CAN U REPLACE THE GD ROM WITH

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CAN U REPLACE THE GD ROM WITH

Post by theendisgone »

CAN U REPLACE THE GD ROM WITH A FASTER CDROM FOR QUICKER LOADING OR A DVD ROM FOR WATCHIN DVD ???
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Post by WiseMonkey »

this is just one of the many reasons i went psycho on the boards
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Post by pkScary »

Umm Well not all loading is from the gd-rom.......but you could probably replace it with a newer faster gd-rom drive. not a dvd though the dc wouldn't do anything with it.

my .02
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Post by sixteen-bit »

No, the connectors are most likely proprietary, so standard connectors won't fit. More importantly, replacing a GDrom with a CDrom?? You would lose all GD reading ability even if you could get it to work.
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

Well... every single one of my games (other than Sonic Adventure 1) are run off of... ::cough:: ...backups... ::cough:: ...so if I could replace the thing with a 52X CD-ROM assembly, I would be a happy little boy. The only thing you'd have to worry about are the pinouts, but a lot of CD-ROM drives have standardized ribbons. The width of the GD-ROM ribbon seems standard... this might be something I'd look into.

Could someone tell me the speed of the drive's CD-ROM reading capabilities? I think it's 12X, but I might be wrong.
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ROM Drives

Post by Chainfist »

I have read that the GDROM is 12X too. But I'm not sure what this means since, for example, PC DVD-ROM drives come in 12X DVD but have CD-ROM speeds of 40X. So I'm not sure if GDROM and DVD-ROM speeds are the same.

I've seen replacement GDROMS for sale online but no upgrades for their speed.
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Post by pkScary »

ag Midnight how do u backup stuff? I need some foreign roms that never came to the us.....could u pm me plz? just some links is really all I need. Did ya'll ever hear of a game called shemue II? :D
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

Does anyone have a GD-ROM pinout?
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Post by BlackAura »

As far as I know, the GD-ROM drive uses standard CD-ROM controller chips, lasers, and is basically a modified CD-ROM drive. In theory, if you could work out how (if at all) the interface with the DC differs from the interface between a PC and a CD-ROM, you could modify a CD-ROM (or a DVD-ROM, maybe) to plug into a DC. But why? No DVD software exists for a DC, and your DC can now only run backups. A better way might be to hook up an IDE controller to the expansion port. I don't know if that's possible, but if it is, you could connect PC hard drives, cd drives and dvd drives to the dreamcast, and write custom software to boot from them or use them for whatever else you want. Does anybody know enough about IDE and the expansion bus to do this? Oh, and shame on MidnightObsidian for using ::cough:: ...backups... ::cough::
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

Yeah, shame on me. But still, I'm only making sure that all of :cough:: my originals don't get screwed up. Yep. That's it.

::ahem::

Anyway, BlackAura has a really great point... unless you have a DVD-RW drive, replacing the GD-ROM with a DVD-ROM would be kind of pointless. The same goes with the CD-ROM thing... but that's just me.

But what I really wanted to say is that this gave me a very interesting idea. I want to find a CD-ROM drive with the same pinouts (or ribbon size, for that matter), and then replace the GD-ROM laser mechanism with the CD-ROM laser mechanism. If the CD-ROM will read the GD-ROMs, then we will know, beyond reasonable doubt, that the GD-ROM doesn't use smaller "pits and lands", it just uses compression which is decompressed by the GD-ROM's firmware.

AND IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEN GUESS WHAT? We could get some tech people working on it (maybe even crackers), and decrypt the GD-ROM's compression. Then we could burn our own GD-ROMs in theory... because we could just compress our data... then use software to emulate the compression on-the-fly (kind of like the glide wrappers)!!!

...I'm rambling. Does anyone understand what I'm trying to get at here, though? Tell me if I'm onto something or just kind of retarded.
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

Well I only have one standard cd-rom drive in my house, and it's an old 16x. This drive is amazing in the respect that it will read just about anything (other than DVDs and GD-ROMs), but its pinouts are REALLY odd. I put it back together without even bothering to try to hook it up to my DC. >= |

If anyone else would like to test this out, though... >= )
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Post by sixteen-bit »

Well, I have an old six speed CDROM somewhere (lucky me, eh?) that has been disassembled more than once. If I can find it; I'll rip it apart again to see what the connecters and things look like.

And yeah, I know using a six-speed would be pointless but it's interesting just to study and, like, hack up and stuff... :roll:
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Post by la_eternal »

How's this for an idea? I took a look at the laser assembly in my broken PS2 (bought it new, too :evil: ) and I was wondering if I could fit it to be used in a DC. Then I thought would it allow for the reading of DVD discs (even though the BIOS wouldn't know how to deal with them)? Just some thoughts...
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

Both of your ideas kind of come back to my central conflict; are the pinouts identicle to any other cd-rom or dvd-rom readers, and are the lasers the same. I'm not sure about either answer, but I am keeping true to my theories.
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sixteen-bit
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Post by sixteen-bit »

Yeah, I'm kinda certain the pinouts would be different because Sega used a proprietary storage medium so it would make sense to use proprietary hardware for reading this medium (to protect their software).

If that doesn't make sense think of it as Sega stopping you (easily!)connecting the GDROM to your IDE bus on PC and ripping games directly
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Post by pkScary »

good point 16-bit miles :D . i guess sony was kinda stupid with the playstation.................... :eek:

now THAT was direct ripping :evil: ......and........well.......still is :|
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Post by Mollie »

The gd-rom is 12X all the way around(reading cd's and cd-r's). The pin layout is around 18 or so. There is an IDE board set, but you have to build, and can only use hard drives and cd-roms no dvd. You have to use dc linux as well to use the IDE controller. And you can either warez a Dreamcast game (not recomended) or use the coders cable to rip the game (not recomended).


Thats my .02
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Pioneer DVD

Post by dreamgamer »

I was thinking that if the pioneer DVD drive i've been hearing about being able to read gdroms wasn't a hoax (this i do not know) then couldn't that be a start as a drive replacement??
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Post by pkScary »

i dont think i dreamcast would have the drivers to support dvds. :|
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Post by MidnightObsidian »

My posts from another thread:

In a few other threads, I've made the mistake of saying some really illogical things that didn't even occur to me because everyone else was speaking otherwise. It isn't the laser of a CD-ROM that reads faster, it's the PCB and Firmware that applies more voltage to the rotary motor and can interpert the data streaming from the laser. >= | Too bad, huh?

This is really unfortunate because it completely destroys any CD/DVD/GD-ROM replacement theories.

Damnit.


I think you guys might be misunderstanding me. Upgrading the laser assembly would be pointless, because it would be impossible to benefit from it... unless your GD-ROM broke or something. The firmware controls how fast the cd/gd-rom is read, NOT the laser mechanism.

http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4408
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