Mega-CD/Sega CD FPGA Optical Disc Emulator

[broken]

I just saw these posts.

1) What product needed firmware fixes or hardware exchanged right after launch? That is what I'm trying to figure out as I saw comments like this in this thread, so I'm asking. Right now, their NeoGeoSD seems cool. It can play CD games now and has reduced CD speed, as perhaps NGCD had the worst loading times ever. I don't care about SCD or its CD/ISO loading times, they weren't that bad imo.

2) About being "backhanded complimenting" or the other stuff you said about me, no bro I was nothing but positive to you, and this product, for the first 16 pages - before your PM and me asking of more questions/research of you after (I admit since page 17 it wasn't sunshine and rainbows, but I was still asking you questions).


Aren't you here to answer questions from potential buyers? Facts, thread links, screenshot or questions aren't accusations. Hope that clears everything up and we can move on, even broke my sentences up here for you and others. I'm definitely leaning towards buying this product after watching GS and MLIG youtube reviews.
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post844466

^ I also thanked you for posting here, told others they should appreciate you answering them and fixing marketing issues from their feedback here and glad this product exists from start to page 17, like 99% of my posts to you and your product were positive. Again, facts. http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post844541

3) Apparently the FAQ or any detailed info was not even on sales pages at first, glad it is now. I have read the info broken asked me to read, re read this thread and watched every video twice for this product. I will await Joe from Game Sack video and maybe a price drop next year or later and buy one. Looks very good, all things considered. I wasn't the first to ask or address things btw http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...mulator/page10

4) Since NGCDSD was firmware updated to do more things, or System3 was improved I'm confident this product will be supported too. I'm wary of SG update claims though, I don't know how Analogue can firmware update its fpga MSG to play 32x games when no 32x chips are inside system unless hardware like adapter relea$ed to help with it like me and Sik mentioned, no way a firmware update can resolve that IMO. http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...l=1#post845138

^I know that it seems crazy with my future "Kega on chip or in a cart" comment, but before you announced this product it was a dream or wishful thinking too that we wanted for years but didn't have (but you were working on which is cool), SD support for Saturn or DC was once a dream and even playing every game we ever wanted from just 1 cart we dreamed of since 90s was fulfilled by Krikzz everdrive. You know. I don't mind your hardware replacement for SegaCD (hoping it drops in price from $280 give or take though in future) nor just emulating SCD and 32X from a cart one day. Whatever gets rid out power supplies away from my Genesis M1 V3. I made a homemade power supply with correct polarities for Genesis, 32X, Sega CD2 and little monitor for now. I won't buy other all in 1 power supplies, or retro ones, because they lack transformers so I made my own. But your product gets rid of 1 line for me.

5) I'm not trying to make this a broken vs Krikzz thread, but I had no problems playing anything from his everdrives except wavs. But in terms of roms and other things, his everdrives (had 2 variants) played perfect for me. I don't play Duke Nukem3D because it plays horrible, maybe the framerate or I don't know it was good for its time but Wolf3Dv11 blows it out of the water and I just played that on there. I guess I just want to ask, if Krikzz CD product comes out, since his other everdrives could play things like 8 megabyte full length bad apple video/audio, could this too?

6) Also, how could people add CD audio to Roms like Outrunner "CD" rom you did, ips software etc or? Many games in past for systems came with separate CDs to play along with carts like SNES Killer Instinct or MD Mortal Kombat audio CDs to jam in your 80s Pioneer systems while playing 16 bit greatness then, and many other games for both SNES and MD so I guess snes msu-1 and this can now bring things to fruition now, those CD soundtrack playing with rom action synced all in 1 =)

I hope this was legible. And I believe I'm being civilized.

1. 1st version of the SSDS3 had issues. We recalled all of those boards and exchanged them. We have continued to update and enhance the quality of SSDS3.


5. I can't comment on anything krikzz hasn't released in comparison to something we have released. I simply don't know. If you have a specific rom in mind we can't test it.

6. We have published a Developers manual for folks that want to do cd audio rom hacking (along with other special mappers): https://downloads.terraonion.com/pub...DEV_Manual.pdf

Joe from Game Sack and My Life In Gaming would make the best and most detailed review / production / promotion video of the Mega SD of average to advanced users from people watching youtube or shared on twitter, fb, etc, instead of sending to people like these 2 below with low views or followings IMO. Those 2 units should have definitly been sent to GS and MLIG instead.

Alienparadox is a member of our team. He is a pixel artist that does all of the graphics for our devices including logos and interfaces. So naturally he has a cart.

As far as SmokeMonster goes - I sent him my cart so he can do streams with it. It's a preproduction cart.


And, as stated earlier in this thread, both Joe and Coury (among many others) are getting review carts. The reason they didn't have one prior to the launch is because we didn't have finalized carts on hand to give hem. The boxes and manuals weren't printed and the cart shell for the final shipping carts are of a slightly thicker and darker plastic. We would rather they have finalized production carts in hard to evaluate and review.

[broken]

Thought I would keep you guys updated on MegaSD firmware stuffs. One of the cool new features is the ability to copy over your game saves from a Sega CD/Mega-CD to the MegaSD.

MegaSD firmware version 1.01R10

MEGACD
- Improve detection of actual megacd. It will now try to write and read from registers, and ignore the peripheral flag.
- Add option to enable Low Pass filter to PCM output, to match actual megacd audio.
- Add option to enable CDDA Treble boost filter to CDDA, to match actual megacd audio.
- Add option to simulate exact megacd Graphics processing chip speed, to match actual megacd framerate in some games.
- Add support to load a bios from the SD when a real megacd is connected. It also simulates a RAM cart so saves can be
transferred from a real megacd to megasd.
- Add "Switch!" to games requiring seek time emulation.

MD
- Fix in game menu not working in Castlevania
- Add SuperFighterTeam mappers

SMS
- Increase FM volume

[Sik]

- Fix in game menu not working in Castlevania

What weird edge case did it hit? o.O

[Team Andromeda]

Thought I would keep you guys updated on MegaSD firmware stuffs. One of the cool new features is the ability to copy over your game saves from a Sega CD/Mega-CD to the MegaSD.

MegaSD firmware version 1.01R10

MEGACD
- Improve detection of actual megacd. It will now try to write and read from registers, and ignore the peripheral flag.
- Add option to enable Low Pass filter to PCM output, to match actual megacd audio.
- Add option to enable CDDA Treble boost filter to CDDA, to match actual megacd audio.
- Add option to simulate exact megacd Graphics processing chip speed, to match actual megacd framerate in some games.
- Add support to load a bios from the SD when a real megacd is connected. It also simulates a RAM cart so saves can be
transferred from a real megacd to megasd.
- Add "Switch!" to games requiring seek time emulation.

MD
- Fix in game menu not working in Castlevania
- Add SuperFighterTeam mappers

SMS
- Increase FM volume

The product sounds amazing, I don't get the hate at all

[Sut]

This product sounds awesome especially since my Multi Mega is on its last legs. This saves me buying a Mega CD and I can just pull out my old Mega Drive.
Quick question all my Mega CD images are cue/ccd/img/sub redumps does the Mega SD support these ?

[RottenToTheGore]

MegaSD firmware version 1.01R10

MEGACD
- Improve detection of actual megacd. It will now try to write and read from registers, and ignore the peripheral flag.

Does this mean it can be used on a setup with a Sega CD attached?

[broken]

No. It's an updated method that the MegaSD can detect if a Sega CD or Mega-CD is plugged in but not powered on.

[broken]

New MegaSD firmware version 1.01R11
MEGACD
- Add "Panic!" to games with forced seek emulation

MD
- Fix Psy-O-Blade backup RAM mapping
- Fix "The Story of Thor"/"Beyond Oasis" and "Phantasy Star IV" backup RAM not enabled.

[Sik]

What was the Castlevania issue? Genuinely curious what the game is doing that could have broken it (guessing it had to do with the logo FX? or was it something else?).

[broken]

What was the Castlevania issue? Genuinely curious what the game is doing that could have broken it (guessing it had to do with the logo FX? or was it something else?).

I’m honestly not sure. I can check with our dev to find out.

[chilled]

From the dev manual:

MegaSD contains an enhanced SSF2 mapper that allows to use the entire 8MB ROM available area with bankswitching, and also being able to remap the first block, that is fixed in the SSF2 mapper (however, it must be changed with extreme care, as interrupt vectors are there). Also the entire area can be set to Read/Write, so you can use the banks as RAM if needed.

Wait what does this mean? Does this open possibilities for something interesting for homebrew/demo scene?

[broken]

I will have to confirm with neodev, but I believe all of the MegaSD hardware (vdp, extra 68k, ram and etc) is exposed to the flashcart side.

So you could create a game or demo that uses those extra features if you wanted to.

[Tor Landeel]

- Add support to load a bios from the SD when a real megacd is connected. It also simulates a RAM cart so saves can be
transferred from a real megacd to megasd.

Amazing! Now it's just sold to me. It provides everything I need, I can give away the old everdrive md!

[broken]

Some comments from neodev about Castlevania:

About castlevania, the problem was simple, and probably affected other games. In order to read the gamepad, megasd
peeks the cart bus, and processes the gamepad port reads and writes to know the gamepad read state data. As
the trigger combination is in the TH=1 part, it only processes it when a data port read with TH=1 happens, but it was very strict
and it was actually checking a very specific data write to check for TH=1, that is, it only processed the input if the last
value writen to the port was x1000000 (40h ignoring the highest bit). Generally games write 0 or 40h to set TH to 0 or 1, but
castlevania writes 30h and 70h, and so, the gamepad port read was being skipped, because 70h != 40h. It now takes into account
which bits have been set to output in the configuration port, masking the bits set to input, so 70h->40h after masking, as only
TH is set to output, and it works.

And from him about the enhanced mapper and accessing the MegaSD hardware:

About the enhanced mapper, it allows accessing to all the rom area, like the everdrive ssf2 extended mapper, but it also
provides access to the megacd PCM chip, so you have 8 digital PCM channels available for your game. Also the entire memory
can be made read/write, so you can have up to 8MB RAM in your console. Also this mapper can be used in the MD+ mode, by
placing it in a directory, with a cd image, and play CD tracks at 0 CPU usage, and also stream data from the CD to the RAM.
Alternatively, if you want to use the full MegaCD hardware (68k, roz, wordram...) you can add a special header so megasd
boots it in cart mode but with the megacd hardware simulation enabled, so you can access all the cd hardware, and even boot
the bios in mode 1 to easily access the CD using the bios routines.

[Sik]

Wait, why does the Mega SD need to peek controller accesses? What function is there? o.o (also if not done already, I'd also suggest to make sure the control port is exactly 0x40 or otherwise it could other peripherals, and most of them set it to something else which makes for a good way to quickly disregard them)

Also I wonder why Castlevania writes those values (that's odd) but eh. I imagine some games write 0x7F and 0x3F though that would be probably affected by this as well (whatever the case, those would be now fixed too).