People need to FORGET about rigging something on place of the LASER PICKUP for drive emulation. It would require simulation of the pickups physics behavior including the generation of very high frequency analog signals for the photo diodes simulation. The optical pickup is an ANALOG device and emulating it would be a LOT more complex than completely bypassing the drive hardware and hooking right by the optical drive interface on the system bus. Devices like the WODE or SUNDRIVE do replace the whole Wii optical drive, by mimicking it's behavior and making the Wii believe it's talking to an Matsushita DVD drive as it would should it be running on it's original configuration. The drive replacement approach is perfect for machines like the 3DO(early models), Dreamcast, Nintendo Game Cube or Nintendo Wii where the optical drive is completely assembled in a separated board which can be disconnected from the main board. In the case of the 3DO, the drive protocol is the same as early/old Panasonic CD-ROM drives (Sound Blaster cards pre ATAPI) and on the others DC, GC and Wii the protocol is custom but bus signaling is obviously using the ATAPI hardware specs. So IMHO hooking on the optical pickup connector is not feasible/affordable but hooking on the drive interface is. Perhaps in the case of the Saturn it's doable through the cartridge slot ?
No, he is not right. He said it circumvented the CD Drive. That's not true at all. It lets you perform a swap trick. That's all. The only way to circumvent the CD Drive is to apply a modchip to feed the bitstream of security codes. The way he said it made it sound like plugging a device in the port was equivilent to modding the system with a chip. Edit: Oliveira, so it sounds like the PS1 would pretty much require replacing the drive controller chip or something like that then? Doesn't seem feasible at all since no one wants to desolder those chips.
It probably doesn't need saying, but a little pro-tip for l_oliveira: NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE 3DO. Nobody cares about it now, and nobody will ever care about it in the future.
I feel a little bit of hate on your words towards the 3DO system. Anyway, I just used it as an example because most models do have the CD-ROM drive separated from the main board just like the other machines I mentioned on my example. Playstation and Playstation2 on the other side have their optical drive logic embedded on the main board, making such modifications much, much harder. :shrug: That's the whole point of my post ... And since I'm already typing, let me say a thing about the PS2: The "hijacking" of the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM interface made by HD LOADER and similar software is only possible because the PS2 uses a sort of software device driver (CDVDMAN) to interface the user application (GAME) with the SONY hardware. On the PS1 that exists too, but the PS1 is a bit limited on memory space making an software based approach similar to HDLOADER almost impossible.
Lol I love my 3DO. Although I have a Goldstar 3DO so it's very possible that anything that ends up being made wouldn't work for my 3DO
Well, I play my PS1 games on my PC normally with ePSXe, and all the video hardware acceleration. Looks way better.
I think it's safe to assume everyone in this thread is aware of PC emulators. Certainly anyone who understands the appeal of a solid-state storage device to replace the PSX's optical drive will be well aware of ePSXe - obviously it's the cheapest and easiest solution, being that it's free and takes a matter of minutes to download and set up. The kind of hardware device we're talking about only appeals to people who prefer to use the original hardware.
Which is the point of things like EVERDRIVE. Hence we having the conversation about optical drive emulation here. Talkling about PC emulators is offtopic on this thread, IMHO. :shrug:
Sorry, no hate intended, I just think it's a pipedream to want such a development for such a highly niche console.
If I tell you that some russian hackers actually made an "translator" device which translates the Panasonic/Sanyo protocol into ATAPI (allows the use of standard PC CD-ROM drives ? :lol: Niche enough, some hackers made an EXI to ATAPI adapter for the Nintendo Game Cube as well. EXI is the name Nintendo gave to the SD-CARD like bus interface the Nintendo Game Cube and Wii have inside for peripheral interconnection, including the memory cards, network adapter and such. :shrug: Another project, also on the Game Cube existed where the goal was to replace the DVD drive board with an ATA HDD.
Realistically as soon as this cartridge comes out, your Z64 will instantly drop in value. Right now these old copiers are the only way to play N64 ROMs on the real hardware other than the very expensive NeoFlash cartridge that costs so much you might as well buy a copier. But once this cart and/or Marshall's are available and for considering less money the value of any old copier is definitely going to drop. Basically you may want to sell it sooner rather than later if you want to get the most amount of money for it.
You're right. I guess i'm not expecting much from selling it. The z64 (v2) was the perfect n64 copier because of the 10gb hdd mod, but yes it will be less desired once this flash cart comes out.... But then again, what's the market like for flash carts anyway? Krikzz - Just my 2 cents, but I believe you would reap the benefits if you started marketing your products via other channels. There are just too many people out there who don't know about flash carts and their capabilities, and the value they would receive from your products. There are just the few hundred diehard/hardcore retro console fans like us on this forum who stumbled across krikzz.com one day and voila. There are just a lot of people out there, especially on eBay, who are unaware that flash carts even exist. In Australia especially, friends and other people I know who play retro consoles but had no idea of what a flash cart is until I told them. They are still relying on their super wild cards and other ancient copiers Example: A few months ago, I witnessed a bidding war on a bunch of SWCDX2's (they were relisted one after the other). They sold in excess of $250 each. I emailed the seller and said "you know, I could buy a flash cart for approx $100, I believe your auction is overpriced. But i'll continue to watch it for entertainment". His response was: "there are no good flash carts out there. SWCDX2 is the best copier in the market". Well, he is obviously unaware of the everdrive products and retrozone's carts. Anyway, maybe the bidders were collectors and maybe they see SWCDX2 as the holy grail of copiers (I once did). But anyway, maybe if I sold my hdd modded z64 on eBay, well after the release of "everdrive64", i'm sure there will be some people who have no idea of these forums and krikzz.com. And then I could break even :dance:
it might be in krikzz's best interest to not draw 'too' much attention, I believe he currently builds and tests each cart himself without any real help? yeah, this is why I sold off my v64jr, compared to everdrive64 and marshall's cart it is very clunky and soon to be obselete. Right now I'm really looking towards marshall's primarly because of the level of polish he has given his cart's UI so far in his previews
We market the EverDrive pretty well on many forums, YouTube, and other mediums. You may see the EverDrive-MD reviewed by Classic Game Room sometime in the next few months. Gamester81 has also already done reviews as well as others. These are all carts provided by us. We do not sell anything on eBay mainly due to their prices. Same with Amazon. From talking to Igor a lot he does not seem too interested in this part of the EverDrive. He enjoys developing them more than marketing and packaging. We are pretty proud of what we did for EverDrive-MD packaging and others to make them more "average consumer" friendly. Based on how many we sell it is working.
