DREAMCAST HARD DRIVE (POSSIBLE-YES)

Discuss modifications you have done or plan to do to your Dreamcast or any other hardware, or discuss devices you want to build. If your console does not work or is acting up, ask about fixing it in here.
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Post by Sir Savant »

Zip drives are crap. Better off using the thumb drives.

Actually, I am really thinking about this. After I finish up some coding for a project I entered and get out of that project, I am going to actively pursue this. It will come out just in time for the PS9 release. I know there is skepticism and some people think I am just an idiot by even trying to defend my idea, but Im gonna at least try so that way I dont try something stupid again. I may even learn something.

But I guess it is kinda pointless. I mean, how many dc fanatics are going to buy a zip or hard drive just for a homebrew game :?: And I wont even succeed. Well, good luck pyrosurfer!
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Post by Pyrosurfer »

Forgot to ask, Kamjin, how hard would it be implement DMA? I realize you would have to make a new driver, but would the hardware part of it be hard to design? People were saying it is the lack of DMA that made it so slow.

I'm also tied down at the moment, I won't be able to start till months later.
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Post by Vchat20 »

recheck one of the earlier DCHD threads, i remember the DMA issue being discussed before, but am sketchy on the details.
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Post by Alexvrb »

DMA and interrupts, too.
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Post by Kamjin »

DC's DMAC wasn't designed for it, so it would have to be implemented via some sort of controller, which would make it to complex for hobbiests..

Even a software driver is fast enough.. up to the mid 90's dma for HD's on IBM type PC's was practically non existant, and in general the use of the hd would be homebrew/bsd/linux. which still proves more than fast enough, even if you reach speed of 1mb/sec with all the other program overhead, consider the largest existing HB game would take 4-6 seconds to load into memory. Even to store your mp3's and Oggs.. it's more than fast enough, to stream them off the HD. In reality you should be able to get 1-2MB/s with game/app overhead included.

I still think a HD is a fun idea, even with a simple filesystem, and a cute gui, it can be used to load all the Hombrew that's single file w/o modification, emu's can be compiled with hd drivers to look for rom's on the HD etc.. For homebrew dev it's also a nicety for those who don't have a bba, simply use the HD to store all the data files, and just use serial up the main executable.
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Post by Alexvrb »

Yeah, IDE HDs in PCs to this day still eat up a lot of cycles when they're in use. Enough that you don't want to stream during gameplay, for instance. But that kind of eliminates use for swap space, at least in stuff like emulators.
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Post by <(00<)bluepunk(> »

IF some one really took the time and money thats really needed you could proably end up with a HDadvance type product like for the PS2 and that might be one of the uses for it. Back up your DC games on the HDD and run the games off of that. Would be cool and have faster load times and save the Gdroms life.
I was stupid enough to keep putting a warez link into my sig.. even after an admin removed it.. twice... I'm such a bloody moron. Oh well.. and now i'm banned too. boo hoo.
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Post by Skynet »

Which is where the warez comes into it :roll:
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Post by Vchat20 »

not really. while in a slight sense it does involve warez, morally, if you own the original game and know how to make a backup of it, its perfeclty fine, although it may not be legal in this corrupt country of ours :roll:

but the HD idea is still way down the road. we may see it, but is far down there. here are some problems:

-no widespread production of the hardware. only available to those who can build one.

-homebrew software to take advantage of it

-if using it as a replacement for the gd-rom, only one game could be loaded at a time (correct me if im wrong here) if using commercial games. homebrew sbi's would work fine.


dont get me wrong, id love to see a HD adapter made and supported even by just a small fraction of homebrew games. ive got a small 3GB hard drive sitting here unused and even it would make an awesome storage device for the DC. but i just dont see it becoming widespread. this is more of one of those things that is not feasible in a homebrew sense, but rather something that should have (or could have) been built by Sega themselves or a licensed professional hardware developer (such as Iomega or Madcatz, etc..)
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Post by <(00<)bluepunk(> »

<(00<)bluepunk(> wrote:IF some one really took the time and money thats really needed you could proably end up with a HDadvance type product like for the PS2 and that might be one of the uses for it. Back up your DC games on the HDD and run the games off of that. Would be cool and have faster load times and save the Gdroms life.
This would also improve the use of running linux on the DC.

Hmmm i got thinking sense Linux detects all hardware couldnt you Install the live cd on the DC or hardrive and then start poping in GDroms and backing them up on there. BRILLIANT :D But then you would have to find a way to run the games from the Hardrive. Could also help some of the offline games go back online by modifying the Iso and putting in new IP address so it connects to the Euro servers for PSO (phantasy star online) :idea:
I was stupid enough to keep putting a warez link into my sig.. even after an admin removed it.. twice... I'm such a bloody moron. Oh well.. and now i'm banned too. boo hoo.
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Post by Matt »

In theory you could, but running the games from the harddrive would be hard, but bluepunk, thats warez, again.
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Post by Pyrosurfer »

Dan Potter got homebrew to run off his. It would be too slow for commercial games.
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Post by LordFenixNC »

i have a question could u trike the DC into thinking its a VMU or somthing
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Post by Prophet][ »

LordFenixNC wrote:i have a question could u trike the DC into thinking its a VMU or somthing
no.

IF you could make the HDD a VMU it would only display 200 blocks anyway as the size of a vmu is set by the DC not the vmu it self
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Post by Caboose »

what if it was seperated into banks like the mega memory cards.
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Post by Pyrosurfer »

Homebrew could store however many saves on the hdd as you wanted. Commercial games would not work at all with it though, unless you hacked the game.
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Post by FETUS »

I'm drivin down to iomega in the morning I'm gonna kick the guard in his no no place and get you those plans.
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Post by Quzar »

FETUS wrote:I'm drivin down to iomega in the morning I'm gonna kick the guard in his no no place and get you those plans.
:rofl:
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Post by Zealous zerotype »

FETUS wrote:I'm drivin down to iomega in the morning I'm gonna kick the guard in his no no place and get you those plans.
Scream dc r0x!!!111 for us.
SCO=SCUM=M$=SCO it keeps repeating :P
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Post by Alexvrb »

Like this? dee cee arr zero ex exclaimation pointexclaimation pointexclaimation point oneoneone
If you have twenty monkeys,
banging randomly on typewriters,
they will in twenty minutes produce the complete source code to World of Warcraft.
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