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GENESIS with Hard disk/cdrom drive

REDFLELD - Jan 3, 2004

		REDFLELD	Jan 3, 2004
		Is it possible to connect a PC cdrom drive/hard disk to a Genesis/megadrive system? I once saw a floppy disk drive for the SNES for sale about a decade ago. I'm not sure if there's such a device for the Genesis. Have someone here heard of attaching a cdrom drive/hard disk to the Genesis?

		M3d10n	Jan 3, 2004
		huh... Sega CD?

		bugbeak	Jan 3, 2004
		oh...the disc drive...those days AFAIK, the disc drive was only an Asian thing where you hooked a modified disc drive and a certain unit into a genesis/mega drive. that unit was a game ripper -- you'd plug in a cartridge on the top and pop in an empty 3.5-inch disc into the disc slot, and you'd start ripping games into those discs. then all you needed were the discs -- pop them in, sit for about a minute while the device copied the data into RAM, and when it was done, you could pop the disc out and play until you shut your genesis off. for the SNES, it was called the "super wild card". i dunno what it's called for the genesis. i know for a fact that during those days, games in discs sold like wildfire because they were dirt-cheap.

		Ratamahatta	Jan 3, 2004
		I think it was just called the wild card for the genesis

		AntiPasta	Jan 3, 2004
		I have such a thing for the SNES, in fact there were lots of different brands and types of backup units: It's a lot more complicated than a disk drive with a cartridge connector though, as you can judge from the size. It also has a DSP chip to emulate cart games that use it, 4 MB of RAM to store the games, some SRAM to store savegames, a built-in cheat function and whatnot wned

		antime	Jan 3, 2004
		IDE is so simple (at the most basic level) that you can connect it to almost anything - a couple of years ago Elektor Electronics ran an article on building an interface for 8-bit microcontrollers and Google should give you links to similar project. You'd need to build the actual interface and then write the drivers, and to run the drivers you'd have to either make a ROM cart or boot from a burned MegaCD disc.

		Chiraz	Jan 6, 2004
		One of the game copiers that you're talking about was called "Super magic drive", I got mine about 11 years ago

		Mask of Destiny	Jan 6, 2004
		Someone did hack a hard-drive onto his Sega Genesis. I think he even added enough RAM to the thing so he could load ROMs off the drive and play them. http://devster.netfirms.com/...

		REDFLELD	Jan 7, 2004
		Thanks for the replies... not that I'm interested coz my NTSC J Megadrive broke long time ago(didn't use a stepdown adapter).

		Link Hylia	Jan 7, 2004
		actually, someone managed to run BASIC on the genny. with hard drive for loading rom images.

		DeV0	Jan 19, 2004
		Some company made a genny/pc combo, forget who it was but it was a 486 with a genny/md cart slot in the front. I have a disc copy unit for the snes with 36mb of ram, think its a super ufo 3. Great system although i need to mod the snes for multi region and a 50/60 switch. There is a copier available that works for both rhe md and the snes,,,

Curtis

Jan 19, 2004

Originally posted by DeV0@Jan 18, 2004 @ 11:50 PM

Some company made a genny/pc combo, forget who it was but it was a 486 with a genny/md cart slot in the front.

		Kaneda	Jan 19, 2004
		Or the teradrive in japan (with Dos/V) some pics here : My Webpage... (scroll a little) you can also find a pic of the Genny FDD (don't know if it was released or not) Kaneda

		gameboy900	Jan 19, 2004
		ERm...Kaneda just so you know the "MD+PC Engine Hifi ?" picture you have near the bottom is just the three Pioneer LaserActive modules stacked on top of each other. You got the Genesis one on top, the TG16 one in the middle and the Karoke one at the bottom.

		Kaneda	Jan 20, 2004
		the karaoke!! yes of course... in fact i knew for the 2 others (Genny and PCE...like you can see 5 lines up) but the 3rd was a mystery for me I though it was another model of LaserActive...without the LD part.. something like the Aiwa stuff Thanks Kaneda

DeV0

Jan 20, 2004

Originally posted by Curtis+Jan 19, 2004 @ 07:06 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Curtis @ Jan 19, 2004 @ 07:06 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-DeV0@Jan 18, 2004 @ 11:50 PM

Some company made a genny/pc combo, forget who it was but it was a 486 with a genny/md cart slot in the front.

That was the Amstrad MegaPC. It was overpriced and underpowered even for the time, packing only a 486 SX33 with 4(or 8?)Mb of RAM. AFAIK there was no interfacing between the MD and the PC - it was just two seperate units in one box. [/b][/quote]

Yes the amstrad is a piece of crap, but would'nt the box be ideal for this sought of project??

		Curtis	Jan 20, 2004
		Oh I guess so...a bit overkill maybe. Surely half the fun would be designing a whole new (smaller) enclosure?

		Kaneda	Jan 20, 2004
		Else you have Devster's monster devster site... i really don't know how he did this but...WOW! else you have the Shinco dvd/genny player... Kaneda

		Edge-`	Jan 20, 2004
		Devster's setup is pretty neat. Hi Kaneda btw , welcome to SX.

ExCyber

Jan 20, 2004

i really don't know how he did this but...WOW

On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.

Seriously, the NVSRAM alone on that peripheral board must have cost at least $200 and probably closer to $300. The RTC would be around $20 and the oddball NVSRAM (for cart SRAM emulation I suppose) is around $40, bringing it up to a grand total of ...

Of course, that's assuming he didn't convince Dallas Semi that sending him engineering samples would really benefit their business.

edit: looking at his IC/databook collection and apparent level of engineering experience, it also seems entirely plausible that he's a professional or ex-professional and got them from an employer that folded.