Saturn Optical Drive Emulator

wauw..! That is just amazing.. Watched the entire video... Very nice to see what you have accomplished!!!

 

This. is. so. promising!

 

Hi, just heard about this great feat at another forum and signed up here to show my support.
This is the most exciting news I've heard in a long time. My Saturn's optical drive gave up the ghost back in 2014 so I bought 2 replacement Saturns to have jic. I refuse to use either as I'm terrified they'll die too. Ironically, I kept the non-functioning unit in case parts were ever readily available and now it will be perfect for this bypass.
Thank you so much for the work you're doing! This is saving the day and I for one intend to support heavily upon release.

 

Interesting video.

Must admit, I've never actually used a Saturn before. They aren't very common around me apparently.

 

Great Job, I was looking forward to this moment for years.

 

Just wanted to let anyone know there's two Saturn dev kits up for sale I found. eBay has one and so does yahoo jp saw them today

 

Very impressive, keep up the good work!

 

Wow totally awesome work, Cheers

 

Great work, great video. You do deserve your PhD. And a honoris causea one in reverse engineering.

Can't wait for the device!

@jhl, would a small USB stick fit inside the mpeg port with the pcb? I'd like it not to stick out.

Great job again!

 

Providing the device itself can be reduced in size (which looks as if it's very much possible), something like this would be ideal:

 

jhl I've got a few questions for you, but first I want to say thank you for being willing to SHARE your findings! One question I have is I wonder how you will handle multi-disc games like "Panzer Dragoon Saga" or any of the others, because you will need to emulate a lid opening but also allow for the user to select another image.

I'm curious if you intend to support ISO + Cue as I see in your video Bin + Cue on screen. Most of my backups also contain .wav files that are called in the cue file as well, I assume all this is handled, but I'm curious.

Next is about game saves, will your device allow for game saves to the storage device as well, or will we need new batteries and/or ram carts?

Last, is connectivity... it looks as though the usb on your dev board is micro usb, is the intention to use a full size usb for the retail board or is the micro the final decision?

OH! wait, one more thing... can you tell us which emulation software you are working with so we can also follow advancements on that as well?

Thank you again for your hard work, the true fans of the Saturn appreciate all your hard work and I personally can't wait to purchase one of your boards.

 

This isn't a problem. When a disc in Panzer Saga is done, you are given a screen with a prompt to save your game. You do so, you then open the lid and return to the CD player. Or if you want, you can even just power down the whole system. Put in the next disc, load the save file. Or in the case of this device, just go back to the disc select menu and pick the next iso

But don't take my word for it, see here at 51:35:

 

Just edited original post to discuss my planned feature set. *waits for raging arguments*

 

x

 

that's best dream come true
lets think more considering some great points :
- SegaSaturn modded with SSD hard drive inside to play backups no region requirements no ram cartridges requirements
- enhancement to video output at least to output component signal or HDMI
Finally if you can do the same with the great Sega DreamCast

 

You probably already though about theses, but in case of, can you provide (from SH-2 point of view) :
- A command to check if Satisfier is installed or not, and another one to retrieve its firmware version number
- A command to disable/enable Satisfier, in order to run games from CD-ROM drive (Rhea can't do this, and that's a pity).

And, when (approximately) will Satisfier be publicly available ? (PM me if that's a private info.)
That's in order to get an idea of priority to add Satisfier support in Pseudo Saturn Kai.

 

The Saturn outputs RGB from the factory. You can run this signal to any RGB to Component converter of your choosing.

There are already two drive replacement options available for the DC. GDEMU/USB-GDROM. So I'm not sure why there needs to be a third.

 

Please note that some Saturn models have sync issue with RGB if you use CSync(Composite Sync, Seperate Sync, what ever you want to call it). For instance my US model 2 has all sorts of problems with my RGB cable with CSync but works fines with the RGB cable I have that takes sync off the composite signal, but the japanese model 1 I have works fine with either cable.


Speaking of that Model 1, the laser or drive is dead in it so when this card comes out it is the first thing going into!
Question, it's not possible to change the saturn's address space to map the saturn's cartridge slot to this card and put the ram expansion onto is it?

 

That seems like a job for the menu to me.

Nope. You could use the breakpoint register to patch games similar to the AR though, I think.

The first already exists (well, without firmware version); there's a magic knock sequence that unlocks the advanced Satisfier modes which a non-Satisfier machine will ignore.
There will also be some way to bypass it (run games from CD drive), I haven't gotten there yet.

I'd guess early next year. There's still quite a bit to do and I have very little time.

Nope. It's on a totally different bus, which is part of why that cart port was not useful for anything else

 

How is this Different from "RHEA"?