Something I've been working on.

Razoola

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Back in the spring I worked hard with mikew on something for the Neo Geo CD system. I have had a break on it for the last couple of months but will be working again on it soon.

Here is a video which is basically a proof of concept. I'm not really going to delve too much into what the end result is going to be but maybe this will take your minds off some of the other happenings in the forum.

 
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Rot

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That's cool Raz pal.... i assume the whole game just loads off the usb.... not just individual stages?

xROTx
 

68k

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Alright, might have to pick up a CD system for this.
 

Yodd

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Awesome. Look forward to more of this.
 

Razoola

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That's cool Raz pal.... i assume the whole game just loads off the usb.... not just individual stages?

xROTx

Yes, the PC is uploading the game from via USB on the pc side to the joystick port on the neogeo cd side. Andro Dunos is a game that can fit onto the CD system without level loading required. Just to make it clear this is the MVS version of the game.
 

Rade K

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Super cool. So, the PC is required for this to work? Is the PC just "there" serving the files and the BIOS in the CD system does the work?

Would it be possible to program the BIOS so all games are compatible? Every title requires custom programming right? The fact that that is the MVS version of AD is the most interesting thing...

Only compatible with game that dump fully on the NGCD RAM? Could RAM be expanded?

Transfer rate is the same as from CD to RAM - that bottleneck still there?

Wonderful work and I have a million questions, so I will stop.

Thank you,
 

Pedrobear

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Beat by the french ;)

That was a serial connection tho.
Dude has a pretty cool neogeo lightgun proof of concept too.
 

Tempest

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Awesome! All this cool stuff is happening right after I get a Neo Geo CD. I can't wait to see where this goes. When you're ready to sell these, I'm down for one.

Oh and pretty much everything Cohaagen said. :)
 

pipes

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Cool stuff. Good see some positive things going on in the Neo world these days.
 

Razoola

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Yup, pc will be required (mac and other should be possible also). Every MVS game would be compatable if there was a way to increase the cache.

About the cuerrent speeds. The current protocol uses 8 data lines, on the MVS we can get speeds of 150k/s. On the CD system the joysticks are hooked up a little differently internally and that slows things down to around 120k/s. we could go 16bit and double the speed in theory. There are other ways to give an even higher speed also but would require internal modding. USB transfer rates are not the limiting factor at present.

Don't even think to compare to the French demo which is around 1k/s. We had a parallel port hookup in the universebios back in 2008.
 
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chrisr

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This is pretty cool, as a tech feat, and the other video showing someone uploading a demo seems like it would be the most appropriate use of this type of thing.

In the end though, what would make me really be happy I have an entire CD collection would be the development of something like this:

http://www.x360key.com/

Basically, just a drive emulator. This way you could store your games all on a USB hard drive and access them with about as minimal load time as possible without adding additional ram to the system and hacking everything to pieces.

Outside of the CD only games, the only real reason to play the CD is for the far superior soundtracks. With minimal loading, it would probably be worth it for many of the games.
 

genetik

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Definitely interesting. I was just about to sell my Neo Geo CD cause it had lens issues and it stops playing background music after a few minutes of gameplay. I think I'll hang on to it to check this out whenever it's available.
 

Rade K

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Do you think something like the Raspberry Pi would be useable?

Any idea on using the extra ram ports on the CDZ?
 

supergoose

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That's the best news i read in ages. For i while i thought you might have lost interest in the neo but this looks very promising.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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Any idea on using the extra ram ports on the CDZ?

Been there, done that. Few years ago I populated all my ram on the CDZ and used a bios from smkdan to test. System did not read the added ram at all. Think we came to the conclusion that the empty slots are just available to use different surface mount type of ram than what was on there originally. Let me see if I can find the thread.
 

Razoola

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This is pretty cool, as a tech feat, and the other video showing someone uploading a demo seems like it would be the most appropriate use of this type of thing.

Thanks. I don't want to go too much into that final aim for the project but its going to be a little more intresting than what the proof on concept shows.
 

Razoola

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I wanted to talk a little more about the transfer speeds we are currently getting as already someone has compared to another proof on concept done by a french person.

In this day and age 150k/s (which is what the protocol can acheive) sounds very slow. When you factor in we are talking about only 8 data lines through a joystick port and a CPU running at 12MHZ then you begin to realise thats quite an achievement. Our aim was to hit around 60k's so you can imagine our delight to get the speed we did. The limiting speed factor is of course the 68k side of things. I made some very heavy optimistions there to get this speed. As a matter of interest I forgot to mention it but download speed is around 33k/s over 2 data lines if memory searves me right.
 
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NG:DEV.TEAM

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Awesome work, Raz!

That's really a good step forward for the homebrew scene.
We were thinking about creating a SDCard based flash card for this purpose, but after all this drama, we decided against it :annoyed:
But this is even better, as it probably will cost only a few bucks and everyone can start hacking and brewing :-J
 

Yodd

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We were thinking about creating a SDCard based flash card for this purpose, but after all this drama, we decided against it :annoyed:
But this is even better, as it probably will cost only a few bucks and everyone can start hacking and brewing :-J

I think many of us would be interested in one of these.
 

goldenegg

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Awesome work, Raz!

That's really a good step forward for the homebrew scene.
We were thinking about creating a SDCard based flash card for this purpose, but after all this drama, we decided against it :annoyed:
But this is even better, as it probably will cost only a few bucks and everyone can start hacking and brewing :-J

You'd have a ton of people lining up to get a SD based cart. The Neo Geo is pretty much the only mainstream console without a flash cart at the moment. Given the high cost of most games, few people will ever get to experience many titles on original hardware. A flash cart would make the system much more accessible.
 

DanAdamKOF

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Great work! I'm stating the obvious, but for those that don't realize what this entails, this means that someone coding a game (or coding whatever) for the NGCD no longer has to burn a disc each time he needs to test a change in code. This will greatly streamline development.

Awesome work, Raz!

That's really a good step forward for the homebrew scene.
We were thinking about creating a SDCard based flash card for this purpose, but after all this drama, we decided against it :annoyed:
But this is even better, as it probably will cost only a few bucks and everyone can start hacking and brewing :-J
I would be highly interested in this. The multigame bootlegs are "nice enough" but have their flaws. Something like this would be great. But then again, I'm assuming the price would be more aimed at developers than at console enthusiasts that just want to play downloaded ROMs.
 

mikew

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One thing Raz didn't mention is that the unit also has the ability to work as Playstation to Neo joystick converter so you can still use the 2nd joystick port when not using the upload/download feature. I'm sure most people would rather have an actual Neo joystick connected but I didn't have any of those kicking around to test with and opted for the PSX controller as it only uses 6 lines for all the buttons.
 

NeoTurfMasta

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Also wanted to add that once this is done, the CD version of the NeoBiosMasta allows you to install this bios quickly and easily ;)
 
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