Sega CD Optical Drive Emulator Announced | Play Ripped ISOs on Original Genesis/Mega Drive Hardware, €232.00, Launches in August
- Thread starter Dancrane212
- Start date
I really want one of these, but at $300, I am perfectly fine with let others test it out for a year before dipping in.
This is very nice news to come home to! I do kinda want the side loader option though.
Side note: I really wish there was more indy development to get the real potential out of 32X and/or CD power combos.
Side note: I really wish there was more indy development to get the real potential out of 32X and/or CD power combos.
Last edited:
eh? I don't have the Mega SG, but I'm pretty sure it runs Virtua Racing.
There's actually work being done on Atari Jaguar FPGA cores right now. The Jag CD is much like the PC Engine CD, it's merely a larger storage medium, not like the Sega CD with extra chips. So when Jaguar FPGA cores mature, Jag CD will eventually come.
Oh, I know they're working on it. I just doubt there is enough interest to actually make a console like this...
Thats why things like the Mister FPGA project exist. Its just a small fpga board you buy plus an expansion board, and viola, instant fpga console for about $200.
Awesome news! Got the Mega SG a couple of months back, and will definitely be picking this up as well :)
I bought one and am returning the Sega CD I recently got from eBay which has probably lost its value by half lol
Looks very interesting. I already have the whole Genesis+CD+32X monstrosity, but being able to get rid of the fallible optical drive is very tempting.
What, other than cost, are the downsides to using this thing versus using an actual Sega CD? You lose the audio output ports of the Sega CD, and, unless the special adapter is ever released, 32X/CD games won't work. And others?
What, other than cost, are the downsides to using this thing versus using an actual Sega CD? You lose the audio output ports of the Sega CD, and, unless the special adapter is ever released, 32X/CD games won't work. And others?
It runs the cartridge, not the ROM image via jailbreak though. To run the ROM image as if it was real hardware, the only way to do so is with MiSTer.
It's a visual novel/SRPG hybrid. Think Snatcher with grid battles.
And maybe one day.
Have you seen how much a recapped and refurbed Sega CD unit goes for on eBay? And that you have to still have to depend on physical media and a disc drive that will eventually fail?
I recall the Turbo version has sound issues and some other things. I wonder if they've solved that for this one.
I have the NeoSD pro from these dudes and after playing around with the recent Neo CD support, I'm totally sold on this device. These guys are going next level. Pre-ordered and looking forward to it. And will probably end up selling my Everdrive X7. I don't think there's a reason to keep it at this point.
Haha. Sorry for sounding so pessimistic. I was more hoping that you'd finish Eternal Punishment first...
I get the vibe that Shadowrun Sega CD hasn't really captured anyone's imagination, so its not exactly a top priority translation. I'll be playing it day one, most likely with this drive emulator.
Not really, it's a pretty obtuse game, and it's also a difficult beast to tackle.
Never forgotten though, Esper periodically pecks at it.
It has a really cool story though, and a great vibe. Funny thing, the creator of Shadowrun isn't even aware of it.
This is a dream addition to the Mega SG, the feature list is astounding! Can't wait to receive it.
In my opinion the price is perfectly reasonable for a full Mega CD FPGA implementation plus all the other featues to boot. An everdrive x7 is ~$150/£130 alone!
In my opinion the price is perfectly reasonable for a full Mega CD FPGA implementation plus all the other featues to boot. An everdrive x7 is ~$150/£130 alone!
Last edited:
The only thing that isn't reasonable is that you have to pay for shipping for a return defective item.
They process payment immediately even though they don't ship for over a month. If you change your mind, your fucked. That isn't reasonable.
Many places will send a replacement for a lost package in the mail since they usually send it insured.
Yeah I'm just going to wait for Stone Age Gamer to stock them. It'll give me time to save up as well
I don't have a problem being charged for a pre-order, and not being able to cancel it. The lost package bit is if you return it, and it's lost. Which is the part I don't agree with. That means you pay for shipping and insurance. If the package is lost, you have to deal with the insurance claim to be reimbursed. That's the bit I don't think is reasonable.
Retro RGB Review
Came here to ask how they made an FPGA Sega CD that connected to the top, thanks for the detailed explanation.
I still have my original Genesis, CD, and 32X - never realized the two connectors were basically the same interface or how CD games could "use" the 32X hardware. Still not 100% clear on that :)
Now I'm imagining an alternate history where the Sega CD connected to the top cartridge slot (like a Famicom Disk System) and the 32X, released years later has to stick out of the side/bottom 🤣
Quoting both these comments because the answer is the same:
Basically, in order for this thing to work, there can't be an actual Sega CD (or other hardware) plugged into the expansion port on the Genesis. The games will try to read from the expansion port and that won't play nicely with the cartridges. That's why it's not compatible with X'Eye/Wondermega or CDX/Multimega. At least with the X'Eye, you also probably won't be able to play Master System games due to a slight difference in behavior on soft reset from Sega-produced units, and the Nomad and 32X don't support SMS mode either, but that's because of pinout restrictions. In those latter 2 cases you can actually do some hardware modifications to the cartridge slot leads to re-enable the support, basically soldering a wire across part of the unit in either case.
It might be possible to overcome the limitation of the X'Eye and CDX hardware with custom bios that tries to get all data related to the Sega CD from the main cartridge slot (and it's possible to distinguish the two, which is how the Sega CD ram cart and the unusual Sega CD game cartridge Flux work), but running the original bios from Sega/Mega CD units is always going to carry that downside because it will default to trying to read from the expansion port if it can detect hardware there. This isn't to say that such a hardware mod is, in fact, impossible, just infeasible -- and not particularly necessary as long as the drive works.
As another note for the edification of the crowd, the expansion port is quite literally the same set of traces as the cartridge port, and there's a reason for that.
There's a piece of hardware called the DS-16 that was designed for demo units / in-store kiosks; the device attaches to the expansion port and has 6 cartridge slots. It was designed to allow the demo unit to have a way to switch between multiple display games without having to have someone come in and swap them out.
I wouldn't say the design of the Sega CD to fit on that port was a matter of serendipity by any means. If anything, it's slightly frustrating that something like the 32X couldn't take advantage of it.
If I knew where my sega saturn was I'd be all in on this. The disc drive on that has been wonky for a decade now.
I may have completely overlooked the implications of that as well. Time to start looking into the best screen replacement/situation for a nomad.
This will be the first megadrive flash cart I've bought since the very first model of the original Everdrive. I just noticed this has savestate support -- when my Mega SD finally arrives, I think I'll write an old school Save State hacking guide, showing people how "rom hacking" was done way back in the 90's before everybody knew how to actually disassemble roms.
a bin is a binary image of an entire CD, bit for bit. The CUE file is meta data about how that binary file is split up into tracks, i.e. the padding between sectors of the CD owing to certain data falling between sector segments. You don't have a binary per track, you have a binary image of the entire CD, which includes all the "tracks" in it at once.
There are plenty of multi bin dumps.
Yes it does.
Last edited:
Still waiting for mine. I think Andorran customs can only handle so many packets a day or something.
I'm still holding off, but just barely. I already had to swap a fuse in my Sega CD, and I'm worried it won't last too too much longer.
Mine hasn't shipped yet. My Terraonion account still just says Payment Recieved, and I ordered pretty much right away. I don't mind too much as I have a working Sega CD, and this was supposed to be a birthday present but my birthday isn't a month away, but I'm still super anxious. The Analogue Mega SG was one of my favorite purchases of the last several years, and I loved Terraonion's PC Engine Super System SD3, so I'm certain I'm going to go nuts over this.
When it arrives, I have a small topic planned on doing old school Save State hacking like I used to do back around 1999 or so. It'll be neat to do that kind of hacking on a real console.
When it arrives, I have a small topic planned on doing old school Save State hacking like I used to do back around 1999 or so. It'll be neat to do that kind of hacking on a real console.