Making the Ultimate Combo Console

[lordofduct]

What if we just combined a sega CD, Saturn and DC?

Getting them all to share a laser would be near impossible, so I would just remove the motor that spins the disk from the sega cd and saturn, and arrange it so that the dreamcast motor would be connected to all of the system drives, while eachsystem would have it's own lazer, arranged like this a big T, with the motor where all the tracks join and each arm of the T representing the lazer track for a different system. then integrate them to shate a single video port with a built in switchbox and a shared power supply.
just a thought. easier than getting them to share a drive, anyway

Problem with this is that the motor speed is controlled by the CD-ROM intelligence. It has to know how fast the CD is spinning. When controlling 3 systems with 3 different speeds with the same motor you wouldn't be able to really do it. That and the connections can't be shared easily (Sega-CD doesn't have a variable speed motor like the DC, so it only has a couple pins where as the DC one has several and needs to be told what speed to run at).

Also when you extend the motor out, it would have to be a further distance, altering the resulting speed. And the 3 drives connected would add resistence also altering the speed. So even if the DC was able to tell it how fast to spin, the motor would spin at the speed, but the spindle further down the mechanism of pulley's wouldn't.

and also why... you'd still need three seperate trays anyways to work like this (so that the lasers would fit). Why even remove such a small part like the motor, when you'd still need all 3 trays?


As for the shared video... that actually isn't that hard (as long as you don't mind scrapping the VGA support of the Dreamcast). You'd just need a new composite encoder chip and put a tripole daisy switch for the sync, R, G, B between each video source (prior to their existing composite encoder chip)... and push them all into the more up to date chip. Then the tripole daisy switch could just swap connections in referrence to what system you activate at that moment. (using another external tripole switch for power that is linked with the daisy switch).


basic sketch

[carslayer]

The reason why i want it to share the motor is so that the lasers are all based around the center of one disk, so that there is only one tray to put your disk and a switch to select the console.i like the idea for compining multiple systems, but i dont like how you'd have cart slots and multiple disk drives sticking out all over the place. this (theoretically) solves that by cutting it all down to one disk tray, with all the lasers for each system sharing the same center motor.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

This has actually been done to a small degree. I remember seeing an article about one in Maximum PC magazine, (IIRC). The guy had built a PC that also had a Gamecube, XBox, PS2, NES, and Atari 2600 Jr. in it. I was hoping at one time to try something like that, but my soldering skills suck and my time and money is limited. I see no reason why someone couldn't build a system using a large PC tower case that contained most of the major cart based systems, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.

JY

[sotu]

I'm probably missing the point of this post but I'll ask anyway.

Why do this when there's a modded xbox which emulates all the systems you mentioned except, Saturn, DC and the next gen consoles. Dunno but for the money you'd spend on a project like this it just seems easier to me to get the xbox modded up and emulate away.

[racketboy]

Read my first reply to aaron on the first page -- that sums it up.

[The Apprentice]

Genesis + Saturn: Open a Saturn to install a Genesis 3 motherboard, and place the cartridge connector in the cartridge solt of the saturn. wire a switch to the cartridge slot, and when a game is in the slot you boot up the Genesis when you press the Saturns power button.

[All Hail The New Flesh]

I do have an idea for a combo console, I was thinking like combining a portable DVD player and a Dreamcast, I've done some sketching of it, I will upload it later