Saturn CD Block ROM dumped

Great to check in and learn of all the progress! I really am enthused by the use of the expansion port (easy installation and ANY Saturn model can be used).

I had two low import questions. Would you expect the board w/ SD card you make to fully fit inside the expansion so the cover can be closed (same size as VCD Card)? Obviously if you were using a USB interface to a HDD this wouldn't happen. Will the user still be able to run game discs with your card installed?

PS: Is there an official name to this project yes?

 

This is simply amazing! After almost 20 years... I still can't believe this is happening.

Great work! I can't wait to see more.

 

Great progress so far guys! can't wait till that device is finalized and ready for shipment/selling

 

If SD is included, then yes, the cover will close. I'm also considering setting back the USB port from the opening, so if you want to remove the CD drive and implant a 2.5" HDD, you can run the cable internally.

Yeah. If you power on the Saturn with a (legit) game disc inside, the mod won't even load at all - 100% authentic experience.

Not yet... how about "sudo saturn"?

 

I like it! :encouragement:

My first thought was "those are some bad search terms for people looking for help, they'll just end up in some unix forum", but it seems that word combo isn't too common.

 

I apology if my question has already been answered, I wanted to ask if it possible to make an "ultimate" saturn cart, meaning it could have rom, ram and saving capabilities all in one. If you can do that, I'm pretty sure you're going to blow out the whole Saturn community. While RAM cartridges are not rare, ROM ones if I'm not mistaken are non existent. So a multi-cartridge would be fantastic!

 

I'm pretty sure that the Action Replay and the USB dev cartridge both fulfill some or all of those requirements.

This is not a cartridge in the usual sense. It does not go in the top slot and does not provide any RAM. (That means, of course, you can use standard RAM carts with it, with no problem.)

 

ROM (do you mean emulating KOF/whatever cartridges ?), RAM and backup may be possible in a future revision of USB dev cart.

But as jhl said, ROM and RAM can't be possible with only a MPEG cartridge-like solution, because there's no connection to theses address spaces available on MPEG cart connector.

 

But it will do region patching, so that takes some of the need away from the RAM carts. In any case, they are very cheap and only used by these games.

 

Back to the original topic.

The dumps I have of CDB105 and YGR022 differ in the addition of less than a dozen instructions in the CD-ROM LSI setup pathway. The new code reads from PC0 and sets some flags in the LSI if it's high.

This pin corresponds to the HIC/JVC jumper selection for drive type in the Saturn Karaoke Commander (SKC-1000C), which was fitted with a CDB106 and YGR019 combo. That suggests that the YGR022 ROM is, indeed, identical to CDB106.

 

Any update on your project, jhl?

 

As I mentioned, I'm exceedingly busy with the rest of my life at the moment. I'll definitely post when I have some interesting progress, no fear!

 

Ok so why hasn't this SH-1 code dump been used to improve the state of Saturn emulation? (presumably emulating the SH-1 instead of simulating its internals would be more accurate)

 

Hi, this post is really interesting!! How could I access to that dumped code? I wold like to try to run on my own saturn emulator, since as jonwil has mentioned... Saturn emulation CD-BLOCK has to be improved

Really nice work jhl

 

Mostly because it's a lot of work and nobody has had the time.

Emulating the SH-1 is accurate, but complex, and burns a lot of pointless cycles. It would certainly be useful to run even a bad CDB emulator side-by-side with an HLE to detect misbehaviours, but even that is hard going.

There's a bunch of things that could be done just based on the disassembly of the ROM contents, like implementing some of the more mysterious transfer commands. Again -- needs the appropriate people to have the time.

Time time time time time. (I accept donations of time.)

 

Hi jhl, At this time I have that "TIME". Understanding CD-block is a hard task since some documentation is really hard to find (meaning impossible)

 

Any updates jhl? also bumping thread and will there be a OS menu seeing that the intent is for running isos can unsigned code run for instance homebrew aswell? I guess like the Wii's HBC with different selctable applications?

P.S. I have read the whole post so if this was already answered and i missed it please correct me

 

The last time I worked on this I got up to loading files happily from a USB key. I don't have any time to work on this again until I finish my PhD, though (~2 months). I'll be posting updates again as soon as I can.

I will release a basic menu code that is just designed to boot ISOs. The menu code will be open source, so it can be extended in any way you like.

 

This sound awesome. I too used to browse Segaxtreme and other forums and consider them a ghost town. I thought that nobody really cared about developing anything on the Saturn, let alone a CD-ROM Emulator WOW! It is truly a worthwhile project and I can't wait till it's out. I'm standing in line now with money in my hand.

 

Bumping the thread, and congratulating JHL for the hard work. Hope I can be as bright as a reverse engineer as you are! And I'd be one of the firsts buying this hardware