Any chance of a CDROM2 unit on an FPGA?

[Drakon]

I don't see why this wouldn't be doable and it's a great idea for sure.  You'd just need to built a connector for the port at the back of the system that wires into a fpga which simulates the cd unit.  For something like a turboduo you'd need to solder in a connector of some sort.

[MottZilla]

The expansion connector and HuCard slot have many of the same signals/pins. You can do or imagine any method you want for playing CD images off a SD card or other media. Trying to hardware emulate/simulate the actual CD drive may be unnecessary. I think my idea is better if it will work. That is based on the CD games all properly using the BIOS for any interaction with the CD-ROM. If they do you could probably load off of any media you could imagine, though audio would require the media be fast enough for streaming it, or you could I guess just have something setup to cue a separate CD player.

[HercTNT]

an sd adapter exists for the dreamcast to loads iso's. i'm sure its possible, and by all means give it a go. for me, i could only imagine using such a thing on a portable. gates of thunder on my gt would initiate the launch sequence. for the full size system their is something about having a cd drive, and would prefer it. 

[wilykat]

an sd adapter exists for the dreamcast to loads iso's. i'm sure its possible, and by all means give it a go. for me, i could only imagine using such a thing on a portable. gates of thunder on my gt would initiate the launch sequence. for the full size system their is something about having a cd drive, and would prefer it. 

Also for Gamecube and Wii. It bypasses the laser and spindle motor and feeds data from SD card into system.

[Tatsujin]

The problem i see with de pce cdrom is the red book
audio stuff. How do you gonna control this over the hu slot
or extension port? Since game data/psg sound is very independent
handled to the red book audio.

[spenoza]

The PCE doesn't use a 6502 though. Honestly if you have enough money, and it would be a lot, there is nothing stopping you from paying a company/lab to do the work to break it down and make it possible to clone it exactly. I want to see a DUO with SGX support and native S-Video & RGB output as well as Region Switching. That would be nice. But I don't know that we will ever see that. Something more likely is like those FireCore Genesis clones. Essentially it's a device that is just built to run an emulator but it can use real media (cartridges). You could probably build a system like that for the PCE.

Those don't emulate, at least not in the traditional sense. They're clone hardware. They use a GOAC, Genesis On A Chip, which is engineered to perform the functions of the Genesis at a level that is "good enough". They do probably have a pretty legit MC 68k knock-off core. It's the other functions that are usually a bit off due to them replicating things cheaply and in poor detail.

As for the PCE, the PCE CPU is a modified 65C02. There are schematics and markup files for the 6502 and, I believe, the 65C02. If you use those as a base you have a good portion of the core of the PCE's CPU already.

Here's some of the goodness I've already found...
http://www.visual6502.org/

[HercTNT]

either way, playing iso's on a portable would be amazing, but i think its a pipe dream. it would be much cheaper to buy a cd unit that is working, or one that needs to be fixed and have our onsite experts fix it up.

[MottZilla]

The problem i see with de pce cdrom is the red book
audio stuff. How do you gonna control this over the hu slot
or extension port? Since game data/psg sound is very independent
handled to the red book audio.

You can't do it with just the HuCard slot, atleast not in stereo. Instead you'll need to mix the audio from the proposed device playing the audiotracks with the system's audio output. It's not a huge deal. If such a device interfaced with the expansion port it would be no problem but would leave DUO's out in the cold.

[Everblue]

Well considering that then you won't need a duo... and a HuCard only PCE is way cheaper....

[MottZilla]

While that's true then you need to get a Expansion Connector, and I'm not sure if you can find those easily. Also if you don't make whatever it is coexisting with the CD system, you'll have to clone the hardware for the extra sound channel. But it might not be a very complex setup to handle. Either way it would be a sweet project.

[HercTNT]

i can make an expansion connector, its not to hard. sourcing one is a whole different story. Here is a picture of one i built. I sent the prototype to thesteve. its far more likely that he or guys like him could build them much faster and of higher quality.

[Everblue]

Is someone brewing something here ?

[HercTNT]

not me, i'm not smart enough but i will help anyway i can.

[MottZilla]

Has anyone ever done a complete disassembly of the Super System Card 3.0 BIOS? Or does anyone have a document detailing all the function calls in the BIOS? Since there are homebrew CD-ROM games I would guess someone has atleast some good information on the BIOS.

[HercTNT]

don't think you need to. other members have stated you can use a flash card to load the bios on a portable system, or a system without a cd attached.  Gameofyou's flashcard would be ideal for this.