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

Here's a great example of a mod that suddenly got front-page billing on Kotaku today, and the forum where it was posted is now getting slammed, and the modder getting PMs, I presume - -

http://kotaku.com/this-portable-n64-is-a-work-of-art-and-there-are-more-1560767275

http://www.bacman.co.uk/bacforum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4375

I wouldn't unleash the Internet on it until you are much closer (you often only get once chance, make it count), but when you are ready . . . make a new thread, include a few clean, detailed pictures, and of course, a video of it working . . .

. . . and have your infrastructure ready and in place to take orders.

The Dreamcast is a much-beloved system, and people will flock to the product - - if they can buy it.

 

$150 is a little pricey for me but I'm really waiting for it!

 

Is DCIO going to allow the GD_Rom drive to be used concurrently, or it has to be removed?

 

It must be removed as it is fully replacing it and it's functions. XD

 

Just a thought - Would be cool to have some sort of switch (or maybe even a switchless-mod) to switch between the GD-Rom and the DCIO and use some sort of ribbon cable between the two units (like the Saturn modchip).

 

The way the gd-rom/dcio connects to the board, I'm afraid this wouldn't work without removing the dreamcast shell.

 

The way that the Wiikey Fusion works on GameCube allows booting to SD if one is inserted on boot and if no card is inserted, the DVD drive still functions normally.

Perhaps the DCIO could have a pass through mode such as this. It would require the GDROM drive to be connected to the DCIO board though and making everything fit in a stock DC shell would probably be tricky.

 

I will also buy one. It's fine if it's up to $200. Thanks

 

yeah i want some solution like this! I do not like gutting the console and i can wait 10 months or more, if we can get a cheaper product that works fine.

 

I'll by one for up to $200.

 

Sounds fine to me. The one I want this for is running without cover any way.

 

Deunan's website said his boards software does not support long filenames?? This drives me up the wall on the SuperUFO I have for my SNES, so I'm holding out to see how your board shapes up, OzOnE.

 

That's great news, I already had this suspicion but It's nice to hear it from someone more tech savvy. With a solution like DCIO/GDEMU we can finally play games like Half-Life, Propeller Arena and other unreleased gems on full speed

 

True.. maybe on later revisions though, if the DCIO board itself could be made smaller in the future. Or by making an external power supply and making the board fit in its place.

 

Even if the board is as thin as a sd-card, there still should be a socket that connects to the motherboard and a socket that connects to the gd-rom daughterboard, increasing the height of the laser assembly. It's not as simple as a Saturn modchip where only the ribbon is hijacked.
Geometrically, you can't do a man in the middle connector and preserver the height of the daughterboard without modifying either the mobo or gd-rom sockets, IMHO.

@Wombat, it's my opinion, but I'm not 100% sure. cybdyn is the one who really knows.

 

~3-4 times faster loading

 

Probably the best improvement for gameplay (besides probably reduced loading times) wouldn't be the data transfer speedup, it would be the greatly reduced seek time. Making badly-sorted games behave better than even well-sorted ones!

 

Which might explain the 'messy' structure developers used for Geist Force among others, they were probably playing it from the developers kit's HDD which also greatly reduces load times. But with that being said, 'optimized' builds might perform less then their non optimized counterparts when playing from a DCIO/GDEMU solution? *runs of to my archives, to check if I still have the non optimized Half-Life build laying around*

 

seek times is nearly instant in sd even with messy structure for best performance use class 4 or even better class 6

 

Well, I should've been more precise: "Making even bad-sorted games behave better via DCIO than well-sorted ones via CD-R."

The sorting shouldn't matter too much on a HDD/SD-Card compared to the gd-rom unit. So sorted/unsorted games should behave the same, and better than on CD-R. But again, let's wait for cybdyn word on it.