StoneAgeGamer and Mnemo Fiasco

I'm surprised it hasn't surfaced yet - there were mountains of DC units in mainland PR China (leaving aside obvious overseas sales)... here's hoping it's just a matter of time.

 

heeeyyy wait a second...
so is all this GDEMU doing is loading up an image as a standard ATA drive?
Could one simple shoehorn something like a Wasabi360 or XKey, using a Sata to PATA adapter and changing the auto loaded image (iirc the Wasabi could load a iso up on boot (or default back when the image is ejected) that had a small menu system)

 

It's also nonsense and wouldn't work.

 

fair enough, just asking

 

I too agree that it doesn't work like that, but there's an interesting point in the vicinity. Directly wiring an parallel ATA hard drive seems to be possible without messing with the GDROM interface. I believe that Bad_Ad84 is even working on a neat board to do exactly that. If compatibility is good, then this whole GDROM emulator strategy might be less needed than initially thought.

Also note that the USB-GDROM by Mnemo is not the same as the GDEMU. That's right...there are two such products already that take this GDROM emulation strategy. Between these two and the Dreamshell+IDE/SD mod, retiring our dying GDROM drives should be very doable in the years to come.

 

I'd like to see a mod where you can still use the optical drive as well

 

Also working on that. But obviously harder install.

 

i think mnemo wants and is tryin to make his product rare and hard to get so he can charge a high price

 

No, unfortunately it's not that simple. The GD-ROM interface is pretty much electrically identical to an ATA port, just not using the standard connector - this is why you can just wire a hard drive to it and (providing you have the software to access it), it will work.

The thing is that ATA was originally designed only to support hard drives, so to support other types of devices (like CD-ROMs), you needed an other layer on top of it - for the PC, this was called the "ATA Packet Interface" or ATAPI. The GD-ROM drive doesn't use this - it uses another packet interface called the "Sega Packet Interface" (probably best not to call it SPI, since that's already used for something completely different).

So just hooking a standard converter on the bus won't do anything useful - the boot ROM will try and access the GD-ROM using the Sega packet interface commands, and the HDD will have absolutely no idea what to do with them.

 

I don't think it's a bad thing, really. Could it have been made a bit more concise? Probably. Did it need all that detail? Not really... but it's nice to hear the full story!

Sometimes, these things do read as sob stories, but I think it's important to illustrate that we're talking about someone who, whilst they may have made a great product, doesn't really have a head for business and his stubbornness (and perhaps greed) has soured the deal.

Also, glad you replied - I couldn't tag you as your name for some reason wouldn't show up in the auto tag!

I notice that the how to buy page doesn't work on his website. And the ultra basic design (if you can call it a design!) of the website. All rather ominous, really.

 

What is his website? I was looking to see if he'd posted any rebuttal to StoneAgeGamer's post.

 

http://3do-renovation.ru/

 

mnemo is selling the again for $187. only internal usb though

edit: ordering page down again

 

I have had dealings with NMEMO so I can understand Ryan's frustrations to an extent. I ordered a 3DO board and one of the original DC prototypes from him about 2 years ago. Back then, Paypal would not allow payments to be sent to Kazakhstan so I had to wire him the money (fortunately I found a UK company that let you send your first payment free). I received what I ordered and they both work well - but NMEMO was an incredibly awkward sumbitch!. Firstly, e-mailing him was a waste of time as he was always too slow to respond. I ended up having to return to the late 90's and install ICQ to communicate with him. Now, I don't know if it was a language barrier or a cultural thing but he just came across as (almost) robotic! Completely devoid of personality and absolutely no sense of humour. Still, I can't complain really because, transaction wise, he fulfilled my order and it's all good. But he's not the type of person I'd want to deal with again. Shame really as his products are pretty good although I've probably had more riveting conversations with them than I did the man himself.

 

I guess things will get better to Deunan after this

I'm pretty amazed, after reading all this, that my order went fine with Mnemo. Since I'm in a country with bad customs and my only way of sending payments if basically paypal.
I feel pretty luky now be to the owner of the 3d0-usb and the gd-rom usb.

And I never bought anything from SAG but everytime I talked to him he was very cordial to me.

 

I don't think anyone ordering from NMEMO will have a problem receiving it if it's just one or two boards. It just seems he can't (or won't) cope with bulk orders.

If I'd created a similar 3DO/DC USB board I'd be tripping over myself to get a distributor like SAG to sell it for me as they have so much more exposure to get the product out there. I really think NMEMO has shot himself in the foot with all this.

 

Yes, this is how a cartel operates, whether it be selling crude oil or drugs. It's a completely nonsensical way of doing business, but one has to assume he doesn't have the manpower, time or will to make enough boards to comply with demand. Therefore, since he can't make more boards to in turn make more money, he makes less and charges more. He should have worked with Krikzz or something like that.

Well there are those who bitched that SAG charged too much, but they're the ones taking on the risk here in trying to import the boards. Most people do not want to have to send money to Kazakhstan and try to communicate with MNEMO. $187 is still pretty hefty.

 

That pretty much sums it up.

 

Not likely because his product is the only one of it's type beyond the GDEMU. It's already a "rare" product.

What's far more likely is that he isn't interested in making a large sum of cash otherwise selling it at a lower price at a higher volume will net more profit over time than selling a handful of units at a high price. He's obviously greedy and short sighted. That is the truth of the matter.

Also dumb as shit. I can't imagine Russian courts could enforce his rights over production if it went to China.