PCEngineFX Picture Thread (Formerly "Mugs")

[Kitsunexus]

I can't find the site, but way back when, there was a site that said you could take a certain CD-ROM drive (it was a Hitachi, I think) and you would open your Saturn, pull out it's drive cord from it's jumper, put the PC CD-ROM's cord into the jumper and you could use the drive.

Why it's so damn hard to find now is a mystery, but I'm still looking for it...

[Michael Helgeson]

Well keep looking. The problem with this is there are alot of revisions of the Saturn,that use different drives from JVC and Sanyo and hook up a tad different,so even if this is a real swap,it would only work on a certain revision most likely. I heard of Massystems tech guy doing something like this long ago,but I don't know the details on it,or what all he did or what all he used,but the rumor was he was able to replace a Neo Cd systems laser with a Saturns. I am doubtful these days of this being legit,but anyone who cares could always inquire to Massystems.com about it.

[Kitsunexus]

I'm going to ask some people who would know for sure: http://www.assemblergames.com/

[offsidewing]

Here's the only digital pic of me without someone else in it.  And yes, I put my teeth in for the pic...

[FM-77]

A portrait of me.

Were you designed by that Amano guy?

Nobody's heard that silly story I take it. Look at the pic for five minutes and die, blah blah blah.

[Kitsunexus]

Well keep looking. The problem with this is there are alot of revisions of the Saturn,that use different drives from JVC and Sanyo and hook up a tad different,so even if this is a real swap,it would only work on a certain revision most likely. I heard of Massystems tech guy doing something like this long ago,but I don't know the details on it,or what all he did or what all he used,but the rumor was he was able to replace a Neo Cd systems laser with a Saturns. I am doubtful these days of this being legit,but anyone who cares could always inquire to Massystems.com about it.

Alright, here is what the Assembler guys told me:

I can't positively confirm or deny that claim, but it seems plausible. I know that Saturn CD drives are highly interchangable, as I've transferred one from a US Saturn to a Japanese Saturn once, and I think they are quite similar if not exactly the same as regular PC drives.

Errr, no. The Saturn has its own controller, nothing like IDE. It would take a great deal of doing. And, as has been said with ALL consoles, swapping out the drive for a faster one is pointless, as the rest of the hardware probably can't keep up with the faster transfer speeds. Even if you did get it to work, it is doubtful you would see any increase in read times.

Also, I doubt that a PC drive is going to be able to read the protection ring!

I'm sure I saw that webpage too, I believe it was a JVC laptop drive that you had to remove from the case and mount to the Saturn (mark 2 I believe) it required two extra wires to be soldered but it could use the standard ribbon connector. As it was a 4x drive it did speed up access quite a bit (but not 4x more like 2.5x to 3x speed), as you say the webpage has gone and I can't find it for love or money now.

That Jamtex guy definitely saw the same webpage as me, but if retro is right, then it's DEFINITELY a hoax. However, la-li-lu-le-lo has a point about drives being transferable, when I was Googling for that page I found a LOT of pages on how to swap one Saturn drive with another. So who knows?

[Michael Helgeson]

That more or less makes you guys master of the obvious though
As long as the build type is the same,as in same model jap or usa and same cd drive type,yea you can. The early models all used JVC drives. The latter used a different make Sanyo drive,which from what I remember will not work on the first 2 Saturn revisions made for the JVC drives. I remember it only working with the revised systems with round buttons and crunched pcbs.

[Kitsunexus]

That more or less makes you guys master of the obvious though
As long as the build type is the same,as in same model jap or usa and same cd drive type,yea you can. The early models all used JVC drives. The latter used a different make Sanyo drive,which from what I remember will not work on the first 2 Saturn revisions made for the JVC drives. I remember it only working with the revised systems with round buttons and crunched pcbs.

Yeah, but that one dude said he also saw that site with the PC drive. That's all that matters. I could care less about swapping console drives, no speed bost. But the PC Drive, that's a different story...

[Kitsunexus]

New reply!

The Saturn drive apparatus itself is unlikely to be that fundamentally different from a standard CD drive, although there'd certainly be custom firmware in there. Since CD drives fluctuate in response time and read speed, I'd imagine that if you did get a faster drive working in there, games would take advantage of the increased read speed.

Also, here's the thread: http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=193659

[Michael Helgeson]

New reply!

The Saturn drive apparatus itself is unlikely to be that fundamentally different from a standard CD drive, although there'd certainly be custom firmware in there. Since CD drives fluctuate in response time and read speed, I'd imagine that if you did get a faster drive working in there, games would take advantage of the increased read speed.

Also, here's the thread: http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=193659

Honestly,none of this really matters unless actual proof is posted. I think it would be possible myself,but I know for a fact it will require modification to whatever drive assembly  you can find that will even allow the swap. All in all,its not worth it. The Saturn already had good load times anyway.

If it was possible it would only be useful if you could use a current type of cd drive,and if there was at least a few types that would work. Otherwise youd be stuck trying to hunt down a certain one from 1996-98,which would be a terrible experience in its own right. This would also mean this swap would only be  really useful to someone wanting the slight speed increase from a better made drive. As a fix for a dead drive it would be silly because you could just buy another Saturn deck.

[Kitsunexus]

This would also mean this swap would only be  really useful to someone wanting the slight speed increase from a better made drive.

That's why I want it.

[Necromancer]

Well..... I might be exaggerating.....  just a little bit.  A single speed drive equals 150KB per second and a NeoGeo CD has a total of 7MB of memory, so a little math gives you 48 seconds of loading time plus any seek time.  Of course, this is a worst case scenario and not all games are horribly slow to load.

This is wrong, because it's assuming that all games do the same things with the hardware, and that all hardware is in the same condition.

Anyway, you can take certain PC CD-ROM drives and plug them into a Saturn to get shorter loading times...why can't you do this with a NeoCD?

I'm not a tech-know-it-all, but I think that you are wrong.  CD-ROM transfer rates are industry standard (1x = 150KB/second, 2x = 300KB/second, etc.), so there shouldn't be many differences between different drives (other than slight manufacturing tolerances).  Drives are regulated by onboard controllers and not by the games, so all games would have the same transfer rates.  On the other hand, if a game didn't utilize all of the memory, it would load quicker; and if a game loads from many different tracks, it will take even longer.

I don't see the point of arguing load times on damage or worn out hardware, so I'll concede that a dead drive would have infinite load times. 

[FM-77]

Well, the 1X, 2X, 52X, etc are the max transfer rates. They are definitely not constant, and usually  not that precise either. My 48X drive can transfer data at 52X (including some more), for example.

[Necromancer]

That's true for transfer rates on newer drives (constant angular velocity), but originally the transfer rates were more or less constant across the entire disc (constant linear velocity).  CLV drives would vary the RPM to maintain a given transfer rate from the inner portion of the disc to the outer portion.  CAV drives will maintain one speed regardless of track location, so that outer areas of the disc have higher transfer rates than the inner areas.  In any case, I seriously doubt that there are huge variations in load times between different NeoGeo CD models - just as there is little difference between different Duos and TG-CDs.

[Joe Redifer]

More mugs.  MUGS!!!!!