Dreamcast GDRom Dive replacement finally found!

[benderx]

What the hell, looks like it came from the Future.

[D.D.D.]

The Wii has something like this already called WODE, Wii Optical Drive Emulator.

There's also the WiiKey Fusion which will let you boot games off an SD card. And, as I recently found out, because it works in Gamecube mode people were able to get the Fusion to work on an actual Gamecube. So you can completely bypass the optical drive in a Cube and boot games off an SD card.

As far at it seems, it doesn't seem to have better compatibility than the WODE...

[BRIK]

I wonder what those LED numbers are for. Just to make it look cool? Probably.

[Alexx]

It looks great

But tell me is it expensive

[Anthony817]

The board he is using now is a prototype board for developing the code that allows this to act like a GDR drive. It gets the system calls and stuff and he try's to emulate them in this piece of technology.

That board is only for testing purposes, and as such, is bigger than the final version will be. I know that particular board goes for $125, but they do sell MUCH smaller boards on ebay for about $50. He just needs to perfect it, and shrink it and HOPE that it gets much smaller.

I would hope it cost no more than $75 when all said and done, but as said before, it is still very early in the development stage to quite know for sure.

As it is now, this thing has like 100% compatibility with everything homebrew emulators and retail, he only had a slight problem with 1 game, but for the most part, the original SD adapters were like less than 10% compatible with retail games, so with this, full Gdr rips of your retail discs can be ripped and stored on your sd cards.

[Ziggy]

SD adapters were like less than 10% compatible with retail games

WTF, for real? I had on idea the compatibility was that bad with the SD adapters. Why the hell would you even want one then. What is that, like 15 games?

[Anthony817]

SD adapters were like less than 10% compatible with retail games

WTF, for real? I had on idea the compatibility was that bad with the SD adapters. Why the hell would you even want one then. What is that, like 15 games?

Why the hell? Because I do. I have said time and time again that it is for EMULATORS.

The fact that it exists in the first place and that it can play anything at all from a lowly serial port should be impressive in its own right.

It has 99% compatibility with all homebrews and emulators anyway.

If you can't see the appeal of it, then please don't knock it till you have tried it.

Btw, there were over 700 retail games for Dreamcast, you do the math, probably like closer to 100 games if we tested all 700, maybe even more than 100.

Anyway, we have almost 250 sdiso's at isozone, so you could go through that list and count all the games and then you will see what all we have done.

[vlame]

this can be created to make the dc regionless and keep bios updated (i recall correctly there is an alt bios, right?)?

[Anthony817]

this can be created to make the dc regionless and keep bios updated (i recall correctly there is an alt bios, right?)?

Yes, there are even Dev Box bios's you can use, but the biggest one right now is Dreamshell, as it is a full operating system, much like windows on PC is, and it allows you to already boot games from a front-end.

The guy making this thing though said there needs to be a special iso image that is the front-end that browses for all other files, but he won't be making one.

Keep in mind the only way you can use a different bios is still with a modchip however.

[Ziggy]

SD adapters were like less than 10% compatible with retail games

WTF, for real? I had on idea the compatibility was that bad with the SD adapters. Why the hell would you even want one then. What is that, like 15 games?

Why the hell? Because I do. I have said time and time again that it is for EMULATORS.

The fact that it exists in the first place and that it can play anything at all from a lowly serial port should be impressive in its own right.

It has 99% compatibility with all homebrews and emulators anyway.

If you can't see the appeal of it, then please don't knock it till you have tried it.

Btw, there were over 700 retail games for Dreamcast, you do the math, probably like closer to 100 games if we tested all 700, maybe even more than 100.

Anyway, we have almost 250 sdiso's at isozone, so you could go through that list and count all the games and then you will see what all we have done.

Why so defensive?

Perhaps I should have said "Why the hell would anyone even want one then?" instead of "Why the hell would you even want one then?" I wasn't talking about you in particular. It was a generic you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you

I couldn't see the appeal of it, that's why I asked. That was a genuine question, you just mistook it for sarcasm or something. I wasn't knocking it.

And while I'm not aware of the exact number of retail Dreamcast games, I am fully aware that 15 is 10% of 150. That was sarcasm.

Don't think I'm mad I'm just pointing out that you completely took my post the wrong way.