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

Though his implementation is somewhat ugly with a ribbon cable and mini-led/button board hanging out the front.

 

Eh, I think I could sexy that up pretty easily - -

- - put the cover back on, feed the cable up through where the GD-ROM used to be and mount within the disc load area with some double sided tape.

Or, maybe instead snake it out the front and mount it on the front of the shell, on the left side. That way you can see what I take to be indicator lights.

It almost looks like you could swap SD cards with the shell back on, just by reaching through where the GD-ROM used to be. Hope that would be the case, don't want to have to faff about to swap cards.


Well, let's see what comes about. Like you said, cost and availability will help make a choice.

Pretty exciting that fifteen years after its release, we might have three possible options to choose from in 2014! Might just have to get all three . . . !

-a2a

 

hehehe

 

How about modding it into the VMU and using the buttons and screen to display the images or is that what you are getting at?

 

Heh, that shot he included is also from Deunan's blog. I think madsheep is joking about Deunan's own quick efforts to "sexy it up" - -

- - "eh, I'll just throw this shell back on . . . aaaaand, perfect, looks great!"


It's just a proto. Lots can be done once the form factor is finalized, and in the hands of those of us who like to mod.

Luckily, modding the Dreamcast shell is relatively easy. I've cut plenty of slots in the side of DC units to accommodate built-in SD card readers, drilled holes in the top to include a reset button, built switches into the side for for double BIOS on/off switches, and reamed out ports in the back for built-in VGA mods. It responds well to Dremel tools, and there's lots of space inside to route things.



I was thinking that a thin horizontal slot should be cut in the upper shell, just to the left of the left-most controller port, which would accommodate snaking out the flat cable. Double-sided sticky tape to hold the sub board to the shell, LED facing you, and it's done. Very rough, and not elegant, but will do on the short term. It's no worse than any original XBOX modchip controller board, most of which went outside.



Longer term, maybe placing the sub-board INSIDE the lid, where you don't have to see it flashing all the time, or if you aren't into look of green circuit boards.

Heck, maybe his final will be a black circuit board, which I always thought was classy. Wouldn't mind that attached to the outside of my DC.

 

Would also be nice if it was small enough that stock gdrom functionality could also be preserved.

 

Impressive Work! I hope to have the opportunity to buy one piece! All my respect to anyone who has worked on this project.

 

is this also working for replacing the Gdrom Drive in a Naomi Gdrom Setup ? (The drive is the same as the DC drive)

 

@cybdyn, do you know what it would be like for playing games online? i think that if you wanted to play PSO online you had to run a patch disk to get into the private servers in which you had to swap out for the game after it had loaded would the DCIO have any problems with with like that?

 

I don't think you have to do that anymore. Just put the server IP in the DNS field I think.

 

what about games with multiple disk the require you the swap disc in the games menu ?

 

nothing special done yet for such option)) ? but i can add button...


what will happen if we just restart DC and select image with next part. of course, before it we made save progress on dreamcast's mem-card.

is it important question?

 

its not important but i was under the assumption that multi disk games would be like FF7 where it would come up with a menu asking to put in the next disk, if you didnt and turned it off you would lose unsaved progress up to that point ?

 

The only multi-disc dc game I used is Shenmue and you can either swap disc or save and reboot.

But this is secondary, I think cybdyn/Ozone should have something working and neat before they start making extras. GDDA should bethe first feature to be worked on IMO.

Good job and good luck!

FG

 

can be solved with 1 button or with special code for every game individually (DCIO side)
ex. when DC request from DCIO to read a spesific file or instruction then DCIO loads the next predefined image

 

some kind of .ini or .def file for such game image. in such file we can store list of parts(images) and other params

 

my thought

 

now i'm at stage: DCIO loads DS)))

question is how dcio can detect specific address. i think game wait door_open / door_close (event or status). DC moders/fans can easy make some switch where original door detector is.

anyway, it's next step after all simple more important steps will be done.

 

How DC reads the files on the gdrom drive?

 

Shenmue 2 you can save and change disk? i thought you should change the cd to save.