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Did that Dreamcast SD adapter ever amount to anything? I remember it used compressed iso's or something but the transfer speed hurt compatibility. Have there been any updates to make that adapter usable?

opa wrote:Did that Dreamcast SD adapter ever amount to anything? I remember it used compressed iso's or something but the transfer speed hurt compatibility. Have there been any updates to make that adapter usable?

I think essentially the 2 Optical Drive Emulators made it obsolete. They're also fairly plug & play. No soldering.

As an owner of both ODE products, I never really needed it... however...

I really want to install a dreamshell bios in 1 or 2 systems just for emulation (neo/cd in particular) and a few DC games that do run well. It's just slughtly beyond my skill level though (not that it would stop an attempt, but lack the gumption at present to solder the chip).

The fall of isozone left me without a good resource for patched images and such. They had a really good section for USB compatible games.

Jagosaurus wrote:

opa wrote:Did that Dreamcast SD adapter ever amount to anything? I remember it used compressed iso's or something but the transfer speed hurt compatibility. Have there been any updates to make that adapter usable?

I think essentially the 2 Optical Drive Emulators made it obsolete. They're also fairly plug & play. No soldering.

I had no clue these existed. Sounds pretty neat but seems kinda pricey from what I've seen so far.

opa wrote:I had no clue these existed. Sounds pretty neat but seems kinda pricey from what I've seen so far.

There's ODE type solutions for all of the retro CD systems now that I can think of. Some are true ODEs similar to the Dreamcast devices. Others are a bit different but have the same outcome such as the PS1 PSIO and Sega CD off Mega SD cart. None of these are cheap.

Even PS2(and PS1 on PS2), PS3, oXbox, & 360 have hacks allowing you to boot games directly off HDDs, accomplishing the same thing. These are more price aggressive.

Essentially, these methods allow you to play ISOs or bin/cues of disc based games (ripped to digital files) on real hardware. Pretty cool from a preservation standpoint as these drives will all die over time. You can read more on this awesome thread by Ziggy on both flash carts & ODEs: viewtopic.php?f=56&t=36353

One huge caveat is that disc rips online are the wild west. Roms tend to be fairly reliable... not the case for disc images. I think it's about 50/50 for disc downloads versus 95/5 for roms. I recommend ripping you own games. With the older systems, you do this on PC & transfer. The newer systems will allow you to do this or rip directly from console disc drive.

I've got one of them. The SD card adapters that plug into the serial port, right? They work well enough for most games, but read times are definitely an issue. Soul Calibur seemed to work okay, but Daytona USA studdered a lot, for example. Not bad for a cheap $10 dongle I found on eBay, but not exactly an ideal solution.

Jagosaurus wrote:There's ODE type solutions for all of the retro CD systems now that I can think of. Some are true ODEs similar to the Dreamcast devices. Others are a bit different but have the same outcome such as the PS1 PSIO and Sega CD off Mega SD cart. None of these are cheap.

Even PS2(and PS1 on PS2), PS3, oXbox, & 360 have hacks allowing you to boot games directly off HDDs, accomplishing the same thing. These are more price aggressive.

Essentially, these methods allow you to play ISOs or bin/cues of disc based games (ripped to digital files) on real hardware. Pretty cool from a preservation standpoint as these drives will all die over time. You can read more on this awesome thread by Ziggy on both flash carts & ODEs: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 56&t=36353

One huge caveat is that disc rips online are the wild west. Roms tend to be fairly reliable... not the case for disc images. I think it's about 50/50 for disc downloads versus 95/5 for roms. I recommend ripping you own games. With the older systems, you do this on PC & transfer. The newer systems will allow you to do this or rip directly from console disc drive.

I'll have to put a DC ODE on my "get to it eventually" list and skip the SD adapter. I'd rather put that $10-15 towards something more useful.

Yeah, online copies of disc games generally don't work in my experience. It would be easy to blame the emulator but when I rip the exact same game lo and behold it works perfectly. I don't know why people can't rip a disc in half-decent shape.