HDD Mods on Fifth Generation Consoles.

[LentFilms]

With the recent release of the 3DO IDE hard drive adapter and the soon to come out PSIO, It got me thinking weather a similar method could be used to mod other 32-bit consoles to load games from an HDD.

Do you guys think this would even be physically possible with something like the Sega Saturn or even the Dreamcast (though that’s not 32-bit, but still)?

[Drakon]

There's a video of a guy who loads dreamcast games off of a sd card (I'm too lazy to look for it). However the sd card doesn't have the correct read timing so some games don't run right.

[LentFilms]

From what I've heard games will never run correctly using that method since the SD card reader is limited to the speed of the Dreamcast's serial port, which is slow and definitely not as fast as the GD-rom drive.

[d123456]

With the recent release of the 3DO IDE hard drive adapter and the soon to come out PSIO, It got me thinking weather a similar method could be used to mod other 32-bit consoles to load games from an HDD.

Do you guys think this would even be physically possible with something like the Sega Saturn or even the Dreamcast (though that’s not 32-bit, but still)?

Thanks for the psio link, WANT. Please let us know if anything develops.
As for the dreamcast sd reader, this forum has a huge awesome thread dedicated to it. Several games run at full speed.

[Ziggy]

Some one posted about some prototyping some one was doing with the Dreamcast. It wasn't the serial port SD card adapter, it was something else that was only in the prototyping stage. Perhaps some one recalls what thread that was or has the link handy.

I'm all for devices like these! Optical drives are the weakest link. For consoles that use optical drives, being able to boot games from a hard drive, memory card or other medium is a huge must in my book. Hopefully some day we'll have worthy examples of devices like this for all of our mainstream retro consoles.

[neilencio]

Some one posted about some prototyping some one was doing with the Dreamcast. It wasn't the serial port SD card adapter, it was something else that was only in the prototyping stage. Perhaps some one recalls what thread that was or has the link handy.

I don't know if this is what you're are referring to, but DKnute(of DeMul) was working on a thingamajig that could run straight dumps off of an SD card attached to an FPGA, which itself is attached to the Dreamcast motherboard while emulating a GD rom drive.

[Ziggy]

^ Yup, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Has there been any progress worth noting?

[neilencio]

I don't really follow his blog that much, but based on what I've read in the past, it's been put on hold and not really a priority (primarily because it's already functioning well, with his concern being that he needs to find a way to make the whole thing smaller and more practical).

Also, I think he's only making it just for kicks, and has no plans of making something that can be marketed (unlike the SD card adaptor thing).

[SGGG2]

Also, I think he's only making it just for kicks, and has no plans of making something that can be marketed (unlike the SD card adaptor thing).

He's stated that it's going to be released to market. OzOnE @ Assembler has made progress with something similar and has released the code to anyone that's interested.

[neilencio]

I see, thanks for clarifying. I'm glad I was wrong, because it means our 'casts will have a life after the GDrom drives have failed.