I was thinking about making a SD card reader for my Dreamcasts, but cannot seem to find any link cables for sale? (to butcher) I was thinking of makeing an external one.
They sell SD Card Readers on eBay and other sites pre-built. I've been told SD cards via the serial port are slower than devices that use the GD-ROM connector. Hopefully someone on here much more knowledgeable than me can help you out though.
If you're considering building one because you want an internal SD slot rather than an adapter, @Helder sells pre-assembled quick-solder boards. It's what I have, I recommend Yes SD card doesn't have as much bandwidth as the GD-ROM interface. This is why GDEMU/USB-GD are more expensive but much better options for running disc images without a CD. SD cards also require a special format ISO. Called SDISOs
Does this mean that the SD card solution interfere with the game play, or is it just slow to start the game? People are always saying that the GD-ROM is of low quality and I was thinkig why not use SD images instead of ruining my drive. Also, Im planning to put a dreamcast inside my jamma cab, and it would be easier to throw in a SD rather than keep changing disks.
The games in many cases will not even load, or if they do most will stutter worse than Michael J Fox. CDDA audio and the game loading data and trying to play all at once severely hampers the serial SD readers. The whole reason there is now a GDEmu, USB Gdrom Controller, and the G1ATA IDE HDD mods are because the Serial interface was not ideal in any sense of the meaning. I would just save up the $120 or so and get the GDEmu, or in fact if you already have, or can mod or locate a Dreamcast with a Bios mod a much easier solution would be to buy one of those XCKDIY IDE Dreamshell adapters. You need the bios mod to load into Dreamshell since it completely replaces the disc drive, but you can get the thing for as low as $22 USD, not counting the cost of the bios mod or DC itself. http://assemblergames.com/l/threads...ard-inexpensive-gd-rom-hdd-replacement.60458/ I think out of all of the choices this would be the most feature rich and cost effective in the end. GDEmu you are limited by the size of current SD cards, and the USB GDRom Controller cost way too much for what the silicon on the board consist of. Obviously there is a huge demand and low supply so there you have the reason for the high price. Also, I must note none of these are 100% compatible with everything out there which require boot discs like Bleem or D2, and the Dreamshell solutions aren't at 100% compatibility either as they just recently got Windows CE game support. But they are all working towards full compatibility and I believe D2 is working on one of the 2 GDRom drive replacements with a new firmware update.
