Finally got a Sega CD system!

[grimm]

Bootleg and conversion carts arnt really the same thing.. A conversion cart uses all authentic hardware (unless someone is dishonest about the actual conversion), whilst the bootleg does not. That might be the origion of the trouble you had with the bootleg drift out.

[Drakon]

Bootleg and conversion carts arnt really the same thing.. A conversion cart uses all authentic hardware (unless someone is dishonest about the actual conversion), whilst the bootleg does not. That might be the origion of the trouble you had with the bootleg drift out.

Yeah could be...still was majorly disappointing as it ran great otherwise.

Anyway...I really want to play the segacd library...without loading games off of a cd and using flash.....this world is cruel I tell you. If I were king such a device would already exist.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

What's so bad about using CDs? The thing has no copy protection so you can just burn games and play them. The load times aren't even long. If you can put up with 360 and PS3 load times you can put up with Sega CD load times.

[xelement5x]

Yeah, depending on the game you're playing loading time for a lot of the Sega CD stuff isn't that bad. Mortal Kombat CD is one that's REALLY bad if I remember correctly, but there are plenty of games you probably won't even notice it on.

[EclecticGroove]

It's more the longevity issue. Plus the multi game capability. You can fit the entire Pre Saturn Sega library on a single SD or CF card with ease (All CD games included). And you can back it up, copy it to new cards, etc without much of a problem, and MUCH faster than burning individual CD's. Also no drive wear or moving parts to speak of. Just a few contacts that will get worn much slower given that you would almost never have any reason to remove the thing from the system.

Load times would still exist due to the nature of how the system was designed unless someone put a lot of work into each game to ensure it worked properly AND loaded faster.

That said, I'd love a flash drive replacement for my CDX. That + the everdrive = best portable 16 bit machine ever. If I could somehow cram the 32x inside my CDX it would be even better.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The games would probably need to be readjusted to work as Mode 1 Sega CD games. Just like how you can't throw a bunch of Genesis ROMs onto a CD and expect them to run off the Sega CD, you can't throw a bunch of Sega CD games onto a Genesis flash cart and expect them to work. They'd need to be individually altered to work from the Cart slot. Plus I don't think the Redbook audio would work without a CD of some kind.

[SEGACOOL]

A Sega CD that you do not use to play Sega CD's with .... Gut Wrenching ....

[EclecticGroove]

The games would probably need to be readjusted to work as Mode 1 Sega CD games. Just like how you can't throw a bunch of Genesis ROMs onto a CD and expect them to run off the Sega CD, you can't throw a bunch of Sega CD games onto a Genesis flash cart and expect them to work. They'd need to be individually altered to work from the Cart slot. Plus I don't think the Redbook audio would work without a CD of some kind.

They would not be running from the cart slot. They would be running from a flash card that was operating through an interface replacing the CD drive. Assuming the device was created correctly, it should play the games and audio the same as if they were on CD media. In order to play them faster, the way the system accesses the media would need to be changed and any games that no longer work properly would need to be adjusted properly.

No idea if the cart slot has the bandwidth or access to the CD hardware to play the games or not.

A Sega CD that you do not use to play Sega CD's with .... Gut Wrenching ....

You would still be playing Sega CD's, just not using the CD media. :P

[SEGACOOL]

Point Taken and a good one at that!!

[TrekkiesUnite118]

So you'd be using a flash cart in the cart port to send data to the Sega CD's RAM? That still sounds like something that would need to be adjusted on a game by game basis. And the Redbook audio if I remember correctly doesn't go through any sound chips, it just goes straight to the audio out lines. Trying to stream that from the Genesis side would probably run into bandwidth issues.

[EclecticGroove]

So you'd be using a flash cart in the cart port to send data to the Sega CD's RAM? That still sounds like something that would need to be adjusted on a game by game basis. And the Redbook audio if I remember correctly doesn't go through any sound chips, it just goes straight to the audio out lines. Trying to stream that from the Genesis side would probably run into bandwidth issues.

No, you would basically pop the cable off of the CD drive, and plug it into a device that would have an interface of some type for external memory.

From the Sega CD's standpoint, this would "be" the CD drive and act no differently. They exist for some other systems, but not for the Sega CD that I've seen.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Oh I got you. Kind of like the Dreamcast SD mod? If I remember correctly that only works because the Dreamcast has a Serial port and the SD slot uses that internally to load data. It's quite slow and buggy last I checked.

[Genesis Knight]

You can fit the entire Pre Saturn Sega library on a single SD or CF card with ease (All CD games included).

Haha, not for most people. The SegaCD games alone are, like, 12+ DVDs @4GB a piece, from what I remember. You'd have to own quite the huge SD card.

[Drakon]

What's so bad about using CDs? The thing has no copy protection so you can just burn games and play them. The load times aren't even long. If you can put up with 360 and PS3 load times you can put up with Sega CD load times.

I hate fragile hardware. CDs are fragile. Also cd drives tend to die after so long. Flash / cartridges go pretty much forever.

Also regarding all this tech talk. The mega everdrive can already play wav music (same thing as cd music). The genesis cartridge slot already has audio mixing pins that's how the 32x mixes its audio into the system. I'm not saying the mega everdrive has to be the hardware that finally accomplishes this. I wouldn't mind buying a segacd and soldering some piece of hardware into the segacd that runs games off of a flash device. The gamecube already has such a device, so does the dreamcast although that one has speed issues. It's certainly not impossible, it just needs to become worth some engineers effort to earn back the time in profits.

Actually building a fpga based piece of hardware that sends the data at the correct speeds into the segacd should be pretty easy. From my understanding of how these flash cartridges work is that the fpga takes the data from the ram chip or flash chip and sends it into the console at the correct speed. Sure adding a fpga upgrade would be a little expensive but hey...goodbye cds and hellooooo flash.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I don't think loading a Sega CD game off the Cart port is even possible though. Sure you may have audio expansion pins but there's more to the Sega CD than redbook audio. To run a Sega CD game properly you need to access the Sega CD Hardware. And other than Mode 1 I don't think that's really possible. And as I understand it Mode 1 would require modifying each individual game to do it. Now putting something into the CD hardware itself could work, but then again it might not. The GC and DC methods are very specific for those systems. If I remember correctly the DC one uses the built in Serial Port and the GC one takes advantage of the Memory Card system. So that might not be possible on the Sega CD.