Saturn HDLoader

A) The games are expensive, particularly many of the good ones.
B) It's also very intriguing and exciting to see this home brewed hardware come to life. I'm likely going to wait awhile to see how jhl's project progresses. The concept of installing the board into the expansion/VCD card slot is really novel.

 

And hopefully we don't need to reconvert our CD Images and use generic numbering of the folders which makes it difficult to know what game is what.

 

x

 

Can you share the fw please? I'd like to test it on my rhea but I can't find it on the official blog
Thank you in advance

 

which firmware version is that Druid II? I'm using 3.01 which DK sent me after a few audio issues (which were all fixed in the 3.01 fw)
Currently I still convert all images to CDI - as it only takes a few seconds once mounted in daemon tools - then use madsheep's GDEMU_SD program to prepare the SD card and copy the cdi's (remembering to make a game index too lol)

 

x

 

These were the ones I had issues with:

The first one was the Twinklestar Sprites Omake CD in ccd/img/sub format, froze on start up - but after mounting the disc in daemon tools and converting it to cdi it worked perfectly (since then I convert all images to cdi as it does not take long)

The others were:

*All verified dumps except GunFrontier Arcade Gears & Terra Cresta 3D - all NTSC-J, mounted in daemon tools and converted to cdi

Batsugun (Garbled audio - game plays fine) (Trurip)
Layer Section (Garbled audio - game plays fine) (Trurip)
Layer Section 2 (Garbled audio - game plays fine) (Trurip)
Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo Kanpekihen (Garbled audio - game plays fine) (Redump)
Terra Cresta 3D (Garbled audio on the intro/title/select screen - audio fine after game has started)
**Note** Be aware if you test this one as the game will automatically change your console language to Japanese lol!

Capcom Generations Vol 3 (Garbled audio and game freezes to a black screen) (Trurip)
Gun Frontier Arcade Gears (Garbled audio and game freezes to a white screen)

However I'm happy to say that after installing the 3.01 firmware all played fine (but in all fairness I will need to give the titles a longer playthrough to be 100% sure)

 

Could someone post a detail review of Rhea? The current limitation and compatibility issues.

Thanks.

 

Maybe I missed it but does this support sdxc?

 

a saturn hd loader would be sweet

 

https://github.com/tpunix/SAROO

Looks like Saroo has put it as open source similar to the SD2snes.

 

Wow, thanks you for the news !!! It's only 09:27 AM here, but you already made my day :]

 

It is opensource now indeed, and that's great. More than that, it works, you can find some videos in the net. But the project still have some problems unsolved, so simply compiling github sources won't give you a complete HD loader. I'm poking it now, looking for some way to improve it.

 

I personally don't plan to build an HD loader, because of use of BGA parts, etc.
However, I'm very interested in SMT32 sources, because it will give me sample code in order to start toying with micro controller :]
I'm looking forward you to improve its hardware, I'm ready to write software for it if needed

 

I would definitely be interested in buying one of these if someone made them.

 

So what is broken on it or the problems? I'd like to build me one assuming programming the firmware on it won't be too difficult since it's useless without the firmware to run software off the SD Card.

 

Currently FMV playback freezes saturn. I'm not too deep yet to tell specific details, but i will be soon.
FPGA firmware is loadable thru MCU, and to program MCU you'll need some STM32-capable JTAG cable (ST sells their ST-link for $20 with free programmer software).

 

So you can't program the FPGA without it even though there seems to be 2 Jtag headers on the board. Either way the cable is inexpensive but trying to source all those components on Digikey has turned up no results, maybe we look for alternatives (not the FPGA and MCU) but the other components U8,U9,U10,U11 are not available on Digikey but I haven't looked at other suppliers either.

 

You can program FPGA via JTAG header. What i meant is that you don't need to do so, unless you do FPGA debugging, so you don't need ByteBlaster (or compatible) cable, simply putting FPGA firmware onto SD card will do.

Cyclones are available from digikey, maybe with a different speed grade. U8 is actually a SST25VF080B (not FV), it's a typo in schematics. U9 and U10 (MP1482) are available at Mouser, and have a few direct drop-in replacements, for example NX7101 from Microsemi. The same goes for U10, any 250mA 2.5V LDO will do (for example MCP1700T-2502E/TT). Beware, LDO on my board is rotated, so maybe there's a mistake in LDO's pinout.

 

I'm excited to see a release out of this! I'd also love to see JHL's card release, but why not both?