How Can I wire A CDROM To Use In A DC??

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Gforce598
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How Can I wire A CDROM To Use In A DC??

Post by Gforce598 » Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:41 pm

I would like to wire a CDROM to use in a DC. Not to fit in the case but I would like to build an arcade cabinet with a DC as the engine and use a CDROM to swap my backups due to the ease of mounting and slide out tray which is what I have been trying to figure out if this cold be done with the original GDROM but no one has answered any of my previous posts on this subject. Also has anyone ever thought of hacking apart a 100 disk CD changer to use the mechanism to swap games like juke box style??? That would be the SHIZNIT!! Thanks in advance.
Gforce598 8)

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DK
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Post by DK » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:17 am

Don't think it would work I'm afraid. The Dremcast uses GD Roms, basically CD ROMS but they read from the outside in, not the inside out.
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atari2600a
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Post by atari2600a » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:28 am

Plus they can store over 1GB.

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DK
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Post by DK » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:46 pm

Acording to this, ur idea might be possible, but doesn't seem worth the hassle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM

edit by mod: You don't need URL tags around a lone URL, unless you work at the Department of Redundancy Department. But if you do use them, please make sure they're put together right before you submit, ok? :) -bic
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vskid
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Post by vskid » Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:12 pm

I say its possible if you use the reader, motor, and that stuff from the DC and the tray and its nessisary stuff from the CD drive.
I too always thought it would be cool to hack a 100+ CD changer with a DVD player or game system.
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Gforce598
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As far as I know all CD media reads from the inside

Post by Gforce598 » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:50 pm

As far as I know all cd media reads from the inner most part of the disk to the outside edge that is why when you burn a disk that is not all the way full you will see a line around the edge from where the data stops. Also I had a Yamaha CDRW that had what was called t@2 or tatoo and this worked similar to the lightscribe with the exception that it would write text into the unused portion of the disk IE.. the outer ring I was talking about earlier. Any way as far as the cdrom for gdrom subject. I am aware of the whole GD or gigabyte disk thing but I will only be using this dive for backups as anyone who knows anything about DC backups almost every release fits onto normal cdr media with the exception of a few releases that needed to be put onto 90 minutes 750mb disks but I currently have more than the entire USA collection of games and could really care less about those few games I would not be able to play. Now as for a normal cdrom reading a backup of an original disk; not only is this possible but it is a fact!! There is an emulator for the PC that will run a DC game which I have used in the past where in you place your game into your cdrom and it loads into the emulator to play. So even though a PC will not recognise the data on the disk this is only due to the fact that the windows os was not designed to recognise it. Does anyone with some experience in hacking or modding a DC have any suggestions on this matter??? I thought this was suppposed to be the place for these types of questions. Come on moderators!! LOL 8)

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Post by marshallh » Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:27 pm

Short answer: No.

Long answer: The DC hardware needs the GD-ROM hardware to run, period. There's no way to interface it with a regular CD drive instead. Yes, the GDROM drive reads CDs. But that's like trying to put a CD player in a DVD player and still expecting to play DVDs.

Also, you are right about CDs reading from the inside out, but GD-ROMs read from the outside in. That's why DC backups had to be "dummied".

What you could do is to keep the existing GD-ROM drive parts intact, and make a mechanism of sorts to do your disc loading. But it would be tough.
Last edited by marshallh on Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tom61
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Re: As far as I know all CD media reads from the inside

Post by tom61 » Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:27 pm

Gforce598 wrote:Come on moderators!! LOL 8)
In before the lock, LOL. Piracy=no-no on these forums.

For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume you meant backups of legal homebrews. The DC is not setup to handle IDE CDROM drives, and therefore can't work with them without hard-core hacking. There is a homebrew IDE/ISA/PCMCIA interface for the Dreamcast that connects to the parrallel port (used for modem and LAN adapter), but is so complex that only two people had built it last I checked. In addition to the hardware, you'll also need to write software to load DC games off ATAPI CDROM drives.

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Post by Gump-in-space » Thu Oct 26, 2006 8:16 pm

Hehehe, I posted this about a month ago...
Gump-in-space wrote:I had a good idea once that would be pretty cool.

My parents have a 100 CD changer/player and I thought "hmmm... it would be awesome if a game system could hold 100 CDs at once!" All I would have to do is replace the Cd player inside with a game system of my choice, and when I want to play, I look at the number chart and find the number of the game I want, then press the rotate button untill I find it, then press play. The robotic arm places it on the spindle of the system and I play. Oh, and what if it was an arcade cabinet! That would rock!
Gamelver wrote:aw, I thought they were gonna be Gameboys inside the bricks :P.

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Post by Sparkfist » Thu Oct 26, 2006 8:17 pm

I know there has been talk about connecting a CD-ROM laser as a preplacement for a burned out GD-ROM's. In one of the thread someone mentioned they did successed, however they can only run homebrew or backup.

Also in responce to tom61, you don't need the whole CD-ROM. The CD-ROM like that out of the PSone, which is nothing more then the motor, lens and laser.
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Ness
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Post by Ness » Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:59 pm

Just attach the dreamcast vertically to the cabinet with a custom opening try. That would be the easiest way while keeping the simplicity of not having to open up the dreamcast and modify things.
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