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

I did not. Perhaps I should. Did you?

 

i will try.

 

I just bought four Dreamcasts for $14 apiece. Those are some expensive connectors.

Are the revision 2 Dreamcasts the ones with the GD-ROM stuff on the motherboard? In which case there's no connector, right? That would be unfortunate.

 

Yes. That is correct. V2s do not have the connector you want. There is a pic on page 1 of this thread:
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?33064-Dreamcast-hardware-list-based-on-internals

 

mickcris is right.

V2 are pretty much useless for you. Would require an heavy redesign to work like most modchips by hijacking traces instead of being a kind of man in the middle attack.

 

Keep up the fight guys!

I have a fair fair few broken dreamcast bits about my shed so if you need any spares let me know

 

what is happened w/ OzOne? didnt se news/replies from him.

 

any news or progress?

 

Mouser has some compatible connectors but are pricey:

http://uk.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...GAEpiMZZMvffgRu4KC1R/FJmTX9m%2bt/wbrYQmucO0Y=

 

Today, to my surprise, I received my Mouser samples (20 pieces) and the four Dreamcasts! Three rev 1's and one rev 0 (which I was hoping for). I'll have to look and see what exactly the differences are between the two revs and see if I can't get the board to work with both.

Cybdyn/OzOnE, if you need connectors for prototypes, I'd be willing to spare a few. Those Mouser parts look good, too, they just have a slightly higher mating height (20mm as opposed to the stock 18mm). Let me know.

 

Easy : REV0 is 5V, REV1 is 3,3V.

 

curious moment?! - if any difference between gd-drive of V0 and V1, especially parts on the gd-boards?

 

AFAIK the gd-rom boards are interchangeable between V0 and V1!

V0 bios and flash uses 5V instead of 3.3V as stated by Braintrash.

 

Deunan says this on his webpage here:

IMPORTANT: VA2 model is not compatible. Mating GDEMU with VA0 model mainboard is possible but will cause permanent damage to the device. See installation instructions.

 

@cybdyn

Do you have any progress on the development of DCIO also are you developing the DCIO alone or co op with OzOne?

 

i asked above, i dont know where OzOne?))) last time, i sent him firmware to chk it. and no reply. maybe he lost interest to this.
i thought he can test and make more vids or pics.

dcio is working, but not on 100%)) . GD (or emulation of GD mode) images works well, as i didnt meet game that is not working.
but - no cdda support yet, and cdi (or CD mode) and WIN-CE game doesn't work.
i think the reason same , problem somewhere in low level I/O. i,m trying figure out how to solve it when i have free time.
and i wrote above, dcio is complex, so i try make more simple/cheap device, similar to G1-IDE. it will use DreamShell as menu. but it will work as emulator.

 

Just installed my GDEmu, works great. I even installed a couple out-of-region GDIs, and as expected, they didn't work (my DC isn't region modded). But my utopia .cdi image does, and it will load the out-of-region 'discs' that are on the card. Bless that reindeer.

I can't imagine an easier-to-install replacement for an entire disc drive.

 

@can you try this tool to see if you can patch your gdi files thanks

View attachment 10541

 

It's simply a matter of changing a few bytes in the first 16 sectors of track03. I really don't know why deunan don't wanna implement region-free in his device, should be easier than anything else ...

 

For what it's worth, Deunan did mention that it's entirely a possibility in the future. ( http://gdemu.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/5050/comment-page-1/#comment-57 ) and yeah, I know I could likely just hex edit the files, I just haven't bothered with it yet, and wanted to see if the utopia method would even work. I couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't, but thought it'd be interesting anyway.

madsheep: Do you have src available? No offence, but I'm not really in the habit of running random exes

Also, to be honest I think I'd have liked to get the upcoming revision over this 5.0 version - literally the only thing securing the board down is the connector port. His 5.1 revision is going to be a wider board with a screw mount, which seems much more secure.