Saturn Optical Drive Emulator

I believe so, but I'm not sure on what the ranking on that will be, i.e. level of $, length of time supporting, etc.

 

I'm just became a patron. I hope get into the pre-order list.

 

Question: Will this sort the filenames on the SD card? (Everdrives, for instance, don't sort filenames.)

 

It certainly could alphabetically sort files for you. Some of the EverDrive cartridges do while others don't I believe. I think it might be left out in some projects cause it's just simpler that way. Another reason would be when you have hundreds of files in a directory it can take some time to sort all those into a list and that can actually take significant time on some of the more limited game systems. That shouldn't be an issue on a system like the Saturn.

 

I've always wished for a searchable DB of sorts. You could sort by letter, genre, year, multiplayer, etc. I don't know if the FPGAs in these flash carts are capable of that sort of thing but it'd be awesome. Even if the DB had to be build while the card was connected to a PC.

 

When is this going to release? Been waiting

 

I'm sure he has more going on in life than developing a piracy device for a 25 year old video game console that already has a working solution released.

 

I was definitely up for this until he mentioned in his recent Patreon post that the USB isn't being used for plug-in storage. I can understand SD for flash cartridges because cartridge game sizes were small. For CD system replacement, USB should be the way to go because of the greater storage it offers. The fact there is a USB on the board means it hopefully will be used for that purpose later on. Just a shame it's not from the outset.

 

Ha! Well I don't know how his beta is proceeding, but the Prof has said multiple times that he hasn't locked in the manufacturing/distribution arm quite yet. He's been keen on having it all settled upfront, rather than release small batches to start. That said, yes, the wait has been excruciating!

Well I concur that USB should be an option, although the PSIO and all of Deunan's options (GDEMU, Phoebe/Rhea, Doc Brown) are SD-only for disc-based systems. I think 512GB SDXC cards are already readily available though, and for the most part, SD media is about on pace with USB media.

 

There are roughly 1,000 Saturn titles released worldwide. (Far less actually worth playing!) If we use a conservative average of 500mb per title, that's roughly 500gb worth of data needed for a full Saturn game collection on a storage medium. 512gb SD cards exist at a reasonable price, so I don't really see the fuss over this.

 

It's not really a fuss, it's just a waste he's not using the USB since it's there. And yes there are 512GB SD cards available now but they aren't what I would call cheap when I can buy a 1tb portable USB HD for less than half of a 512GB SD. The Prof even states on his Patreon page "The ultimate goal is to release the Satiator: a card that brings USB booting to the Sega Saturn."
Oh well...

 

I was also disappointed when I read that its only loading from SD card. But honestly, after spending time playing with the PSIO, I don't think its a big deal anymore. I initially wanted to have the whole Saturn library on a USB-HDD too, but with a 256gb SD card i'll have every game I would likely ever want to play.

 

My full redump set from ~January (Not sure what else has been added but it was complete as of then) clocks in at 745GB. This includes all sorts of things like Betas, demo disks, different versions of the same game, etc.

I think the bigger issue will be speed. The Phoebe I have gets really slow with a ton of games and from what I understand so does the GDEMU. Hopefully the Satiator will be snappy. Good news though for those of us with redump sets, the Satiator will support bin/cue as well as multi bin/cue. This alone will make it much easier to use than the Phoebe/Rhea.