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

Great comparison chart, very helpful! Lack of CDI support on USB-GDROM stinks because most of the ISO's easily obtainable are CDI not GDI!

I'm not not quite following "why" it's overheating and what is meant by 12V jumping to 14V?

 

Dreamcast internal power supply (PSU) has very poor load regulation. Load regulation is the ability of PSU to keep voltage constant regardless the load. Since ODE like GDEmu do not use 12V, the load on 12V rail is actually zero. With 12V rail floating (no load), that rail actually has voltage spike over 14V.

The same can actually be said to Sega Saturn's PSU, specifically older 5-pin style's 9V rail.

 

That's why I suggested to shunt the 12V with a 100k or 1M ohm resistor. The idea is to create a load to stabilise the voltage, but keep the current small enough so it doesn't heat too much.

Physics tells us that P=RI^2=V^2/R so on the 12V rail 100k ohm would generate 1mW, 1M would yield 100nW. Hopefully that could stabilise the voltage, the power use would be minimal and the heat generated would be close to that of a led. I think it's worth trying.

FG

 

To be honest I wish someone has an oscilloscope to measure the ripple from PSU. Voltage is not the only thing you have to lookout for in a PSU.

 

CDI is coming to USB-GDROM. I don't know the ETA.

There was some guy working on a complete GDI set with Mega links but I can't find it now.

 

Interesting to see it all laid out, but I had to go to Facebook to get the link.

And it was a Google Doc.

With embedded comments within the spreadsheet that I had to hover over to see.

Thought I might do the folks who didn't want to go to Facebook a favor, downloaded the .xlsx file, moved the comments into the body of the cells, reformatted it, and captured it as a picture.

Here ya' go, don't shoot the messenger, I just copied the fellow's spreadsheet verbatim...

View attachment GDROM Emulation Comparison Chart 2-4-2015.png

(Original source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...4nSqRoRfm6fvQflxjv1tCGpVEU/edit#gid=420741251 - - link may be dead if you are visiting this forum from your time machine in 2060 or whatever...)

 

I just wanna add that if you use the GDEMU SD card maker from madsheep in addition with GDmenu form neuroacid, your GDEMU got a menu, become region free, and for most games VGA compatible.
So the only drawback left is the storage. But 64Go is already enough to have a bunch of games to play. And i wonder if 128Go would work...

 

Dreamshell does have experimental CDDA support that has worked on the couple of games I have tried.

 

For me it was, I own both devices & the UGC is a lot better for retail GDI games, I have the hole NTSC & PAL (exclusives) on one hdd (just over 300GB) & all in it cost me just over £190, £137 odd for UGC & £55 for a 500GB hdd from asda. (Could have got it cheaper online)

Now GDEMU cost me about £90 & to fit all the above games into SD cards would cost me over £140 or more, the latter is based on 32GB sandisc sd cards, so that's £230 & the hastle of swapping SD Cards & having to label them all.

With UGC you're paying a premium for the luxury of not having to swap SD Cards.

$200 (£130) is basically what I paid & I paid slightly more, because I would only pay with PayPal.

 

I completely understand that it can be a perfect product for you. And quite frankly I don't understand why Deunan doesn't implement region-free patching into the firmware.

But my point was that they should try to compete with gdemu as most people don't have the need for such storage space. I know I only play 5 to 8 Dreamcast games that amount to slightly over 10 discs. My 64GB sdxc card isn't even filled to 30GB and I got all the games I want!

You would go for the USB option in anycase, but a lot of customers might find it too much to pay 200$ + than the other option (that's around 3X gdemu!) for the possibility to add space they won't use anyway. Thus, I believe that it'd be a good buisiness move for them to make it priced as closely as possible to the gdemu.

 

Do you have a link to GDEMU SD card maker and GDmenu?

 

As far as region patching goes - I think both developers have missed something.
As we all know some games do not behave well when patched (Eldorado gate for an example) So for best compatibility with all regions of games a default region patching process is not a good thing (Especially for Japanese buyers)
However - a lot of people will not be buying these devices to play the rare few that do not work when patched - so obviously they will regard default region patching as a good thing.

So... why don't all developers have region patching but as an option in an ini file or something similar. This way people that want it can have it - and people that don't can choose to disable it


As far as space needed - I can see both Rocky5's and FamilyGuy's point of view.

For me - I know which games I like on the dreamcast and my 128GB card has all I want on it (only using 92GB of the space) Though I don't use this card at the moment due to the menu only supporting 64 titles. (So for now I use 2 SD cards)

For someone who hasn't played much of the dreamcast's library of games however - it would be nice to have a complete solution. Though after a short while they will also have their favourites and not need the space.

Pricing though will also be a factor - when SAG start selling Mnemo's board let's hope the price does not increase by too much when they add their percentage.

***Edit***

Just as a matter of interest has anyone in the USA tried using the PNY Elite Performance 256GB SD card with GDEMU yet - at $90 it's a great price compared to similar sized cards here in the UK

 

Deunan have said that auto patching for Dreamcast actually causes number of Dreamcast games to have bugs. Apparently some of them performs security check to see if the region has been altered or not.

The best way for region free is the BIOS mod.

 

Like NightbreedUK said, an option to enable / disable auto patching games, not just for region, but for other things, like enable VGA output, could be nice. If some game don't work patched, just disable this option. I thing creating a patch config option in the loader could be even better than edit and .INI file.

Anyway, I would love to see the GDEmu to overcome the multi-disc select issue to do something like the USB-GDROM, and add an USB port (without discard the SD reader) to put games in a HDD. I hope Deunan can do something like this in future revisions of both GDEmu and Rhea. ^_^

 

That's true only for a handful of games that only would be fixed by heavy hacking or region-free bios.

A region-free patching (with possibility to enable it or not in an ini file) would not break games that already worked (except pathological cases), would allow a lot of games to work properly, and allow a select few to boot but crash due to copy protection.

That said I don't care that much, I have a region-free bios, I just think it'd be a more attractive product for customers with that option.

Adding AR codes/capabilities to the menu launcher would allow for user-patching of the region though.

 

I think the $200 price point (if it is that) would be set due to the conversion rates of $ to €.

As $200 is round about €170 so I think he's wanting his €130 after SAG take there cut.

how much did people pay for GDEMU in $?

On a side note:
I do wish there was a device to convert USB to SD Adapter, so we could use hdds with GDEMU.


Edit:
the region patching of UGC hasn't effected any games I have played nor any of the games I tested compatibility.
(that I know of)

When testing all NTSC & PAL games I would loaded a game & played a few mins of each game to make sure it didn't crash on startup or when starting a new game & if it did crash I would test it multiple times to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

(99% of NTSC games worked fine, there were a few that had game issues & 1 NTSC game that woudnt boot past a loading screen for me. My DC is a PAL region console)

Only games I had issues with, not sure if the issues below are caused by the region patching.

 

you can find GDEMU SD Card Maker on this page (search for madsheep post):
https://www.assemblergames.com/foru...-emulation-happen-quot-Facebook-group/page110

you can find GDmenu here :
https://gdemu.wordpress.com/links/

Usins GDEMU SD card Maker, you'll see that you can patch/unpatch each game separately.
Useful for those that could have bug with those options.
Some games won't work with VGA patching for what i know (Resident Evil Code Veronica don't show picture, only sound by VGA).

 

Update for G1-ATA:

Disc image: CDI/GDI/ISO/CSO
Discless: with ANY BIOS mod
Multi-disc select: not supported yet
CDDA: partially supported (works in not all games yet)
Interface: IDE or SATA with adapter
Filesystem: Up to 4 partitions on disc, FAT 12/16/32 (+LFN, +can use spaces), Ext2 (can't run games from it, but DS can use it in core)
Capacity: Just limits for filesystem - 4 partitions up to 2TB each. In sum 8 TB.
Folder limit: Just filesystem limit

 

Hi dudes,

A small solution to the SD GD-EMU limitation, this is my own DC



I'm doing a two sd reader mod with a miniSD adapter to feed the GD-EMU.

Un saludo

PD: I'm sorry for the small picture

 

double post sorry