Saturn HDLoader

Well it's being made in China, so perhaps that will make it cheaper? There's also a bit of an arms race on Saturn, all with different interfaces on three different projects. Whoever gets there first could reap the most success.

 

Maybe soldering/assembling costs will be cheaper in China, and if hdloader author produces this cartridge in large quantities, parts cost may be reduced a little, but it will probably be more expensive than other solutions anyway.

And yes, it is good to see a lot of ARM-based homebrew stuff for our Saturns

 

Getting their product out first probably won't make them the most successful. There might be some people that jump on the first thing available and settle for it. But many others may wait for the product they think is best. And even if you're first, if your product is greatly inferior to what comes later then you're in trouble.

I'm interested in the Saturn project that uses the MPEG card slot. I'd rather not have something that goes into the Cartridge slot. That's where the 4MB RAM cart belongs.

 

Now that Rhea is finished. Has anyone purchase one and can tell us how well it performs?

https://gdemu.wordpress.com

 

x

 

How did you get one? Which I could have picked one up.

 

It saves on Card?

 

He offered up the 1st batch (20 pin only) on 11-20. I doubt hes still taking orders for it. I think hes still working on the 20/21 pin version. Just keep an eye on his blog:
https://gdemu.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/cold-is-here/

no, it just emulates the cd rom drive, like how his GDEMU works.


Mine should be here in a couple days. Its currently at the mail hub in Dallas.

 

how much was it? 130eur?

 

Yeah, 130 euro. A bit pricey but it included shipping.

 

Hopefully he can start a webstore like Krizz has done once development on the product is working good. I'd be super interested in something like this, same with the GDEMU as well.

 

The price is just incredibly high... no way i'll dish out that much ever!

 

looking forwards too seeing how it does.

 

It's not though, it's right in line with what other creators of these products charge.

 

It might go down a tad now that mass production is possible, but I wouldn't expect to pay much below 100 for it any time soon. Still not sure if I want to bite that bullet myself...

 

Agreed. It's totally inline with something like a mega everdrive. The second the dreamcast and saturn versions become easily available I will grab them!

 

The crazy thing is - you could buy a retail saturn and (probably) all the games you really like for less than 100 euros... I'd buy this and GD-Emu eventually, but when you weigh it all up, these things probably aren't the best saving in the world.

I'm curious, though. Looking at both Rhea and GDEmu - how much do the parts cost to make these devices (just the parts, not the labour) - Does anyone have a vague idea?

 

Maybe you bought all of your games in the 90s? Saturn games are extremely expensive. One of my favorite games for the saturn, hyper duel is almost $400 USD.

 

Saturn games are quite expensive.

As for price, PCB alone probably cost quite a bit already (since it is still a low production run). Price on these ODE is really what you expect, not shocking really.

 

I have a Rhea and am very impressed by how perfect it works.

Games definitely seem to load faster (although not as quick as my dreamcast with the GDemu).

As for price it's certainly not overpriced! If you think so you need to research how much certain Saturn games go for and consider all the time and effort that's gone into making this.