I was postponing this entry in hope the situation will resolve itself but alas… Long story short, you’re looking at another delay. I’m just about to run out of SD card sockets, obviously I’ve ordered more weeks ago but it seems like the distributor messed up somewhere – so my supplier has moved the delivery date to first week of April and frankly I don’t feel confident it’ll be kept.
This is actually a pretty strategic part and I usually keep an ample stock but there are limits – I’m not a warehouse and these are not dirt cheap either, so by the time I decided to purchase more it was already gone from the inventory and put on order. This is worse than usual because it will affect both GDEMU and Rhea.
Now, if the early April delivery date is not pushed back further it’ll only be a week or so before I can resume work, but if not you’ll just have to wait some more.
In other bad news, some time ago I created this:
It’s a 20 to 21-pin cable, made to test a theory. It did it’s job and by that I mean it verified that you can’t just put a 20-pin Rhea into 21-pin Saturn. Won’t work, unless all you’re interested in is CD audio playback. The 21-pin models have a sligthly different protocol and need a few more signals to work properly – so basically at this point a universal ODE for Saturn is rather unlikely. Too many things would have to be put on the PCB, thus raising the cost and complexity. Plus I would not be able to create one without making some changes to the existing 20-pin model, and that would mean two separate FW files anyway. And if I have to do separate FW then I might as well just do a separate PCB just for the 21-pin Saturns and leave existing (and proven) design as-is.
In fact I might even pick a different name for new ODE as people are already confused by the whole 20/21 pin issue, plus VA designations. But that is something still TBD I guess.
On the bright side, I did promise you this:
Gold-plated PCBs for GDEMUs are exactly the same version as the latest HAL ones, except more expensive to me. But somewhat easier to solder so I’ll be sticking with those from now on.
Plus I hope the break, if there is any, will finally give me some time to do serious PCE work. I need to get that prototype running because Saturn was supposed to be a quick side project but between GDEMU delays and very, very busy work schedule I have now it basically took over everything else. It’s not a time wasted though, Saturn gave some serious problems at first and I learned a lot from that.
One last thing, quite important one: PayPal has changed it’s UI and while it seems to work faster, I consider it less useful. I can no longer issue group payment requests and have to do each one separately. I also don’t see transaction status in the browsing list so I can’t easily tell which ones I’ve updated with tracking number and which ones are fresh and not processed yet. So I use email notifications but those sometimes don’t come. So, if you pay and then nothing happens for more than 3 days, mail me. But not sooner please, I don’t need even more junk mail in my inbox.
Also, pretty please, DO NOT give me your full shipping address when ordering, unless that address is different from your PayPal address – this only makes me check everything twice for nothing. All I need is your country/region to make sure I can ship there. On the other hand if you wish to provide a different shipping address make sure you point that out clearly, and that you give it to me before you pay. Otherwise I might see the PayPal email first and ship to the wrong address.
GDEMU 
Shame to hear about all the unnecessary problems! As someone who is eagerly awaiting orders on GDemu to resume, all I can say is that I understand fully that things take time. Best of luck!
Does switching to the “Classic” mode of paypal help any?
There’s that link on the bottom left. Maybe that will put some items back.
So does it mean we can still order a 20 pins Rhea?
Or do we have to wait for an eventual new wave?
can’t wait to see you working on PCE-CD!!
So there won’t be any 21Pins Rhea. Good to know 🙂
The 20pins Saturn were the more complicated to hack with modchip, so their price dropped. But now, they will raise 😀
Glad I didn’t miss the payment request. SOrry to hear your having trouble with these.
Really excited to hear about PCE work though, I’m wondering which model will be the target?
Been having lots of fun with my Rhea lately. I’m really looking forward to getting a GDEMU. I appreciate all your hard work. I will patiently wait for updates. Thanks!
Waiting for PC Engine ODE 😀
Did you consider PSX¿? ^^
Thanks for the update – I hope you will continue and produce the 21-pin Rhea though (my only Saturn is a 21-pin model ;_; )
No updates on Makaron, DEmul or NullDC SVN for 2 years now… this project is exciting and all but the dream of replaying all my favourite games with good emulation in high resolution is fading month by month.
You’re not happy with resolution via VGA box?
No, 640×480 simply looks horrible on a high resolution screen. Dreamcast had really nice textures, those games really shine at 2x or 3x or greater resolution.
Just wondering are Model 1 Saturn consoles the ones with 20pin connectors?
In short: close but not exactly
There are no (or at least few) hard and fast rules when it comes to which Saturns have 20 and which have 21 pin connectors. Certainly later models typically have 21 pins, but not all, and earlier models often have 20 pins, but again, not all. I think some people can figure it out from serial numbers? Not sure about that… the best way to find out if your Saturn has a 20 pin connector is to open it up and count the number of connections in the flat cable that connects to the optical drive.
I am still waiting to open for preordering GDemu. Since it is closed.. I was waiting for such a long time 😦 any guestimate when it will be available.. ?
There have been a number of delays, as this most recent post alludes to. I guess Deunan wants to finish up most of the current orders before opening himself up to a whole new batch of requests.
where can i find info on the menu for rhea that neuroacid is working on?
That would be over at assemblergames in the “let’s make gd rom emulation happen” thread. Ask around over there.
Haven’t found any info while searching around but would starting a GDemu kickstarter be a feasable prospect? Ordering large quantities must be useful in getting costs down and maybe even getting some automatisation.
Apart from the legal stuff and all that.
wil the Rhea feature feature so i can use switches or remotecontrol to press a key like Arcade
Is there any hope of supporting BIN+CUE format, ever? I can’t imagine wanting to take a perfectly created archive set and convert it to something less than ideal, such as DiscJuggler.
“CUE/BIN” and “perfect” is not a valid combination of words.
Well, BIN+CUE is the standard format for saturn game dumping by both Redump and TOSEC, though they disagree on the rip methods.
DiscJuggler/CDI format is far less ideal for Saturn, from all accounts i’ve read. CloneCD images are difficult for non-Windows users to deal with (though it is my preferred personal choice)
So yeah, is there any hope? What do you feel is a better format, widely accepted and easily achieved, easily verified against originals for perfect rip status, without re-ripping a set such as Redump?
I’m genuinely curious, i don’t want to hold multiple image sets.
Thanks for your work on this!
CUE is broken, period. The non-standard extensions to the format that fix most of the issues are poorly documented and/or supported, and thus a major PITA. The fact that I pefer to use closed, proprietary formats that need to be reverse engineered first should tell you something about quality of CUEs. Plus even if the somewhat new dumps could be used, there are tons of older ones that are plain FUBAR.
So no, there isn’t and won’t be any CUE support. Please stop asking.
For the record, i asked once, and didn’t see any answer as to why you went with CDI in any sort of FAQ.
I went on a google search to try to discover why you’d support CDI over BIN+CUE (looking for specific examples and trying to see if any major release/archival groups supported your claims with data), and only then was I able to find your post from last october stating some of your issues with it.
Not in any of the Technical specs, not linked anywhere else. So hopefully you’ll forgive me for not having read back through every post you put up. Even then, I think it might be worthwhile for you to go in to a bit more detail as to why the community as a whole should dump BIN+CUE, as it seems to be the standard across the board for accurate Saturn image dumping, and there is a vested interest in not maintaining 2 different image sets.
Personally, I’m attempting to build as close to a 100% perfect saturn library from my own retail discs, each disc ripped in the exact same manner using the exact same settings on the exact same hardware and software. I’m using existing rips from groups like Redump to compare my rips to.
I am very sincere in wanting to know what the absolute most accurate format available is going to be.
The “BEST” format is going to:
A) Maintain as much of the data accuracy from the original disc as humanly possible, backed up by verification tools.
B) Be supported by archival/preservation groups as a proven standard
C) Be easily accessible to everyone to burn, regardless of what computer platform they are on.
D) Be supported by your product without the need to alter or compromise any of the first 3 points
I’ll keep doing more research on the issues you’ve run in to, but I truly don’t mean to aggravate you. I just want to find the right answer that satisfies all the requirements needed to maintain a single, accurate, saturn backup archive.
And again, thank you for making this product.