Hard Drive

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Sun Oct 13, 2002 5:15 pm

I remember there was some talk of Sega making an attachable Zip hard drive.
I was wondering if anyone here or anywhere made any headway with that?

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Sun Oct 13, 2002 10:52 pm

It was under development but was never released sadly. It would have been a neat add-on though.

IGN in May 1999 wrote:Iomega announced this week that Sega has signed a non-binding letter of intent to include Iomega's popular Zip 100MB drive in a new collaborative product that will be designed to attach to Sega's Dreamcast system. The new product will also be designed to dramatically increase the capabilities of not only game playing, but Web-based activities such as content saving of e-mail and Web searches. In addition, Sega intends to sell private label Dreamcast Zip 100MB disks, offering both the device and disks in game-oriented channels. The collaborative product is expected to be offered as an option to Sega Dreamcast customers in the third quarter of 1999.

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Mon Oct 14, 2002 12:51 am

Well what i meant was.... (and thank you axe) has anyone in the Dev community been able to connect a hard drive whether, IDE or Zip, to the Dreamcast?

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Mon Oct 14, 2002 2:00 am

oh, well in that case, check out this link:
http://www.ma.nma.ne.jp/~ikehara/dc/

i think that's what you had in mind.

[UR4]Dutch · Post by **[UR4]Dutch** » Tue Oct 15, 2002 4:25 am

The Zip-drive would be great. Just think of all the possibilities.... Never have to use a VMU again (probably). All kinds of extra content like extra quests for PSO.

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Tue Oct 15, 2002 10:25 pm

someone needs to look into that!
i'm pretty sure the ingenious minds of this community can get an interface going for a Zip (hopefully 250 or more) Drive and the DC.

Post by **BlueCrab** » Wed Oct 16, 2002 4:42 am

But sadly it wouldn't work with commercial games. You can use this interface, but right now the only things that support it are LinuxDC (possibly, I'm not quite sure), NetBSD, and the navi part of KallistiOS.

NightHammer · Post by **NightHammer** » Wed Oct 16, 2002 9:32 am

I don't know too much about this stuff, but couldn't you write a boot program that fools the DC into thinking the ZIP (or whatever) is just a giant VMU? Like I said, I don't know too much, so I'm just guessing....

Later!
NightHammer

Prophet][ · Post by **Prophet][** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 5:53 am

The think is that if somethin were to act like a VMU, the DC can only read 200 blocks at a time. If you look at 4mb VM's you have to switch to different 200block chips.

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 4:23 pm

Prophet ][
The think is that if somethin were to act like a VMU, the DC can only read 200 blocks at a time. If you look at 4mb VM's you have to switch to different 200block chips.

Well how does the Xbox or PS2 HDD work?
I'm sure the Xbox or PS2 doesn't read the HDD like 8MB memory cards.

So couldn't we give the same functionality to the DC?
Maybe through some kind of BIOS upgrade??

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 5:25 pm

q_006 wrote:
Prophet ][
The think is that if somethin were to act like a VMU, the DC can only read 200 blocks at a time. If you look at 4mb VM's you have to switch to different 200block chips.

Well how does the Xbox or PS2 HDD work?
I'm sure the Xbox or PS2 doesn't read the HDD like 8MB memory cards.

So couldn't we give the same functionality to the DC?
Maybe through some kind of BIOS upgrade??

The thing is, with the Xbox and PS2 hard drives, games are designed with the hard disk in mind. Those games which use the hard drives are set up to read/write onto the hard drive at specific locations, but the dreamcast has no games that can make use of the extra storage because they weren't designed for it. Prophet ][, BlueCrab and NightHammer mean is that it could be possible to use something like a gameshark to 'trick' the games into thinking that the hard drive is actually a VMU and somehow write to that instead. However, you wouldn't be able to do much more then a normal VMU would be able to do because you are just emulating a VMU on the hard drive. But for homebrew software, the hard drive could be used for more.

hope that clear it up a bit.

NightHammer · Post by **NightHammer** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 5:51 pm

Is it possible to write a program that would allow you to choose that saves (be them blank or not) to use as the "VMU"? I understand that the HD (or ZIP) would only act like the VMU, holding only so much data, but is it possible to write somthing like that? Just a question.

Later!
NightHammer

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 6:19 pm

NightHammer wrote:Is it possible to write a program that would allow you to choose that saves (be them blank or not) to use as the "VMU"? I understand that the HD (or ZIP) would only act like the VMU, holding only so much data, but is it possible to write somthing like that? Just a question.

Later!
NightHammer

The way I see it, this could be possible (I'm probably wrong but,)

this way my first idea:

One way could be to take a game and use a hex editor to find where in the memory that the game accesses the VMU. Then change the values so that the game will access the expansion port directly, instead of saving to a VMU. You would also have to make it write to a certain location every time and access the same spot. This would probably be very tedious and take a long time to get to work, and would probably only work for one game, thus you would have to make new codes for each game.

then i thought of this:

If someone were to create a program that emulates the VMU on the HD, and then set the program up so that whenever a game tries to read from/write to a VMU, the program will see that the VMU is trying to be accessed, and by emulating a VMU, the game would send the VMU file to the program, and the program would then forward the data to a specific spot on the hard drive.

the second way seems like it would work in theory but i'm no expert on how to interface an IDE hard drive with the Dreamcast though I'm interested on learning how to make one

Prophet][ · Post by **Prophet][** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:59 pm

Does anyone know how that zip drive worked? did it use the serial port?

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 11:57 pm

I just found this out yeserday:

the Zip drive would have plugged into the console where the modem goes. Then when the modem is removed and the Zip drive in place, the modem attaches to the side of the Zip drive.

kinda hard to tell from the pic though.

q_006 · Post by **q_006** » Fri Oct 18, 2002 12:23 pm

well here's an interesting site:

DC Expandability

but here's an excerpt:

Sega has confirmed that a DVD-ROM drive will be available ("when the time is right") to those who wish to upgrade the Dreamcast's GD-ROM drive (which already holds over 50% more data than standard CDs). ... the Dreamcast's formidable chipset is upgrade-able.

So this must mean that there is a way to upgrade the DC and add other peripherals (mainly Zip Drive). Hopefully it'll be easy

0newinged · Post by **0newinged** » Fri Oct 18, 2002 2:19 pm

Well, It was originally planned that SEGA would be making upgrades available, but the idea never took off sadly. Mainly because SEGA ran out of funds to support the dreamcast and it would not be economical for them to pour out more money.

BTW that article was written 08.07.1999 so it's not really up to date, but it's interesting to see what could have been

Oh if you wan't to know a little about upgrades and the dremcast's chipset check out this thread:

http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=16391

Hard Drive

Hard Drive

clarity..... i need to learn that

i think that would be cool a zip drive for the DC.....

PS2?

Re: PS2?

A little info.....