[donatj]

I can't wait for him to start selling these! I would buy one in a hot minute. My Saturn is collecting dust and there are so many games I just can't get my hands on for my Saturn, and emulation in my experience hardly works. It's way too weird a machine.

[christoph]

In case it helps, there is actually a very low tech solution to booting copied games on Saturn hardware that works with the vast majority of games released (especially expensive/rare/hard to find games like the Treasure releases).

Tape/wedge the drive lid sensor down, power up with a real game in (you don't need to close the lid as the sensor believes the lid is always shut) and allow it do the initial copy protection check on your real disc.

At this point it stops the disc for just less than second - just enough time to pull the real disc out and swap in a CD-R. It takes a little practice and potentially can damage the drive motor if your timing is frequently poor.

Games this won't work with are those spanning multiple discs where you need to swap discs in game to progress.

[serge2k]

I practiced this trick with my original playstation years ago.

Then I killed it trying to mod it. Got a PS1 instead, couldn't figure out the trick anymore.

It was funny that they kept on changing the points where the disc would read info, you had to swap multiple times at different points. They wouldn't stop either, just slow down.

[elwell]

> Then I killed it trying to mod it.

Ugh, don't remind me. My brother fried our n64 and our ps2 trying to mod them into handheld's (with built-in screen).

[pavel_lishin]

I remember owning a "slim" ps2, but I'm still kind of boggled at the idea of compacting everything inside it into a "handheld" size.

[jandrese]

Modding the PS2 is still one of the hardest soldering jobs I've ever done. The worst part is that the modchips were apparently pretty crude in how they worked and ended up burning out the laser diode after about 6 months even if you only used it for imported games and not burned games.

[nathancahill]

Hah, yeah, I used to do that too with the PS1 until I modded it with a chip. It was flaky though, worked 50% of the time.

[MichaelApproved]

Why not just cut the wobble edge of a real CD off and attach it to a burned CD?

Maybe you can shave the back of the shimmed wobble edge down, so that it won't stick out as much on the burned CD. This shimmed wobble can be your key for all the burned CDs you have.

Maybe double sided tape can keep the wobble shim attached to your burned CD while still allowing it to be removable for other CDs.

I've never had a Saturn, so I don't know what this wobble edge looks like in person. Am I missing something?

[justabystander]

You're not getting very technical responses to this, so I'll bite.

> Why not just cut the wobble edge of a real CD off and attach it to a burned CD?

This would have a very low success rate, as the precision required to accurately cut off the wobbled edge on an original disc (and the target area on a CD-R) would a lot of upfront engineering as well as cost-prohibitive tools. Optical discs require more precise measurements than most people who favor the scrapbooking "cut-n-glue" solution can provide.

This is just as long as we're pretending it's possible. Opitcal discs lose a lot of structural integrity the moment you start breaking/cutting them. The reflective portion where the data resides is on a thin film substrate at the back of the CD. Cutting that without outright destroying the disc or (at least reducing the operating life) would take significant effort, as would precisely healing the new gap from combining two separate materials without destroying the alignment of all those microscopic ones and zeroes.

Not to mention that any adhesives you might apply to combine the two pieces would make that level of accuracy impossible, if not highly improbable. And then you have to hope the whole thing holds up while spinning. Even assuming you could get the two pieces to combine seamlessly, there's always the chance that you've done something that destroys the balance of the disc, which could have a number of unfortunate effects in spinning media. I don't think the Saturn drive spins fast enough for it to sling off and demolish your hardware, but it could cause data inaccuracies at the very least.

I mean a company could attempt to do it for you, but it'd be cheaper and more reliable to engineer Saturn-compatible CD-Rs (or offer a disc-pressing service) at that rate. Considering the only use is to defeat old copy protection, it's not going to have a market large enough to sustain it. So you're going to have high prices, and low enough product sales that it would probably not be worth inviting the legal trouble. Even after all that, CD-Rs can have all sorts of QA issues that can affect their shelf life. And then you still have the problem mentioned in the video where the drive hardware fails.

Replacing it with flash data is just a better long-term solution.

[sitharus]

it's not a physical wobble, it's a data track written in a wave-like path. You can't write it as all CD-Rs already have the spiral track so it's very hard to fake.

It's similar to the Gamecube using the burst-cutting area to implement DRM - it's impossible to duplicate without a production setup.

[djsumdog]

I don't think you can't cut a CD like that. The moment you try to cut it with anything, it will probably crack (both for real silicon and CD-Rs).

[JoshTriplett]

> I've never had a Saturn, so I don't know what this wobble edge looks like in person. Am I missing something?

The video shows it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E#t=2m13s

[abrasive]

The video's graphic is a bit of an approximation. In practice it appears that every second disc sector is displaced, IIRC. And they've got particular bit patterns written into them to produce a visual logo; these patterns (but not the actual logos) are checked too.

The protection ring is visible to the naked eye for this reason. I can't find a picture, sorry!

[0xcde4c3db]

I tried to figure out how to reproduce the logo at one point (10+ years ago, when people were less worried about dying drives). IIRC, it's that the EFM patterns used to make the pixels don't make valid Red/Yellow Book sector contents, which causes some weird behavior if you try to read them as such.

[kevin_thibedeau]

As an Aussie he's going to be subject to the TPPs DMCA-lite restrictions on circumvention devices once it's ratified.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

I live in Australia and wrote Heimdall[1], an open-source reverse engineered tool for flashing Samsung phones.

I can assure you, I am not looking forward to the TPP!

[1] https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall

[voltagex_]

Thanks for Heimdall. Samsung really don't seem to like developers that much, and Heimdall was a godsend when I had an S3.

[mavendependency]

What's wrong with odin? Other than the moral aspects of using leaked software?

[voltagex_]

I think Odin was Windows only, there were multiple old versions floating around and how do you know what you're really running? (as Administrator, too)

[em3rgent0rdr]

Heimdall has saved my S3 & Note2 quite a few times! Thank you!

[vacri]

Sad, really, given that the courts here have already ruled that circumvention is your right on equipment that you own.

[djsumdog]

Australia has some of the best reverse engineering laws currently. Those four kids reverse the Sydney train system legally (they did responsibly disclose n such).

[brokenmachine]

?? link please?

[porjo]

http://m.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/free-ride...

[ekianjo]

Is this retroactive though ? Does it apply to everything that was created before?

[estebank]

Continued publication could be construed as an ongoing matter. IANAL.

[Grazester]

There is already an SD card drive for the Saturn. https://gdemu.wordpress.com/

To achieve this did not require fully reverse engineering the cdrom controller but it is great someone did though.

[rocky1138]

I think you're mistaken: what you've linked is a Dreamcast project. OP's youtube link is for the Sega Saturn (the console before the Dreamcast).

[mikepavone]

GDEMU is for the Dreamcast, but the same person/group also produced Phoebe and Rhea which are similar products for the Saturn. Those don't have a separate home page, but most of the menu entries at the top of the page have separate Phoebe and Rhea options.

[seanc722]

Indeed! There are mod chips, etc. He ended up aiming for something that didn't require ripping it open and soldering.

[city41]

The Rhea/Phoebe require no soldering. Just pop out the CD drive, pop in the Rhea. Very simple.

[bydo]

Looking at the installation instructions, the Rhea claims to require some soldering. The Phoebe doesn't, but still requires disassembling the system. They also each only work on specific versions of the hardware (20- vs 21-pin), and which version a specific Saturn is may not be obvious without disassembly.

The nice thing about this new solution, even ignoring that it furthers public understanding of the hardware, is that it's a simple module that plugs into a slot already available and accessible on every Saturn ever sold by SEGA (presumably it won't work on the Hi-Saturn units made by Hitachi, as they had the MPEG hardware integrated, though they are also very rare and very expensive).

[city41]

The Rhea doesn't actually require soldering as Dominik will do the soldering first before shipping. For sure having to know 20 versus 21 pin is a pain. But the Rhea/Phoebe have a huge advantage of being here now and known to be very reliable (they work flawlessly). Not discounting this new approach, it seems very promising, but just pointing out there's already a solution available today for those who didn't realize.

[city41]

You can already buy the Saturn Rhea. It is pretty much the same thing except SD based and it replaces the CD drive. I have one and absolutely love it. It's honestly the best retro gaming purchase I have made in a very long time.

[Frenchgeek]

Does the Rhea have write support too?

[jandrese]

I doubt it. As I understand it, it emulates the CD-ROM hardware and doesn't even touch the drive controller chip.

[city41]

Exactly. So yeah, the Rhea is a slightly different product. But for most people, being able to write is not important.

[mjevans]

I think that's both why they were so expensive back in the day AND why it was so hard to develop on (all I have -ever- heard about developing games for that platform).

[ekianjo]

To be fair most devs at the time completely ignored the second CPU because it was apparently very hard to make them work together. So they treated it as a single CPU console. Which kinds of defeats the purpose :)

[creshal]

Going by the Wikipedia description of it, they had multiplexed RAM access. So developers could choose between having two CPUs at half the RAM speed (4KiB CPU-local cache are enough to make up for it, right?) or a single CPU at full RAM speed.

[kowdermeister]

Yes: https://youtu.be/jOyfZex7B3E?t=25m21s

[StavrosK]

Does anyone know how you go from a PCB to a product? I've made PCBs before, but I wouldn't know where to begin to make it into a product that I can sell to people...

[elliottcarlson]

For PCB printing, OSH Park is a highly recommended one: https://oshpark.com/

For PCB assembly, http://www.4pcb.com/ is recommended.

Some reviews from Lady Ada: http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html

Also check out http://pcbshopper.com/

[StavrosK]

Thank you, I've never seen a PCB assembly service, so that will be useful. I guess one would also need to design some sort of cover as well and talk to a company that makes plastics? Are there plastic assembly companies as well (for if your product has buttons/sprints/etc)?

[shabble]

There's Protomold[1] which does relatively cheap short runs of plastic manufacturing. I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives (and I recall seeing a massive chinese 3d printing contract manufacturer, but forget the name).

Not sure about assembling all the parts into the case. Depending on who does the PCB production and assembly, they might also offer a full assembly service, or not.

The Factory Floor series[2] by Bunnie Huang might be an interesting read about some of the steps necessary for getting an idea to production.

[1] https://www.protolabs.com/injection-molding

[2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2812

[StavrosK]

This looks great, thank you. They're still prohibitively expensive for small runs (for 10 boards, above, the cost was $100/board, but for 1000 it fell down to $2/board, and I'm sure protolabs is similar), but at least your comment and the GP takes me from "I wouldn't know how to even begin making this thing" to "Looks like I can just send these guys designs and my box prototype and get assembled PCBs and boxes back", which is almost there, pretty much.

Thanks again!

[ethbro]

Well, if you want to sell it legally, testing and validation with the relevant government departments. If not, eBay and "intended for novelty use only"?

[arprocter]

I want to re-play Panzer Dragoon Saga so badly

[xyience]

Panzer Dragoon Orta was on the x-box. :)

Sega should really make an HD remastering of all of them though. Or even a new one. Especially after the sadness of Star Fox Zero.

[Grazester]

It is rumored that Panzer Dragoon Saga's source code was lost hence no HD version. I am not angry about it.