Dreamcast -> Arcade Console

Well, howdy-do, folks.

Listen: I've been doing some research on the Initial D: Arcade Stage games, and am actually looking for info on a couple of things.

1. The card reader. If anyone has part names/manufacturers, detailed pictures, and/or instructions for disassembly/assembly, I'd be massively greatful.

2. The NAOMI (also NAOMI2) board. Used inside Initial D games, and according to what I can find, it's basically a Dreamcast with mad RAM. Anyone care to verify?

3. I'm basically going to try and convert a Dreamcast to read the GD-ROM, and be able to play Initial D. Any suggestions as to what I need?

I've already got Owner's Manuals, Wiring Diagrams, and Service Manuals.

And, just for entertainment, has anyone ever tried this before? On any scale?

well fyi, game disc that dc uses are called gd-roms

I know that, and I appreciate it. GD-ROMS are 1.2 Gig apiece, capacity-wise.

What I need is any info on the card reader and anything I may have forgotten, such as the feasibility of turning a Dreamcast into an arcade machine.

Not possible, the internals will be completely different and have completely different roms and things in that the game would require.

#4 is right, just because the systems are based on the same architechure doesn't mean you can switch a few wires and create an arcade board.

You're probably looking at the Neo*Geo AES > MVS conversion kits that exist, and thinking the same thing is possible. The AES and MVS are the same exact system, just with different pinheads on the cartridges. The Naomi and DC just happen to be laid out in a similiar fashion, and have similiar specs and abilities.

The card reader just magnitizes a small metal stipe inside the card. It would be very difficult to do/build one of these yourself. There may be bulk parts you can buy that can magnetize cards like this, but unless you also know the exact format of how InitD saves data to the card, you couldn't duplicate it.

PS: GD-Rom means absolutely nothing. A GD-Rom is just a CD rom. You can burn CD's and use them in a dreamcast with no modding of any kind. The only thing that truely separates a GD from a CD is that-

1) To get the GD specification by sega, they had to be made by Yamaha, thus locking developers into Yamaha's price
2) They have to have a first track that contains signed Sega code. However, the track is formatted as audio. This is why you can put a Dreamcast game into a CD player, and it will play the disc. The signed code is also portable, making this security check pointless, because you can just copy the exact code to any CD you want.

It would be far, far more easier to dump the official Initial D arcade game disc to your computer, make it bootable on a DC through SOFTWARE (ie: changing headers and stuff), and relinking function calls to the card-reader to make them go nowhere, so it never realizes there is no card reader. To attempt to build a naomi machine from a dreamcast would be much, much harder, if not impossible. Not only that, but you intend to do it on one of the last Naomi games out, and a highly specialized one at that.

You can burn CD's and use them in a dreamcast with no modding of any kind.

Me again. Sorry, what i meant here is that the same is probably true for a naomi system, but i really don't know. I'm sure someone has figured out how to play burned arcade games in it.

"#4 is right, just because the systems are based on the same architechure doesn't mean you can switch a few wires and create an arcade board."

You are better off getting schematics for all this.  Way better then guessing.

I have the schematics, though you're probably right.

Hypothetically, though, if I modify the software to forget the function calls to the MagRW, it could work?

Dammit...I need more info on an emulator for the damn things. And some idea of where to go from here.

*sigh*

Try to find Katana SDK documentotion it will be usefull :D

>>9

How so? I'd like to know, before I devote a serious amount of time to looking this up.

#6 is mostly right. Most DCs made can play burned discs without a mod, but the last generation of DC released had burned CD support removed because pirating had become such a huge problem. Too little too late but they did it anyway.

#5 is also mostly right, as said by #3 the GD-Rom also has almost twice the storage of a standard CD so its not quite "just" a CD but its the same tech just stretched a little farther.

the gdrom format is just a normal cd but burned differently, some redundancy related to error checking has been removed and thus they can fit more relevant data on the disk.  theres ways to mess with normal cd drives to get them to read gdroms as well to prove this.

See, that's the thing. I have one of the "earlier" DCs, which actually reads the burned discs. I've tested it, and it works like a charm.

Now, with all the documentation I've seen so far (pro 4-chan help notwithstanding), it seems that such a plan ought to work. Now, of course, I haven't pulled apart the DC yet, to examine the chips (it's not mine, and I'd hate to damage it), so anyone who has done it care to tell me what I'm gonna find in there?