those kind of comment "you can learn how to code" are so inappropriate. This is not a cake recipe, you need to be in this kind of business for your life.
Like be in the computer engineering college.

Count me in for any kind of help a literature teacher can give on this

 

Not anymore inappropriate is the idea that all you need to do is setup a facebook group or tell the world in some fashion that a niche product is desired by a niche group and suddenly the talent will gravitate towards each other and POOF a product will form. Especially when that someone waving the flag around is in no position to start work on the product itself or even help with the product.

 

Yeah, that's exactly like the world works.
Usually people that wave for movie industry to make a sequel or make a movie out of a video game they usually have a hollywood studio back in their garage.

 

I didn't think this would take off. I'm hopefully going to start collage courses on computer programming soon and would like to look into this. Until then, I just have to try and get people aware of the need. Hence the Facebook group I started. If more people are aware of it, MAYBE someone with knowledge in this area may jump on it if they see there's interest and demand for it.

 

I'm still working on this, guys! I just soldered it back together about two weeks ago and I'm trying it on a different FPGA board.

Unfortunately, this board still doesn't have SRAM on it, so I'm attempting to use the SDRAM.

I'm waiting for a seller in China to get back to me about a board with SRAM on it (doesn't seem worth the effort trying to debug this SDRAM crap).
The boards are quite cheap £26 - £45 depending on if you want SRAM only or SRAM + SDRAM + better chip.

The idea is to buy a cheap board specifically for the DC so I'm not tempted to steal it again (I'm gonna BOLT it to the metal shield next time!).

I can't get this board to boot the DC to the Sega logo like it did with the CF Card version. (I'm currently using SD Card instead).

As far as I can tell, it's reading the SD Card OK, but maybe not the SDRAM. It reads the TOC fine and appears to pass the security check, then attempts to read IP.BIN as usual, but no further?

It goes back to the DC Menu with the old "Please wait while disc is being checked", so the data is probably corrupted.
It tries to do a SET_MODE command after that, then just sits there?

I did manage to make the code a bit more generic though - the "gd_emu" part is separate from the control part.
This should in theory make things a bit easier to manage.

The "gd_emu" part does the main interface and parses the Packet commands etc. The "gd_emu" block supplies these values...

gd_sector_type, gd_start_sector, gd_sector_count, then asserts the trig_block_read signals.

In your "control" block, you then need to read the requested sector(s) from your SD / CF / HDD into a buffer, then transfer the sector(s) to the DC via DMA.
When the DMA transfer is complete, the control block asserts the "block_dma_done" signal and the "gd_emu" block handles the rest of the interrupt crap etc.

DMA sounds scary, but it's actually quite simple. The problem is, once you tell the DC that your sectors are prepared, it expects to read the data in a continuous burst at around 16.66 MBytes/sec!

I'm still fairly confident that the main chunk of gd_emu code is working, but using SDRAM is far more complex than SRAM because SDRAM needs to pause during refreshing etc.
This screws up the nice flow of data.

I've added a FIFO to the SDRAM, but it's still not booting? I don't have an easy way of way confirming that the data matches the original ISO file other than capturing small sections of data with Signaltap...

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=mt2iq&s=6

As you can imagine, this is a long-winded way of debugging because I have to reboot the DC every time I need to capture another section of signals.
There is an FT245 USB chip on this board, but it's nowhere near fast enough to stream the data to the DC in real time (max 1MByte/sec).

Again, this could be made to work with SRAM. I'm tired of trying to use SDRAM now, so I'm about to buy that new SRAM board from China.

@cybdyn - Your FPGA design is looking good. I can share my code so far if you like? I would DEFINITELY recommend adding an SRAM chip though, preferably 1MByte and minimum 512KB.


OzOnE.
P.S. Does anyone have a copy of the old FPGA project files which I uploaded in the other thread? I just need to confirm that the one I have matches because the link got removed?
The version I uploaded was the only one capable of booting to the Sega logo! If I had to guess, the filename was probably "GD-EMU Project (26-1-12 OzOnE).zip", or at least starts with "GD-EMU".

 

and... there we go...

Thanks for your effor Ozone, the gaming community really appreciate that!

 

GD-EMU Project (26-1-12 OzOnE).zip

 

That's great, thanks.

It matches the one I have, so the main code should be OK.

I've found that my data is still corrupted. I'm gonna throw the SDRAM idea out of the window and buy an SRAM board.

It might take a few weeks to arrive though. I'll keep y'all posted.

OzOnE.

 

FG - "multi-bios" is just one of features)). you no need make you own multi-bios - it actiually means - different bioses are stored on SD/HDD and you choose what one you wanna launch))

OzOne - i try learn all materail you gave. i wanna ask you in PM.