Dreamcast GDRom Diver emulator!

[Anthony817]

http://dknute.livejournal.com/39276.html

[dakangel]

Easy man, take it easy, it's just a prototype. Even Deunan said that if you only want a free gd game emulator this will be only keep for his makaron tests.

It's a great thing but is very early.

[Anthony817]

Yeah he just said that now, not when I posted this 2 hours ago. I know I should have never told anybody and let him do what he wanted with it.

I was just posting Dreamcast news like I always do. Even with the SD adapters nobody ever mentioned pirating, we always said you have to rip your own GDR's

I agree though, shouldn't have jumped the gun, but I was only posting this where it was relevant to others.

[angelwolf71885]

this is interesting news hopefully he will detail how he did it
and maybe it could be ported to an Adriano compatible system

[Mystical]

very interesting

[8bitplus]

does it plug in to the modem port? or is that just for the development of the thing?

[Anthony817]

From his site he says this.

What you see on the photo is Dreamcast with it's cover off and the GD drive assembly removed. I cut some holes and soldered wires directly to the mainboard to avoid messing with the original connector. This way I can always plug the drive back in and use it as before - or even better, I can use FPGA as logic analyzer to watch the traffic.

So for now I think he soldered it to the board but plans on using a connector so it just plugs into the system later on.

[APE]

Its an altera FPGA. I'm not familiar with that specific model myself but that is how he did it. Time, energy, and likely a lot of VHDL.

EDIT: If I'm understanding his wording right (seems a bit odd) its a Cyclone II.

[Anthony817]

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=83

From what I understand he wants to shrink it down when he perfects it and use one of these things.

http://cgi.ebay.com/MCU-BOARD-STM32F...-/120562467483

He just needs something sufficient enough to keep up with the Dreamcast clock speeds.

[APE]

I'm sure there are FPGAs out there fast enough, the problem is that they tend to be a bit expensive.

[angelwolf71885]

i dont think they are that expensive then tincy and ardrinos tend to be speedy and popular and they dont really break 100 bucks often

[splith]

Are you joking? Arduinos are basically the same as PIC chips, they's slow and have a maximum of 18 pins, how're you going to interface with a propietry CDROM interface and an SD Card and RAM with 18 pins and something that can just about flash a few LEDs on and off.
CDROMs transfer data at ~3MBPS, arduino can just about manage serial at 115Kbps from what I remember.

[Bad_Ad84]

Are you joking? Arduinos are basically the same as PIC chips, they's slow and have a maximum of 18 pins, how're you going to interface with a propietry CDROM interface and an SD Card and RAM with 18 pins and something that can just about flash a few LEDs on and off.
CDROMs transfer data at ~3MBPS, arduino can just about manage serial at 115Kbps from what I remember.

^ this

Arduinos are no where near powerful enough to have any chance of doing this. Ever.

[H360]

i dont think they are that expensive then tincy and ardrinos tend to be speedy and popular and they dont really break 100 bucks often

:-(

hahaha. Arduino's can not do what an FPGA can do man...

The Arduino, has a very slow microcontroller with a limited amount of digital and analog inputs / outputs.

It is just out of the question to use one for this project.



Above all that, what he has done is excellent. Again, this is what I am now trying to acheive for my PS1 SD Card System.

http://www.haunted360.com/development-alterafpga.html

The board he is using, is an Altera DE1. You can see, he is using an external clock and not one of the 3 on-board oscillators.

Yes. It is a Cyclone II. It is actually a EP2C20F484C7 FBGA with 484 pins. It features,

1.2 volts core voltage,
18752 LE's,
315 I/O,
239616 Memory Bits,
52 Embedded Multipliers,
4 PLL's
and 16 Global Clocks.

[erkan]

PM me when its finished and I can order one, then give me directions to the online poll for the Saturn version :)

[Melchior]

Strange I was just wondering what happened to the DC IDE project.

There was a complete Modembus-to-ISA-to-IDE adapter built with nothing but common TTL parts and
scavenged connectors.

Using a FPGA is only needed to emulate the GD drive logic/software, correct ?

I think a practical GD-ROM replacement needs to patch the bios / interrupt routines and then have some simple CPLDs as glue logic to a CF-IDE drive. (Or IDE to SATA converter)

A MCU plus some cheap CPLDs and EEPROM with a fancy software can do all that ~
(the software becomes the complex component then... real-time interrupt patching and the horror )

[Anthony817]

Using a FPGA is only needed to emulate the GD drive logic/software, correct ?

Correct, he should be trying to shrink it down in size with a much cheaper board later too, for now this is only a prototype for developing, so still might be some time till it is released, but he said he is interested in selling them for a profit.

[UprightCarrot]

but he said he is interested in selling them for a profit.

Anyone have another contact for him other than livejournal?

[H360]

Anyone have another contact for him other than livejournal?

I do. But he is extremely busy.

[APE]

I do. But he is extremely busy.

:rolleyes:

Which just means any e-mail sent will be returned when he is available to write a reply.